Talk:Bibliography of the United States Constitution/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Madison's claim

Though Madison apparently felt that the issue of slavery was the most pressing issue, his claim may be of a subjective nature, as he was indeed right in the middle of the controversy. According to Klarman, 2016,  Slavery, of course, was not the only issue — or even one of the principal ones — in the ratifying contest. Chapter 5 (Critics of the Constitution: The Antifederalists) examines the debate over ratification more broadly: There's no doubt that Madison made the claim, but perrhpas this idea needs to be presented more objectively.

The opening sentence in the paragraph indeed says, "According to James Madison, the source of greatest disagreement between the states in framing the U.S. Constitution was the issue of slavery." -- but as a stand alone statement without further context it tends to place too much weight on Madison's one claim and presents that idea as all inconclusive and final..

• Klarman, Michael J. (2016). The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-994203-9.

-- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Other influences

Among the pressing issues that also threatened ratification were:

• the Antifederalist's concern over a strong federal government's ability to tax the people and the states -- an advent which was feared would be under the control of a few elitists in a federal government.

• Along those lines were the idea of debtors, which were many, "who will not wish to see a government established, one object of which is to restrain the means of cheating creditors."

• Federalists often accused critics of the Constitution of being Loyalists having the ulterior motive of reuniting with Great Britain.

• Among supporters of the Constitution were men of property who desired to have their property protected, a concern that was largely the product of Shay's rebellion.

• Hamilton in particular feared "the influence of many inconsiderable men in possession of considerable offices under state governments who will fear a diminuation of their consequence, power and emolument by the establishment of the general government...".

• During ratification Hamilton was also a prominent voice over concerns of "the influence of some foreign powers who from different motives will not wish to see an energetic government established throughout the states.

These concerns, along with others outlined by Klarman, taken together tend to put the one issue of slavery in perhaps a different perspective.

While slavery indeed resulted in continuing issues that eventually led to Civil War, it apparently was not the all defining issue during the ratification, as many other provisions that addressed the above issues were instituted in the final Constitution, which addressed the many concerns of both Federalists and Anti-federalists, making ratification possible.

-- Gwillhickers (talk) 22:53, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

A response

Just briefly: Slavery was without a doubt the number one issue at the Convention in 1787. It, more than any other issue, defined the Constitution. The opposite is true of ratification, meaning the year of debates leading up to adoption barely touched on slavery.

Madison's quote speaks for itself, and many authors, including Klarman (p. 257), cite it. To call Madison's observation "subjective" without any source to support this interpretation is nothing but subjective. Allreet (talk) 19:24, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Gwillhickers: I don't want to get dragged into an interminable back-and-forth. However, in the spirit of cooperation, I'd like to clarify how I see things.

Slavery lurked behind most of the decisions that shaped the Constitution: representation (especially the Great Compromise but also the nonproportional, elitist Senate), taxation, property rights, protection from insurrections, slave trade, amendment process, Electoral College, and so forth. As for the lack of a "federal mandate" on slavery, which is otherwise correct, Pinckney sheds light on its intended purpose: "We have a security that the general government can never emancipate them, for...the general government has no powers but what are expressly granted by the Constitution, and that all rights not expressed were reserved by the several states."

You can confirm these observations by searching Klarman for references to Pinckney. Of particular note is his widely-reported post-Convention summation (p. 302): "In short, considering all circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property [slaves it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think them bad." Allreet (talk) 15:37, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Allreet — I've no trouble in conceding that the issue of slavery became the number one subject of debate, but to say that "It, more than any other issue, defined the Constitution", is simply not true. While provisions were made to accommodate the slave states, the issue did not form the central structure of the Constitution. i.e.Three separate branches of government, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, two houses of Congress, i.e.a separate Senate and Congress, etc. In any case, Alexander Hamilton held that the issue of Federal taxation, finance, getting the states to go along, was the most important issue, maintaining that without a strong treasury to provide for a strong national defense, keeping the wheels of government moving, and the Union strong, there would be no federal government, where the states would have remained separate sovereign entities, and hence, slavery as a federal issue would have been a moot point.   In any case I'm generally happy with the way the section reads. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:06, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Bots, etc

Back in late April an editor came through and removed the urls from templates that had Jstor and/or DOI numbers, and so we settled on this. Then shortly thereafter another bot came trough and made a train wreck out of one of the sections. Later, another bot came through and added urls, many of them from obscure websites, to the templates again, and so after some editing these were removed. Just the other day, yet an other bot came through and again added url's to the said templates, again many of which were to a variety of different web sites -- not archive.org.or google urls, which is what we've been using. In the process this bot didn't add publishers names, that were hitherto not included in a good number of templates. After reverting this last bot's edits, I went ahead and added the missing publisher names, along with some year dates and page numbers that were also missing in a few listings -- just for the record. I'm wondering if there is a template or something that can be included in the markup that will simply not allow this ongoing bot routine.-- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:45, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

What you detailed, Gwillhickers is appalling. I'm not sure what to say about Trappist the monk's edits, but the "battle with the bots" is absurd. Is there some kind of forum where we can protest these changes or at least receive some kind of administrative justification supporting them? Allreet (talk) 05:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

You are complaining about my edits on 30 April and 11 May 2023? And you are just now talking about them? Apparently not; you discussed my 30 April edit at Talk:Bibliography of the United States Constitution/Archive 1 § URL's and JSTOR. I guess that now explains the cryptic post at User talk:Trappist the monk/Archive 25 § Can't ping you which did not tell me why you wanted to ping me.

The initial purpose for my 30 April edit was this reference where a jstor url was improperly assigned to |jstor= (this edit). The purpose for my 11 May edit was this reference where a whole {{cite book}} template was assigned to |last= of another {{cite book}} template (this edit). In both cases, Module:Citation/CS1 emitted red error messages which attracted my attention. I would never have visited this article if editors used the Show preview to check repair their edits before clicking Publish changes.

Re: bot issues. Have you discussed any of this with the bot operators? I presume that the edit that made a train wreck out of one of the sections was this edit. Not necessarily the bot's fault; garbage in = garbage out: this edit added |title=Freedom of the press {reprint) note the unbalanced brackets. That was ultimately fixed (sort of) at this edit; the correct place for that kind of annotation is |type=Reprint because (reprint) is not part of the source's title so should not be italicized nor should it be included in the citation's title-metadata

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Trappist the monk I wasn't complaining about your removal of the URLs, and as I said, we settled on that. Just take exception to the different bots that come through, as explained. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)