Abstract
"From the founding, Americans' contests over the Constitution and what it should mean for their actions have profoundly shaped the country's political direction. With a cast of characters ranging from Montesquieu, Adams, and Henry Clay, to the transcendentalists, Cherokee freedmen, and modern identitarians, this book brings an interdisciplinary group of scholars to the task of forwarding discussion on American political thought and American political development. The result is a volume raising as many questions as it answers, especially about the themes of membership and civic virtue"--