Online Catalog Product Details

		Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle, The
		Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Zuckert and Derek A. Webb
		Table of Contents Publication Date: October 2009 6 x 9. 483 pages. Introduction, note on the texts, annotations, appendixes, index.

Email this page to a friend

International Customers: If you would like an order shipped outside the U.S., its territories, Canada, South America, Central America, or the Caribbean, please email sales@gazellebooks.co.uk for assistance.

There was intense debate on ratification during the period from the drafting and proposal of the federal Constitution in September 1787 to its ratification in 1789. The principal arguments in favor of ratification were documented by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in The Federalist. The arguments against ratification appeared in various forms, by various authors, most of whom used a pseudonym. Collectively, these writings have become known as the Anti-Federalist papers.

The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle makes available for the first time a one-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings that are commensurate in scope, significance, political brilliance, and depth with those in The Federalist. Included in this volume as an appendix is a computational and contextual analysis that addresses the question of the authorship of two of the most well-known pseudonymous Anti-Federalist writings, namely, Essays of a Federal Farmer and Essays of Brutus. Also included are the records of Smith’s important speeches at the New York Ratifying Convention, some shorter writings of Smith’s from the ratification debate, and a set of private letters Smith wrote on constitutional subjects at the time of the ratification struggle.

Michael Zuckert is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.

Derek A. Webb is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University.