The Complete Anti-Federalist Edited by Herbert J. StoringChicago, 1,754 pp., $150 After almost two hundred years of a common life under the aegis of the United States Constitution, Americans continue to have almost no notion of the historical origins of their form of government, nor any conception of the struggles which preceded its establishment. A natural curiosity concerning our patrimony should be enough to induce a respectful effort at correcting this lamentable situation, preferably in the context of bicentennial observations. Indeed several projects with such a purpose have been announced. They should be monitored with care. For, as we must remember, a dispute over the proper interpretation of our national beginnings is always a component of the shaping of our future as a people.
Therefore, clearing away the obfuscatory muddle which stands between our time and the birth of the Republic is a more than academic exercise. As we are defined by that segment of our past preserved in the Constitution, so control over how that past is perceived grants, at law, a measure of control over political choices yet to be made. To reconstruct the universe of discourse within which the once merely confederated states struggled to become more “perfectly united” is therefore an act of piety, a keeping of faith with all of our heritage from the Framers, not just that part of it emphasized in the sanctioned Federalist historiography.
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