A Machine That Would Go of Itself

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution's place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.

1: The Problem of Constitutionalism in American Culture; 1: The Most Wonderful Instrument Ever Drawn by the Hand of Man; 2: To Make the Constitution a Practical System; 3: All That Gives Us a National Character; 4: The Constitution Threatens to Be a Subject of Infinite Sects; 2: A Machine That Would Go of Itself; 5: On This Day, One Hundred Years Ago; 6: The American and the British Constitution Are Two Entirely Different Things; 7: The Crisis in Constitutionalism; 3: America is Always Talking About its Constitution; 8: God Knows How Dearly We Need a Constitutional Revival; 9: Decisions Are Politics When Constitutional Questions Are Up for Decision; 10: My God! Making a Racket out of the Constitution; 4: The Pendulum of Public Opinion; 11: Illegal Defiance of Constitutional Authority; 12: Our Bill of Rights Is Under Subtle and Pervasive Attack; 13: The Public Got Strange and Distorted Views of the Court and Its Rulings; 14: It's What Holds Us All Together