I’ve just started my reading on my quest to determine why these men who professed such a love of liberty would come up with something so (IMO) vile.
I suspect I’ll find it was pretty much all about the war. A combination of lack of trust amongst the states, no clear determination of who was supposed to be paying for the war, and the demand by the French that the States show strong unity before any aid would be rendered.
I think it’s going to be very difficult for me to determine which side I would have been on at the time. Today I’m an AF, but 230 years ago I might have been a reluctant Federalist.
Sometimes I think laws need expiration dates. Then again, it’s scary to think that if the Constitution was to expire at just the right time we might end up with something much worse.
"We are vain, like other nations. We wish to make a noise in the world; and feel hurt that Europeans are not so attentive to America in peace, as they were to America in war. We are also, no doubt, desirous of cutting a figure in history"