In this seminal volume, M. E. Bradford defines the Old Whig political tradition in American thought, showing that the inheritance of the prescriptive anti-federalists still lives. For Bradford, important elements in our heritage from the American Revolution have been systematically hidden from our view by anachronistic and partisan scholarship. He believes that other, more ideological components have been emphasized at the expense of the rest. Here he attempts to return us to our heritage.

A Better Guide Than Reason (The Library of Conservative Thought)

Politics & Social Sciences

Bradford, M. E.

Philosophy

Routledge

In this concise and valuable reference work - the only compilation of biographical sketches for all fifty-five Framers who attended the Philadelphia Convention - M. E. Bradford examines the Framers' constitutional theories, their visions for the newly founded union, and their opinions on ratification of the document that would address such paramount issues as national revenue, public debt, currency, removal of trade barriers between the states, and provisions for the common defense. Delving into the political and philosophical principles of the Founders, he illuminates their motives, thoughts, and actions and illustrates how their political decision-making was influenced by religion, education, environment, economic circumstances, and personal background.

Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

University Press of Kansas

One was a shoemaker, surveyor, lawyer, jurist, lay theologian, and statesman. Two became president, one vice president. Over half were experienced in the legal profession. The majority were well off and, for their time, well educated. And when they came together in Philadelphia in 1787, they produced the framework for the most influential document in the history of the United States. Yet, says M. E. Bradford, the fifty-five original Framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't view themselves as demigods out to "invent" a country. Instead they tackled the nuts and bolts of constitution building by relying on a shared philosophical legacy inherited from more than 1,000 years of British history and culture. In this concise and valuable reference work—the only compilation of biographical sketches for all fifty-five Framers who attended the Philadelphia Convention—Bradford examines the Framer's constitutional theories, their visions for the newly founded union, and their opinions on ratification of the document that would address such paramount issues as national revenue, public debt, currency, removal of trade barriers between the states, and provisions for the common defense. Delving into the political and philosophical principles of the founders, Bradford illuminates their motives, thoughts, and actions and illustrates how their political decision-making was influenced by religion, education, environment, economic circumstances, and personal background.

Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution?Second Edition, Revised

Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative by M. E. Bradford.

Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative

History

Americas

Univ of Georgia Pr

This persuasively argued, decidedly partisan work aims to recover the original United States Constitution by describing its genesis, ratification, and mandate from the perspectives of its original framers. Openly challenging contemporary orthodoxy, M. E. Bradford employs principles of legal, historical, rhetorical, and dramatic analysis to reveal a Constitution notably short on abstract principles and modest in any goal beyond limiting the powers of the government it authorizes. From the beginning of Original Intentions, two sharply divergent convictions about the Constitution emerge. Bradford, arguing from a nomocratic viewpoint, regards the Constitution as an essentially procedural text created expressly to detail how the government may preside over itself not its people. He decries the currently predominant teleologic view, which is based upon the "principles" embodied by the Constitution, and holds that the document was designed to achieve a certain kind of society. By this view, he says, our fundamental laws have been blanketed by a heavy layer of ad hoc solutions to problems they were never intended to address, and then further obscured by the melioristic meddlings of judges, legislators, lawyers, scholars, and journalists. Bradford first shows that the Constitutional convention of 1787 was an enterprise guided by the delegates' hesitancy to impose a higher order over their local, practical, and vastly differing interests. Though all the states would ratify the Constitution, he says, each would interpret it in unique ways. Bradford underscores the dearth of lofty idealism among the original framers by detailing British influences on their political ethos. British common law, on which the framers heavily relied, evolved from a tradition of deliberate responses to practical needs and circumstances, not deductions from abstract utopian designs. In light of these factors, Bradford examines the ratification debates of Massachusetts, South Carolina, and North Carolina - three states that together exemplified the vast range of interests to be accommodated by the Constitution. Next Bradford highlights classic teleologic distortions. Discussing religion and the first amendment, he establishes a pervasive commitment to Christianity among the framers and challenges our notions about the separation of church and state. Warning against anachronistic readings of the Constitution, Bradford also analyzes the rhetoric of the framers to reinforce our awareness of their desire for a government that would contain their multiplicities, not seek to resolve them. In a reading of the Reconstruction amendments (thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen) Bradford argues that they had only a modest impact on the Constitution's original design. By the misconstruction of these amendments, however, the Constitution has been transformed into "a purpose oriented blank check for redesigning American society." In a final chapter Bradford critiques Mortimer Adler's We Hold These Truths and repudiates any broad connection between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Before the Constitution is irreparably damaged, Bradford says, we must realize that it was not the best that the framers could invent but the best that their constituencies would approve. Debates related to normative issues should be settled not within the Constitution but within society, away from the coercive forces of law and politics - or else by amendment.

Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution

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Against the Barbarians and Other Reflections on Familiar Themes

Literature & Fiction

Univ of Missouri Pr

A Worthy Company: The Dramatic Story of the Men Who Founded Our Country

Religion & Spirituality

Crossway Books

A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution by M. E. Bradford.

A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution

Sherwood Sugden & Co

Generations of the Faithful Heart: On the Literature of the South

History & Criticism

The Reactionary Imperative: Essays Literary and Political

Essays & Correspondence

Open Court

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