America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780674059955)

The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised.

America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines the alternative Americas envisioned by John Brown (who dreamed of a republic purged of slavery), Robert Barnwell Rhett (the Confederate "father of secession"), and Etienne Cabet (a French socialist who founded a utopian society in Illinois). Other dreamers include the University of Chicago academics who created a world constitution for the nuclear age; the Republic of New Afrika, which demanded a separate country carved from the Deep South; and the contemporary Aryan movement, which plans to liberate America from multiculturalism and feminism.

Countering those who treat constitutional law as a single tradition, Tsai argues that the ratification of the Constitution did not quell debate but kindled further conflicts over basic questions of power and community. He explains how the tradition mutated over time, inspiring generations and disrupting the best-laid plans for simplicity and order. Idealists on both the left and right will benefit from reading these cautionary tales.

Author: Robert L. Tsai
ISBN-10: 0674059956
ISBN-13: 9780674059955
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/29/2014
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.56h x 6.38w x 1.13d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2014
Library Journal 04/15/2014 pg. 97
Choice 12/01/2014 pg. 705