The MagazineClosing the DealFraming the Constitution was one thing, ratifying it was quite another.Nov 29, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 11
• By JAMES M. BANNER JR.
 Ratification  Photo Credit: Getty Images The People Debate the As hard as it is to believe, this is the first complete history ever written about the American people’s acceptance of the Constitution written in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. That fact alone makes Pauline Maier’s book pathbreaking. It is also authoritative, masterful, and definitive. Maier is known for her earlier studies of the coming of the Revolution, of the older figures among the revolutionaries, and, most recently, of the Declaration of Independence and its many sister declarations—the last a work of many surprises. Few know the revolutionary era as well as she, and few are as dogged in their research. With characteristic modesty, Maier credits the close-to-complete letterpress edition of the state-by-state record of the Constitution’s ratification in 1787 and 1788 for making possible the newest of her works. Those volumes are truly extraordinary in exhaustiveness and accuracy. It remains the case, however, that it is Maier and none other who has used the contents of the existing volumes to write this particular book, and then made up in archival digging and broad scholarship for those volumes that have not yet appeared. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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