#1569 Ten Things About the Constitutional Convention

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the creation of the Constitution in the summer of 1787. What did they get right, what did they get wrong, and which issues did they simply kick down the road? Was the true divide between big states and little states, or as James Madison said, between slave states and free states? Why did the Founders work behind closed doors in secrecy? Why did they throw out the Articles of Confederation when they were instructed merely to make a few strategic amendments? Why did Alexander Hamilton give that insane five hour speech calling for the President and Senators to serve for life? How would things have been different if Jefferson had been there, if John Adams had been there, if Patrick Henry had been there? Well, Patrick Henry said he “smelt a rat.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone it's Clay Jenkins and with this podcast introduction to this week's program
0:04.0	ten things about the US Constitution my conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky.
0:10.0	You know she's really become a stalwart on this program.
0:14.0	And she's up and coming.
0:15.4	She's soon to be one of the premier presidential historians
0:18.6	in the United States.
0:19.7	He's doing a great deal of media.
0:21.6	We're glad to have her at this formative stage of what will be a mighty
0:26.7	career.
0:27.7	We've really become close friends and I think you can hear it on the program.
0:32.4	We're not afraid to challenge each other, to tease each other.
0:36.0	You know, we lay it on a little thick. I'm not quite as much a Jeffersonian as she thinks and she's not quite as enamored of her man George Washington as I like to suggest,
0:47.0	but it makes a really good conversation.
0:49.6	You know, it's so important that serious intellectuals, disagree with civility.
0:58.4	We don't have to agree on these things.
1:00.8	There are so many things we just don't know.
1:03.0	You know, why did Madison start as a close ally of Hamiltons, particularly at this period when they not only were at the Constitutional Convention but
1:14.9	were two of the three writers of the Federalist Papers and then drifted apart
1:20.4	to become something like enemies after Jefferson got back from Paris in 1789?
1:27.4	Why didn't the North call the bluff of the southern states, particularly South Carolina, on the question of slavery.
1:35.0	When we look at the Three Fifth Clause today, every five slaves counted as three for the purposes of proportion and representation.
1:46.5	We not only cringe, but we're ashamed that that can be a historical fossil in the charter of a nation that said that it was dedicated
	...

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