This book offers a powerful new understanding of American constitutional democracy by focusing on several generations of influential “civic founders”—largely ordinary men and women who sought to transform the constitutional order. In re-examining a set of pivotal conflicts over rights, citizenship, and fundamental law, this book demonstrates the profound importance of civic visions and struggles for the Constitution and democratic life. While dominant work on constitutional theory and politics employs largely top-down approaches focused on judges and political leaders, this study shifts attent ... More

This book offers a powerful new understanding of American constitutional democracy by focusing on several generations of influential “civic founders”—largely ordinary men and women who sought to transform the constitutional order. In re-examining a set of pivotal conflicts over rights, citizenship, and fundamental law, this book demonstrates the profound importance of civic visions and struggles for the Constitution and democratic life. While dominant work on constitutional theory and politics employs largely top-down approaches focused on judges and political leaders, this study shifts attention to the role of engaged citizens and social movements in four crucial eras of constitutional dispute and reinvention: the broad swath of revolutionaries who catalyzed the Declaration of Independence and first state constitutions; the streams of reformers, rebels, and antifederalists who influenced the national Constitution and Bill of Rights; the abolitionists who paved the way for the Reconstruction Amendments, and the suffragists whose battles provoked the Nineteenth Amendment. Through “newspaper wars” and petitions, conventions and speeches, sermons, boycotts and protests, these men and women worked to redefine fundamental law. Challenging established authority, they advocated vital new understandings of popular self-governance, citizenship, civil rights and liberties, civic equality, and justice. Indeed, though largely unacknowledged, these civic reformers shaped the text, ideals, and norms of modern constitutionalism—developing the foundations of American democracy itself. By connecting key theoretical questions to in-depth accounts, this work speaks to constitutional scholars, democratic theorists, and all who are interested in American political development and the promise and challenge of constitutional democracy.