Bowen evokes it as if the reader were actually there, mingling with the delegates, hearing their arguments, witnessing a dramatic moment in history.Here is the fascinating record of the hot, sultry summer months of debate and decision when ideas clashed and tempers flared. Here is the country as it was then, described by contemporaries, by Berkshire farmers in Massachusetts, by Patrick Henry's Kentucky allies, by French and English travelers. Here, too, are the offstage voices--Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine and John Adams from Europe. In all, fifty-five men attended; and in spite of the heat, in spite of clashing interests--the big states against the little, the slave states against the anti-slave states--in tension and anxiety that mounted week after week, they wrote out a working plan of government and put their signatures to it.

    For thirty years afterwards, little was known of its deliberations, and nothing official was published. The variety of versions which began to appear thereafter tended to confuse rather than clarify the situation. When Mr. Farrand undertook the voluminous task of gathering into a single unit all available records which had been written or published by the Convention participants, he found that accuracy became the most important and the most difficult aspect of his task. Yet the accuracy he achieved has proved to be the most significant feature of his undertaking. The thoroughness of his research has made The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 the one most authoritative source for students of constitutional law as well as lawyers and legislators who seek to understand the spirit of the Constitution in their interpretations of its provisions.The documents are reprinted exactly from the originals and presented in chronological sequence. Throughout Mr. Farrand discriminated carefully between statements of proceedings in the Convention and theoretical interpretations of clauses in the constitution, including only the former in his work. His footnotes provide cross references to the most important subjects and his general index is as exhaustive as possible. He also includes a special index, giving references for every clause in the adopted Constitution to enable the reader to trace the origin and development of any particular clause and to find every item within the Records that bears upon it. Originally published in 1911 in three volumes, the Revised Edition, published in 1937, incorporated in a fourth supplementary volume new material which came to light after the first printing. The Yale University Press is now pleased to announce the publication of the four-volume Revised Edition in paper-bound format. “Will now be the standard authority on the work of Constitutional convention of 1787.”—New York Times “Historians and constitutional lawyers have long desired to see all the records that exist of the formation of the Federal constitution, gathered into a record which shall be at once correct, critical, and comprehensive. Their wish is now gratified.”—The Nation

    

    

    

    He was the son of missionaries and born in Katanga, Belgian Congo.He enlisted in the Royal Navy at the start of the Second World War. After the war he returned to England to study at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After graduation he worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in Vancouver. There he was married and became an Anglican priest. He subsequently went as a missionary to the Yukon. They returned to England in 1963 where he became vicar at St John's, Greengates, Bradford. He was then offered a place at Dordt College, Iowa, where he became professor of History and Sociology.