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Two Hundred Years Ago Today, Suzanna Sherry

Suzanna Sherry

There is a tendency in the bicentennial year-and especially this week-to idealize the events of 1787. We tend to presume that the men who wrote the Constitution were near-perfect demigods, who crafted a brilliant and internally consistent document from their own insights. We assume that the Constitution represents the consensus of opinion of those fifty-five men, and even of the population at large in 1787. I want to debunk those myths. I want to talk instead about the problems, about the mistakes, and about the very different visions of government that were represented at the Constitutional Convention. In short, I …