ANOTHER BOOK

Hey Novel Spirits, I wanted to post a quick entry about a book I just finished and liked quite a bit. It's called THE QUARTET, by Joseph Ellis. Here's a pic of the cover:

It's a Revolutionary period history book and it's sort of like a textbook but there is some really good information in it. In a nutshell, the book is about how our country went from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. 

Right around the time of the Declaration of Indepedence in 1776, all the 13 colonies published the Articles of Confederation, which essentially created 13 different, autonomous countries rather than one country of the United States. 

During the 1780s and 1790s, a group of politicians led by the powerful "Quartet" of George Washingon, John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton lobbyed hard for the states to unionize into one national entity. There were other politicians that wanted to stay as independent states. 

So this book tells the story of an almost 20 year battle among all the states which ultimately gave us our current Constitution (some changes along the way), and the Bill of Rights. 

It's a very cool story since it tells about how we came very close to not have a Constitution, as well as how each side had to compromise to arrive at the current Constitution. For example, the "Nationalists" wanted both Houses of Congress to be represented by population, but the smaller states didn't want to relinquish power to the larger states, so of course, they compromised and now we have one House with population representation and the other House with exactly two votes per state. I never knew why we organized our Legislature that way but now I do. Maybe people already know that, but I didn't.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I always enjoy reading about our history, particularly Revolutionary history. I always learn how many close calls we had to not be where we are today. Pretty fascinating really.

Talk to yall later

Baron