ABSTRACT
America’s political leaders decided that the existing national government was inadequate. Sensing that their dream of independent nationhood was slipping away from them, they called delegates to a convention in Philadelphia to consider whether reforms were possible. Some of the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787 urged caution, fearing that the citizens of the new republic would not support radical reforms. Almost everyone had misgivings. Some thought that the Senate was too aristocratic; others feared the centralization of power at the federal level; many hated to inaugurate the new government before a bill of rights was securely in place. Those who warn against a modern reassessment of constitutional verities sometimes question whether we can recreate the conditions that made it possible to frame a Constitution in the eighteenth century. More recently, the move to a system of nomination by primary elections revolutionized the process for choosing presidents.
