Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Grand Convention - Nine States
Season 16 Episode 12
Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation required the consent of every state to change anything — and the whole decade died of that sentence, on…
6 hours ago
The Grand Convention - Interest Alone
Season 16 Episode 11
“Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations.” With those sentences, John Rutl…
2 days, 6 hours ago
The Grand Convention - The Committee of Detail
Season 16 Episode 10
On July 26th the convention handed 4 months of resolutions to 5 men and adjourned. On August 6th it got back a constitution — 7 pages, 23 articles, w…
1 week ago
The Grand Convention - The Supreme Law of the Land
Season 16 Episode 9
The branch that today holds the power to strike down acts of Congress was born without a fight — “that a national Judiciary be established,” agreed u…
1 week, 2 days ago
The Grand Convention - Sixty Ballots
Season 16 Episode 8
No question defeated the Constitutional Convention like the question of how to choose a president. Across the summer of 1787 the delegates balloted o…
2 weeks ago
The Grand Convention - An Elective King
Season 16 Episode 7
On June 1st, 1787, the Constitutional Convention reached the resolution nobody had wanted to write: a national executive. James Wilson moved that it …
2 weeks, 2 days ago
The Grand Convention - All Other Persons
Season 16 Episode 6
The most notorious fraction in American history did not begin as a claim about personhood. It began as a tax formula — proposed in 1783, in the same …
3 weeks ago
The Grand Convention - One Vote
Season 16 Episode 5
On June 11th, 1787, Roger Sherman proposed the settlement — population in the House, one vote per state in the Senate — and the Constitutional Conven…
3 weeks, 2 days ago
The Grand Convention - I Will Never Confederate
Season 16 Episode 4
In the second week of June 1787, the small states stopped losing votes politely. David Brearley proposed erasing every state boundary and redrawing A…
4 weeks ago
The Grand Convention - Merely Federal
Season 16 Episode 3
On May 29th, 1787, Edmund Randolph — 33 years old, governor of Virginia, owner of the finest voice in the room — rose to open the main business of th…
1 month ago