In a work designed for general and--as I venture to hope it may prove--for popular use, it would be out of place, as it certainly would be impracticable within the limits of a single volume, to undertake the explanation and discussion of all those particular questions of construction that must constantly arise under almost every clause and feature of such an instrument as the Constitution of the United States, and which, as our whole experience has taught us, are fruitful both of extensive debate and of wide as well as honest diversities of opinion. I shall consider questions of construction only so far as may be necessary to elucidate my subject; for I propose, in writing the history of the formation of the Constitution, to describe rather those great modifications in the principles and structure of the Union that took place in the period at which we have now arrived in the course of this work; to state the essential features of the new government; and to trace the process by which they were evolved from the elements to which the framers of that government resorted.
Happily for us, the materials for such a description are ample. The whole civil change which transformed the character of our Union, and established for it a national government, took place peacefully and quietly, within a single twelvemonth. It was attended with circumstances which enable us to ascertain its character with a high degree of certainty. The leading purposes that were entertained and carried out were not left to the conjecture of posterity, but were recorded by deliberative assemblies, whose acts of themselves expressed and ascertained the objects and intentions of the national will. First framed by an assembly in which the States participating in the change were fully represented, and subsequently debated and ratified in conventions of the people in the separate States, the general nature and design of the Constitution may be traced and understood without serious difficulty.
But to the right understanding of its nature and objects, a careful examination of the proceedings of the national Convention is, in the first place, essential. Before we enter, however, upon this examination, there are certain preliminary facts that explain the circumstances in which the Convention was assembled, and which will enable us to appreciate the results at which it arrived. To these, therefore, the reader is now desired to turn.