Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated - Softcover

Taylor, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584779683 ISBN 13: 9781584779681

Publisher: Lawbook Exchange Ltd, 2019

Synopsis

Taylor, John.
Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated.
Richmond: printed by Shepherd & Pollard, 1820. iv, 344pp. Reprinted 2009 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-968-1. ISBN-10: 1-58477-968-3. Paperback. $21.50.

* One of the major works of the Virginian John Taylor of Caroline [1753-1824]. Little-known today, Taylor's work is of great significance in the political and intellectual history of the South and is essential for understanding the constitutional theories that Southerners asserted to justify secession in 1861.

Taylor fought in the Continental army during the American Revolution and served briefly in the Virginia House of Delegates and as a U.S. Senator. It was as a writer on constitutional, political, and agricultural questions, however, that Taylor gained prominence. He joined with Thomas Jefferson and other agrarian advocates of states' rights and a strict construction of the Constitution in the political battles of the 1790s. His first published writings argued against Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's financial program.

Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated was Taylor's response to a series of post-War of 1812 developments including John Marshall's Supreme Court decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, the widespread issuance of paper money by banks, proposals for a protective tariff, and the attempt to bar slavery from Missouri. Along with many other Southerners, Taylor feared that these and other measures following in the train of Hamilton's financial system, were undermining the foundations of American republicanism. He saw them as the attempt of an "artificial capitalist sect" to corrupt the virtue of the American people and upset the proper constitutional balance between state and federal authority in favor of a centralized national government. Taylor wrote, "If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments."

Jefferson, who noted that "Col. Taylor and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle of importance," considered Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated "the most logical retraction of our governments to the original and true principles of the Constitution creating them, which has appeared since the adoption of the instrument." Later Southern thinkers, notably John C. Calhoun, were clearly indebted to Taylor. Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America 94486. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 6333.

About this title

About the Author:

JOHN TAYLOR [1753-1824] was known as "John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia." He served in the Continental Army and later in the Virginia House of Delegates, then served three terms as a member of the United States Senate. He is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of agrarian liberalism and was one of the first proponents of states' rights. His works include New Views of the Constitution of the United States (1823), Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated (1820) and A Defence of the Measures of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, By Curtius (1804).

About this edition

• Publisher: Lawbook Exchange Ltd
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1584779683
• ISBN 13: 9781584779681
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 358