| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

William J. Watkins, Jr. Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy. (Independent Studies in Political Economy.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan for the Independent Institute, Oakland , Cal. 2004. Pp. xxiv, 236. $39.95.

At the time of its creation and adoption, most contemporaries thought the most distinctive feature of the U.S. Constitution was its framers' effort to create a federal government of limited, enumerated powers. The state and federal governments were each to act concurrently, but independently, within the separate spheres judged most appropriate for each. The Constitution, however, did not describe a definitive procedure for maintaining the federal division of authority or deciding if the general government had overreached its bounds. Some contemporaries thought the courts might play this role. More believed that the Senate, which would represent the states and be elected by their legislatures, would protect states' rights. But what if all three branches of the federal government should join in an egregious violation of constitutional provisions or of the people's fundamental rights? In that event, the authors of The Federalist insisted, the states themselves would prove as insurmountable an obstacle to federal usurpations as the colonies had been when faced with parliamentary pretensions that its sovereignty was absolute, sounding the alarm and joining to concert whatever measures should prove necessary to defeat the central government's encroachments.

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