| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Invention of the United States Senate. By Daniel Wirls and Stephen Wirls. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xii, 274 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8018-7438-6. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-8018-7439-4.)
The Invention of the United States Senate originated in a dispute over the usefulness of bicameralism. Daniel Wirls and Stephen Wirls do not resolve their disagreement about whether having the Senate is beneficial, but they do provide a definitive portrait of why an upper chamber was thought to be useful, and they demonstrate that the high hopes of many who founded the United States Senate were compromised away in its construction.	1
In describing the competing views about the value of upper chambers offered by such political theorists as James Harrington and the baron de Montesquieu, Wirls and Wirls place readers in the mind-set of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Delegates were convinced that an upper chamber was necessary, but they disagreed about why. Perhaps it could be a repository of political wisdom. Or it could provide a stable counterweight to the more democratic and therefore more volatile House of Representatives. Or it might better represent property than the House. The authors describe several key American views, including James Madison's and John Adams's, as well as those of less familiar figures such as Carter Braxton.	. . .

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