Describes previously unknown aspects of the electoral college crisis of 1800, presenting a revised understanding ofthe early days of two great institutions that continue to have a major impact on American history: the plebiscitarian presidency and a Supreme Court that struggles to put the presidency's claims of a popular mandate into constitutional perspective. Through close studies of two Supreme Court cases, Ackerman shows how the court integrated Federalist and Republican themes into the living Constitution of the early republic. The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when it was almost destroyed by the rise of political parties in the United States. As Bruce Ackerman shows, the Framers had not anticipated the two-party system, and when Republicans battled Federalists for the presidency in1800, the rules laid down by the Constitution exacerbated the crisis. [Publisher web site].

For The Louisana Territory. While white men toyed with the future of nations in the gilded drawing rooms of Europe, black men fought a bloody and desperate battle for independence on a small Caribbean island... a struggle which held the key to Napoleon's Empire of Louisiana And as the world trembled, destiny brough 3 leaders together in the most staggering collision of power since the American Revolution.