Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States has a chapter on Maine, but he does not have one on Vermont. In the second book, Story discusses the history of the American Revolution and the Confederation, and highlights the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. In the first three chapters of the third book, Story gives a short history of the origin and adoption of the United States Constitution, the objections to the Constitution, and the nature of the Constitution – whether it is a compact between sovereign states, or the supreme and national law of the United States. In Chapter 4, Story enters into a discourse on
History of the United States Constitution its own terms, and one is closed and has failed by the terms of the resolution proposing it. Much of opposition to the proposed Constitution within several states arose, not because the machinery of the new frame of government was considered unworkable or because strengthening the union between the 13 states viewed as undesirable. The debates in the state ratifying conventions centered around the absence of anything equivalent to the bill of rights found in several state constitutions. George Mason, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, refused to sign the