January 2011

He was born in Scotland in 1742 near St. Andrews, where he attended the university and divinity school. After four years of tutoring in Scotland and Amer- ica, he read law with John Dickinson, the leading pamphleteer of the early Revolutionary cause. Wilson wrote his own pamphlet, one of the earliest statements of American independence from Parliament, which Thomas Jefferson greatly admired.

A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Wilson was cast as a conservative in his oppo sition to Pennsylvania’s state constitution of 1776 and his defense of Robert Morris’s bank. But he advanced the most radically “popular” theories at the convention that drafted the United States Constitution in 1787, where he was James Madison’s principal ally in promoting the Virginia Plan. Wilson’s speeches for the draft were the. ones most cited in the ratifying period, during which he guided Pennsylvania’s early endorsement of the Constitution by a two-thirds majority.

The guest at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., leaves his car and is ushered through a comparatively modest, low-ceilinged entrance hall. The architect, Edwin Lutyens, wished to surprise him, for the entrance hall opens up into a magnificent double staircase that mounts toward the still more opulent reception rooms above, the central feature of which is a sixty-six-yard-long corridor. It is Lutyens’s equivalent of Beethoven’s transition to the finale of his C Minor Symphony. “Lovely corridors,” said a distinguished predecessor of mine, before my wife and I came. “Lutyens loved corridors, couldn’t stand rooms.” In fact, the rooms are pretty good too.

The mountain ranges that hikers and campers speak of with familiarity and affection—the Adirondacks, Smokies, Catskills, Rockies, Berkshires—are all but unknown to me. When I was old enough to plan my own vacations, air fares to Europe were so cheap and my hold on high school French so uncertain that it seemed prudent to nail it down every few years with a trip abroad. If I chose to stay on American shores, I was drawn irresistibly to the ocean. So when I set off for the Berkshires last fall, it was unfamiliar territory. It soon became clear why the area inspires such loyalty.

The best months to visit the Berkshires are May to October. Music and theater fans will want to aim for July and August to take advantage of the various summer festivals. Leaf watchers should plan tours through the countryside in late September or early October. For visitors who prefer to avoid the tourist season, I would especially recommend May or June and the week or two after Labor Day.

Start by calling the Berkshire Visitors Bureau (1-800-BERKSHR) for a copy of their summer guide. Published every year about April 1, it contains theater, music, and dance schedules, hotel and restaurant listings, hours for museums and houses, et cetera. While waiting for it to arrive, hunt up a copy of The Berkshire Book (1986), by Jonathan Sternfield. It offers a complete guide to history, culture, hotels, and shopping in the area. The restaurant reviews are especially useful—outspoken and on target.

The American Constitution has functioned and endured longer than any other written constitution of the modern era. It imbues the nation with energy to act while restraining its agents from acting improperly. It safeguards our liberties and establishes a government of laws, not of men and women. Above all, the Constitution is the mortar that binds the fifty-state edifice under the concept of federalism; it is the symbol that unifies nearly 250 million people of different origins, races, and religions into a single nation.

In the vast literature about our Constitution and the convention that created it, the works fall into three general categories: primary sources that scholars rely on; books written by historians based on those sources; and popular treatments by authors writing for a wider, more general audience. According to Richard B. Morris, two particularly valuable books in the second category have been newly reissued in paperback for this anniversary year. They are Clinton Rossiter’s 1787: The Grand Convention (Norton) and Carl Van Doren’s The Great Rehearsal (Penguin). He also recommends The Creation of the American Republic, by Gordon S. Wood (Norton). Dr. Morris’s own new book examines the intellectual antecedents of the Constitution, surveys the nation that gave it birth, and ends with its writing and ratification. Among more popular books on the subject are Catherine Drinker Bowen’s recently reissued Miracle at Philadelphia.

In this year of the bicentennial of the Constitution, American Heritage asked a number of historians, authors, and public figures to address themselves to one or both of these questions:

1. What change would you like to see in the Constitution and why?

2. What article or clause of the Constitution is of particular significance to you—and in what historical, political, personal, or other connection?

From among the many answers, we’ve selected a variety of replies, all adding up to a provocative forum of opinions and passions.

I. Changes I Would Like to See

The Former Presidents Have Their Say

When Marshall Field intervened in an argument between his clerk and a customer to admonish, “Give the lady what she wants,” he inaugurated the motto for his department store and enunciated the attitude of all the great family-owned department stores of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But this simple and satisfactory relationship between buyer and seller no longer exists in the post-World War II era of corporate and conglomerate ownership. I wrote “A Sad Heart at the Department Store” ( The American Scholar , Spring 1985) to explore the changes brought about by the new economic arrangements.

Peter Baida replies: I plead guilty to the charge of believing that “consumer choice shapes the economy,” and I’m not persuaded that my attachment to this “mythology” means that I’m inattentive to the economic history of the twentieth century. Anyone who is tempted to doubt the importance of consumer choice should count the number of Edsels parked outside the nearest department store, and compare it with the number of Toyotas.

For the rest, I apologize if I seemed to suggest that Ms. Rosenberg condones shoplifting, and I would like to repeat that, as I said in my column, I found much to admire in her essay, as well as much to question.