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In 'Perfecting the Union', Max M. Edling focuses on the reform of the American Union brought about by the framing and adoption of the Constitution and the resulting division of duties and powers between the national government and the states. He argues that the Constitution profoundly altered the structure of the American Union and made the federal government more effective than under the defunct Articles of Confederation, but does not accept that federal power expanded at the expense of the states.

"In this essay, Max Edling provides an internationalist interpretation of the founding of the United States. Rather than focusing on domestic economic conflict, Edling's interpretation highlights international competition, both with European powers and Native American neighbors, and inter-state relations within the federal union, as the principal causes of constitutional reform"--

Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals.In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government's abilities to tax and to borrow money

Edling argues that during the US Constitutional debates, the Federalists were concerned with building a state able to act vigorously in defence of US national interests. The Constitution was their promise of the benefits of government without its costs. They proposed statecraft rather than central authority as the solution to governing

InUnruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Woody Holton recounts how he introduces his students to the framing of the US Constitution by playing a game. Dividing the blackboard into three sections, he invites his students to shout out their favorite clauses of the Constitution. Holton enters the clauses in the columns and asks his students to label them. Clauses like freedom of religion and speech, freedom from illegal search and seizure, and the right to bear arms end up in the third column, which the students soon recognize as the Bill of Rights. In the first column are clauses taken over from the Articles of Confederation. The second column, which typically ends up with the single entry of "checks and balances," is the Constitution without amendments. Students struggle to label the first and second columns correctly. When they finally do, they are struck by the fact that the most popular clauses of the Constitution are not in the original document.

The origin of the United States Constitution is a perennial question in American historiography. In the last two decades a new 'International' interpretation has appeared that challenges an older 'economic' interpretation associated with Charles Beard and the so-called 'Progressive' tradition of historical analysis, which dominated scholarship for much of the twentieth century. The two interpretations assume different positions on what is known in American historiography as the 'dual revolution' thesis, i.e. the idea that the American founding was at the same time a struggle for home rule and a struggle over who should rule at home. Whereas the Progressive tradition has concentrated on the latter question, the International interpretation calls for renewed investigation of the former. The International interpretation presents the Constitution as a federal treaty that allowed thirteen newly independent and comparatively weak republics to maintain peace among themselves and to act in unison against competitors in the Atlantic marketplace and in the western borderlands of the continental interior. Whereas the Progressives identify the principal outcome of the founding to be the creation of a bourgeois state that faced inwards to make North America safe for capitalism, the Internationalists identify it as the creation of a stronger federal union that faced outward and allowed the United States to stand up to European powers and to conquer the North American continent. Yet despite the focus on the question of home rule, the Internationalist redefinition of the Constitution as a federal treaty also makes possible a fresh view on the old question of who should rule at home.