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Tom is right. For more detail, see my book JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA. Madison dealt with this issue in THE FEDERALIST, in the Virginia Ratification Convention, in the House’s 1791 debate on Hamilton’s Bank Bill, in the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, in the Virginia Report of 1800, in his Bonus Bill Veto Message of 1817, and in his reaction to John Marshall’s decision in _McCulloch vs. Maryland_ (1819) — all of which are described at length in my book.

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I agree that Chitwood’s is the best. My only quibble with Dr. McC. is that Tyler is #1 on my list. I agree that THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TYLERS repays a reading; it was edited by the president’s son. It also includes the correspondence of “Judge” John Tyler, the president’s father and a close ally of Thomas Jefferson. (Both men were governors of Virginia, so the family distinguishes between them by calling the father “Judge,” while the son is of course “President.”) I used it extensively in VIRGINIA’S AMERICAN REVOLUTION, chapter 5.

One very odd fact about the Tyler family is that the current owner of the president’s estate is his grandson. That’s right: although John Tyler was born in 1790, his house currently belongs to his grandson.

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Not that I’m aware.

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You’re welcome.

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I recommend Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s NULLIFICATION on this question.

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Good luck. If you find such a book, let me know. I’d recommend just reading the debates themselves.

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You omitted Rhode Island.

For a detailed account of the Virginia story, see chapter 5 of my new JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA.

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The first thing to note about this is that the law chartering the Second Bank of the United States required the secretary of the treasury to deposit federal tax revenue in the B.U.S. Jackson’s removal was thus in one sense illegal.

On the other hand, as Jackson made clear in his Bank Bill Veto Message (1832), he did not grant the validity of the Supreme Court’s decision in _McCulloch v. Maryland_ (1819) beyond the case at hand. In other words, although McCulloch won, Jackson denied that the Court’s decision bound him. Since he held that the B.U.S.’s charter was unconstitutional, he did not think he had to follow the law granting that charter.

In general, Jackson was prone to do what personal animus drove him to do. Thus, for example, he came down hard on South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis even though neighboring Georgia was simultaneously nullifying the Supreme Court’s pronouncements concerning the rights of Indians in Georgia. Why? Because Martin Van Buren had just disclosed to him that Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had as secretary of war in 1817 called for then-General Jackson to be relieved of his command. At least, that’s how I read it.

Essentially, Jackson turned to the pet banks because he had to do something with the federal tax revenue, and he hadn’t thought out the problem before he removed the deposits. For a fuller account of this imbroglio, see:

Kevin R. C. Gutzman, “Andrew Jackson’s War Against the Second Bank of the United States,” in _Conflicts in American History, Volume II: The Early Republic Era, 1783-1860_, ed. C. Brid Nicholson (Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2010), 212-36.

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Elliot’s Debates have been superceded by The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, which will be essentially a complete set. There are supposed to be about 26 volumes when the series is done. I’ve made use of the three Virginia volumes quite a bit in my writing, and the five New York volumes are — as Brion says — also quite helpful.

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The eastern counties of England (which supplied most of the early New Englanders) were generally Puritan, while the Midlands (jumping-off point for most early Virginians) were generally Tory.

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The best books on society and the Revolution are Gross’s _The Minutemen and Their World_ and Holton’s _Forced Founders_. Gross’s prose is truly captivating, and Holton’s book will surprise you from front to back.

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The Populists advocated free coinage of silver precisely because they wanted inflation. This was trumpeted as a mechanism for transferring wealth to “the people” (as in the name “People’s Party,” aka “Populist Party”).

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Certainly one can turn on the television coverage of almost any strike and see “scabs” (i.e., people willing to work for the compensation being offered by the affected business) being physically threatened by picketers. I can’t recall ever hearing of anyone being prosecuted for this behavior, which meets the common-law definition of “assault.”

My father had two relatives killed in the Roosevelt years by union advocates for opposing a United Mineworkers campaign to unionize a mine in Idaho. No one was ever prosecuted.

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I agree with Tom that there’s not a dependable W book.

My own view of the GHWB selection is that it was by far Reagan’s greatest mistake–although it could have been mitigated by Reagan’s coming out for a Reaganite in the 1988 primaries, which unfortunately he refused to do. Daddy Bush was generally supported by people who wanted a third Reagan term, despite protests from some few of us that there was no reason to think that Bush had changed his stripes. He hadn’t. In fact, Richard Darman later conceded that he went into the first budget negotiations with the Democratic congressional leadership determined to raise taxes simply to put the president’s promise not to do so behind us: lying was his principle. And, of course, Bush signed off on the result.

Bush, Sr. also signed off on a “civil rights” bill that Pat Buchanan famously dubbed “The Quota Bill,” appointed David Souter to the Supreme Court (despite his saying in Senate hearings that he admired Justice William Brennan, literally the most avowedly anti-originalist justice ever), and otherwise made a hash of the Reagan legacy.

Again, the Bushes are Reagan’s Big Mistake.

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George Mason defended state governments’ power to elect senators as a self-defense mechanism. Once they were stripped of this power, there was no substantial check on the tendency of the Federal Government to usurp the reserved powers of the states — which they have done to their hearts’ content ever since. It’s hard to imagine a Senate whose members had to answer to state legislators adopting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, for example.

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