Convention of States Historical Revisionism Misleads People

The New American’s Christian Gomez sits down with author and contributor to The New American magazine Joe Wolverton to discuss his online article titled, “Correcting a Convention of States Blog Misleading Readers Regarding Founders’ View of Amendments Convention.” In this interview, Wolverton addresses a COS blog article titled, “Convention of States supporters from the Founders and beyond,” reposted numerous times on their numerous social media platforms since it was first published on their website in 2021.

The COS blog article takes parts of quotes from George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others to convince readers that they would support the call for an Article V convention today to amend the Constitution. “All they do is they call these vague quotations, these parts of quotations, and they use ellipses a lot and I accused them of that. When I had a debate with [Article V convention advocate] Nick Dranias [of Compact for America] at ASU, at Arizona State University Law School, and I told him that on stage. We were debating. ‘You guys use ellipses a lot and there’s a lot in those ellipses that you guys leave out.’ And they do it on purpose, because I think they rely on the fact that someone is going to see this quotation and not double check it,” Wolverton tells The New American.

During the interview, Wolverton recites the following excerpt from a letter by James Madison to George Nicholas, dated April 8, 1788, in which Madison said: “The circumstances under which a second Convention composed even of wiser individuals, would meet, must extinguish every hope of an equal spirit of accomodation [sic]; and if it should happen to contain men, who secretly aimed at disunion, (and such I believe would be found from more than one State) the game would be as easy as it would be obvious, to insist on points popular in some parts, but known to be inadmissible in others of the Union.”

In this quote, Wolverton explains, Madison gives two glaring warnings about what would happen should another convention be called. “And it’s as accurate today as it was in 1788,” Wolverton says. Paraphrasing Madison, Wolverton asks two questions: 1) are you going to get better and wiser men at a COS convention than those who sat in Philadelphia and 2) are you going to get men who will seek to make themselves, the groups they represent/belong to, or their section of the country more powerful?

Joe Wolverton II, J.D., is the author of the books The Real James Madison and “What Degree of Madness?”: Madison’s Method to Make America STATES Again. His latest book — The Founders Recipe — provides selections from the 37 authors most often quoted by the Founding Generation. He hosts the YouTube channel “Teacher of Liberty” and also posts content on TikTok.