In September, the Ashbrook Center launched a new interactive exhibit on its website TeachingAmericanHistory.org: an in-depth presentation of the Ratification of the Constitution. Gordon Lloyd, Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and instructor in the MAHG program, worked with Roger Beckett of the Center and Colleen Garot and Jonathan Eliot of Pepperdine University to design this innovative resource and teaching tool. Unveiled on September 17, the 220th anniversary of the Constitutions signing by its framers, it is a comprehensive and wonderfully engaging tour of the debate and deliberation over Americas essential governing document.

Co-author of three books and numerous scholarly articles on the American founding, Lloyd has made it his labor of love to chronicle the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.

Four years ago Lloyd began working with Beckett to design a first web exhibit, covering the Constitutional Convention. Launched in the summer of 2004, this site detailed the four-month process during which 55 delegates from across the new nation met to frame the document later ratified by the states.

Crucial as this brief creative period was in defining the nation we were to become, the ratification process for the Constitution was no less significant, in part because of the size of the task. The delegates to the thirteen state ratifying conventions totaled 1600 people. "Never before in the history of the world," Lloyd comments, had so large a group met to debate whether to accept a plan of self-government for an entire nation. Yet these representatives managed this feat of common deliberation "without a drop of blood being spilt."

The Convention, which convened on May 25, 1787, had been held under conditions of absolute secrecy, with participants pledged to reveal nothing about the evolving document to the press or to political colleagues outside of the select group of delegates.

Once the proposed Constitution was completed, however, an energetic public debate began. Lloyd calls the battle that ensued in newspapers and pamphlets across the country the "out-of-doors" debate over ratification. This debate eventually moved to an "in-doors" setting, when the separate states met in ratifying conventions.

During the "out-of-doors" debate, contending theories of government were hotly debated. The site reproduces in its entirety the classic work of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, The Federalist Papers, which argued the merits of the proposed Constitution. It also reproduces less well-known works penned by opponents, antifederalist attacks which began appearing in print less than a month after delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed it on September 17, 1787. Lloyds exhibit introduces these vying arguments with notes on their origins, authorship, themes, and significance. To Lloyd, the contest of ideas between Federalists and Antifederalists remains highly relevant to current debates over the proper limits of government.

But this coverage of the theoretical debate is but one of many approaches to the study of the Constitution and its ratification that the two web exhibits demonstrate.

For those most interested in narrative history, Lloyd recounts with literary flair the ratification process. Having on the first website presented "The Constitutional Convention as a Four-Act Drama," on the new website he offers "The Six Stages of the Ratifying States," depicting the ratification process in more epic terms, as befits a story that straddled the huge territory of the young nation.

Interactive features allow a visual approach to the history. The new Ratification website offers a map of the thirteen ratifying states. One may click on a particular state to see a county-by-county break-down of the voting pattern. Another visual aid, a reproduction of a drawing that appeared in The Massachusetts Sentinel during the months when key state conventions met, shows how one newspaper tracked the state-by-state adoption of the Constitution. This drawing shows the states as pillars of a sturdy federal edifice. As each state ratified, the newspaper printed a revision of the drawing, showing that pillar lifted into place.

Real policy wonks may be most interested in the day-by-day summaries of the ratifying conventions of three key states, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. Those interested in the personalities who decided to adopt the Constitution for our young nation may consult a link called "Biographies of Key Figures," which compiles information, sorted by state, on the most influential delegates to the state ratifying conventions. A "Ratification Overview Table" with highlighted links allows users to connect the biographies of key actors in the history to the six stages of the epic ratification process as well as to writings each figure contributed to the debate.

Lloyds enthusiasm for these web projects arises from his belief that debates over the Founding inform current discussions of national identity and policy. He designed the sites, he said, not to provide a definitive history of the Founding, but rather to "capture the imagination and sustain the diligence" of those who come to the sites to learn. Visit the new site at www.TeachingAmericanHistory.org/ratification/.