A number of recent revisionist histories of the American founding have usefully emphasized the ways in which the U.S. Constitution was designed to create a powerful and effective national government. Calvin Johnson's Righteous Anger at the Wicked States adds to that number and ably highlights the importance to the founding generation of creating a national government capable of assessing and collecting taxes in order to secure national interests. As a complete explanation for the Constitution, however, Johnson's focus obscures other positive attributes of the constitutional project of 1787.