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Invaluable insights into the process of nation building
| Customer Rating:  | | The author brings insight and clarity to both the individuality of the characters, and by so doing peels away at the layers of mythology that becloud our vision of them, and their brilliant leadership. But perhaps of greater value to us today, the author presents insight into the necessary processes required to bring together disparate groups of peoples with differing philosophies and religions toward building a United nation with tolerance and accommodating all differences. The genius and the force of their leadership at the foundation of the American experience of building itself as a nation cries out to be understood and appreciated by the leaders (and those who elect them) of the same nation today. The genius of the Founding Borthers stands in stark contrast to the glaring absence of qualities of leadership today. An appreciation of this foundation experience, as well as the Civil War experience, I think are basic to an understanding of the character of the American nation and its role in the world today. |
Interesting introduction to a group of self-conscious titans
| Customer Rating:  | The reader will have gathered by now that this book looks at some of the more illustrious American revolutionaries: Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Burr and to a lesser extent, Franklin. One of the other reviewers calls it 'academic in tone', hardly a good description for what feels more like a professor knocking off a rather chatty essay in old-fashioned mainstream historical writing. Ellis has decidedly not come to bury the founders, although he appears to share the general low opinion of Aaron Burr, and he's interesting about Jefferson's remarkable capacity for self-deception.
As someone who knew very little about these figures, I was very surprised to learn about the depth and duration of some of the antagonisms between them. Everyday political discourse tends to conceal them behind a nimbus of reverence, and the rather stiff group portraits don't help. As a foreigner and an amateur student of US history, it was fascinating to read about the Adams-Jefferson split and subsequent reconciliation, or the power wielded by Abigail Adams during her husband's presidency, or the way that pretty much everyone seems to have hated Alexander Hamilton. The tenuous and uncertain nature of the first presidency, the way that most precedents had not yet been set, also comes across very clearly.
Having said that, I suppose I wanted this to be something that it's not - a comprehensive account of who all these men were, where they came from and how they came to believe what they believed. This reads more like a book written for people who already know the basic story. Ellis is a bit sniffy in his foreword with some of the more radical interpretations of early US history, and presents his book as a kind of return to the mainstream; given that the American intellectual mainstream is currently well to the right, I was expecting him to be more hero-worshipping than he actually is. In fact he's fairly level-headed about the failure of the men of '76 to tackle the problem of slavery, and while he shows the reasons why they couldn't build anti-slavery resolutions into the Constitution (because the crucial southern states wouldn't have gone for it), he's sharp about the way even the more enlightened amongst them were uncomfortable even thinking about the idea. (Except Benjamin Franklin, who came out as a tough-minded abolitionist only weeks before his death - cheers, Ben, bit late though.)
I'm not totally convinced that it's really Pulitzer material; aren't they meant to go to bigger, more magisterial works, not book-length essays? There's no original research here and not much in the way of fascinating reinterpretation, more like a confident and elegant restatement of conventional opinion. But maybe that in itself was a good idea. |
A Unique Brotherhood!
| Customer Rating: | "Founding Brothers" introducess the reader to the unique brotherhood which created, not only a revolution, but also a durable republic. Author Joseph Ellis presents the establishment of the American republic as not the work of individuals but of a brotherhood which worked together and in conflict to establish so much that we take for granted. Ellis accomplishes this by focusing on specific issues contested and resolved by this brotherhood.
The principal personae dramatae are Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John and Abigail Adams..
The first issue brought into focus is the feud between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Ellis does a good job at explaining the events, insults and motivations which led these two giants of our early political culture to their fatal "interview."
Retreating from Hamilton's final act, we find him as Secretary of the Treasury in his famous confrontation with James Madison over the assumption of the state debt and the location of the national capitol. This section of the book begins with the dinner hosted by Vice-President Thomas Jefferson at which he may have suggested the historic compromise to Hamilton and Madison. It continues through the surges and eddies of the political process to its ultimate consummation. Throughout it all, Washington remained both above and essential to the ultimate resolution.
The rise of party spirit during Washington's second term forms the backdrop to the third issue, which focuses on Washington's farewell to the nation that he had served so well and so long. The interplay between Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Madison seems a sad ending for the Father of our Country, but it was also an important part of his historic role in establishing the precedent of peaceful transfer of power.
The rise of the political parties through the twilight of the Revolutionary Generation provides the final issue to be presented. This is an era of shifting roles and partnerships. In the beginning we see Adams and Jefferson as collaborators, both at the Continental Congress and as diplomats in European capitols. During Washington's second term this collaboration fractured as Jefferson entered into a partnership with Madison to contest the direction of the country under the Washington-Hamilton-Adams administration. As Jefferson and Adams parted, Jefferson allied with James Madison and Adams partnered with his wife, Abigail. The reader is introduced to the idea that powerful First is a phenomenon as old as the Republic. These collaborations would continue through Adams' term a president with Jefferson leading the opposition from his position as vice-president. It is one of those intriguing ironies of history that Adams, in their old age correspondence, would renew his collaboration with Jefferson to define and explain this Brotherhood to history.
For anyone with a deep interest in understanding the assembly of our "Shining City On The Hill", "Founding Brothers" is a must!
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A noble fraternity
| Customer Rating: | | Prior to writing this book, 'Founding Brothers', author Joseph J. Ellis wrote books on both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - hence it makes sense that there would be one book that brings the two of them together, along with other movers and shakers of the early American nationhood. Often referred to as 'founding fathers', in fact toward each other, they were more of a brotherhood. Hence Ellis' title. We live in a time where the aging generation has been celebrated as 'the greatest generation', but for this title (and not meaning to take away anything of their achievement) they certain must acknowledge a rival, that being the generation of Americans who lived at the time of the Revolutionary War. Of course, this generation had a sense of greatness about it that made them conscious of what they were doing - George Washington deliberately lived and moved as if his every action would be the stuff of precedent; John Adams had his wife Abigail to begin saving his correspondence long before the outbreak of hostilities in the war. Even with this sense about themselves, according to Ellis, 'Uncertainty, in fact, was the dominant mood at that moment' - the time when the Constitution was being drafted and ratified, there was no clear sense of what was meant by certain of the compromises, particularly the meaning of who 'the people' were in the legal and constitutional sense. If they weren't the federal government or the state governments, then just who were they? Ellis identifies different possible ways of telling the early history of American nationhood, but most simply recapitulate the political debates of the time. Ellis sees these debates and early issues as setting the political stage for ongoing American development. He writes, 'the revolutionary generation found a way to contain the explosive energies of the debate in the form of an ongoing argumetn or dialogue that was eventually institutionalised and rendered safe by the creation of political parties.' The issues of the Revolutionary period were not solved by the Constitution and early government development, according to Ellis, but rather enshrined and codified, indeed, woven into the very fabric of the nation as ongoing (and, as Ellis points out, only broke out into warfare during the Civil War). Ellis develops the narrative across six particular stories involving eight major characters, all of whom knew each other rather well. These figures are George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr. These stories include the famous duel between Hamilton and Burr, a dinner party in which the location of the nation's capital city was decided, and George Washington's farewell address upon declining to run for a third term as president. He also recounts the on-again, off-again friendship and rivalry of Jefferson and Adams, up to the very point of Adams' death - his reported last words were about Jefferson, who died on the same day, in what seems like divinely inspired timing for both: July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the nation. Ellis' writing is exciting and fun to read. It is very informative, being both good history and good storytelling. It is little wonder that it was made into a History channel series. This is a little gem. |
academic in tone, but essential reading for early America
| Customer Rating: | | Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Instead of trying to tell a sweeping account of the American Revolution and the early days of our Republic, Joseph Ellis took a different approach. Ellis decided to take a look at six different issues and events of the first decades of the United States. He did meticulous research on each of the issues and connected them to the larger context of American history, but the focus of each chapter was narrow enough so that we won't get lost in trying to figure out where everything fits in. Ellis attempts to take the myths and legends away from these early leaders and put them into a human context and a historical context. He succeeds at this. One thing to note, however, Ellis has a very academic style to his writing. While someone like David McCullough (also a Pulitzer Prize winner) weaves a story that flows and is fairly easy to read and move through, Ellis's academic prose makes for slower reading for comprehension. The first chapter deals with the Hamilton-Burr duel. All I knew about this was from the "Got Milk" commercial several years ago. Ellis details the known facts about what happened and does some detective work to put together as best as possible what truly happened. This was a very interesting chapter to start the book with and set the stage for how Ellis would construct his chapters. He takes conflicting accounts (in this case, from the supporters of Burr and Hamilton) and weaves them together taking all the evidence in account and tries to make the story fit. Other chapters deal with The Friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, George Washington's Farewell Address, the rumor of a dinner which settled where the new Capitol would located, the Silence on the issue of slavery, and the collaborations of the Founders. This is a very interesting period in American History, and a vitally important one. I learned quite a bit about different parts of early American history and this book will serve as a jumping off point to get into other historical works so that I'll have a more expanded background for some of the subjects that will surely come up. -Joe Sherry |
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