American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic | Joseph J. Ellis | Serendipity

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American Creation:...

	American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic Joseph J. Ellis Knopf, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Improvising on the Eve Of Destruction

This is my new favorite book on the creation of America. From the American Revolution, to the Louisiana Purchase. Despite the broad range, Ellis paints a picture with stories I never heard, and insights I never though of.

What I particularly loved was how Ellis painted the founding fathers as genuine people... flawed, yet still remarkable. They were mindful of their place in history, but never felt that their fortune was due to superior wits, superior patriotism, or even destiny. Washington remarked many times that when people tell the tale of the founding of the republic, that everybody would certainly report it incorrectly... because it was so utterly improbable, than nobody would believe the true story!

Many people think there was a grand plan behind the country, which maliciously left many people out. The founders -- Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Madison -- were men improvising on the eve of destruction. There was no plan... they did the best they could to try to hold the colonies together: maximize liberty, and minimize tyranny. Their gift to the world was a complex, jumbled system: one where politicians will bicker, special interests will curry favor, and states will compete with the federal government over who gets the final say... but nevertheless, its a system that will slowly create something better.

They knew their legacy was tainted... slavery was an abomination, but the country couldn't hold itself together without it. Jefferson refused to be happy about the Louisiana purchase, because he knew colonial settlers would force natives off their land... nevertheless, they did something remarkable. The first country-sized republic. The first modern secular state. The ability to criticize your leaders, without fear of getting your head lopped off. The first revolution, perhaps the only one ever, that came with a group portrait...

Some say its more correct to call it the American Evolution, not revolution. I like that... it gives me hope that even if the system fails from time to time, it will eventually create something even better...

Very enjoyable. Highly recommended, even if you're not a Revolutionary War buff.

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Serendipity

When I purchased "American Creation" I made a mistake and ordered two books on much the same subject. This book I read first. This is an important book for non-Americans especially those who live in former British colonies. The author is careful to point out that the British were determined not to make the mistakes they made in administering their American colonies a subject he alludes to on a number of occasions. Because I live in Australia there are many other political similarities between the United States and Australia and this book gives a valuable insight into political thinking of 18th century which is relevant to my country. While I expect that many of the events described in the book are very familiar to Americans the issues they faced in the 18th century deserve to be better known outside America. I would recommend this book to people like me who live in former British colonies.

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My curiosity satisfied

Perhaps it's presumptuous for an Australian to become sceptical about the way the given narrative describes the principal characters and events in North America from 1775 to 1803, but after a visit to the historic cities and sites last year I came home wanting to peek behind the facade to learn why they chose each a particular course of action, why there was so little publicly displayed dissent between them , how they managed to maintain the moral high ground while ignoring the contradictions of slavery and the place of the pre European inhabitants. Mr. Ellis has explained all those queries to my satisfaction in beautiful, lucid prose without hyperbole or evasion.

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Artfully conceived and finely researched

Joseph J. Ellis is a premier writer of American history. The Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, he has won the Pulitzer Prize (FOUNDING BROTHERS) and the National Book Award (AMERICAN SPHINX). The historical landscape he surveys in his latest work is nothing less than the entire crafting of the new American nation, before, during and after the Revolution.

No portion of the book better defines the character of the leadership of the United States in its infancy than that which details "The Treaty" between white Americans and the native peoples then known as Indians. As Ellis sagely comments, whereas Great Britain would go on to further conquest and domination in the world theater, the other losers in the American Revolution, the Indian tribes, would have no "second act."

"The British defeat triggered a tidal wave of western migration on the part of settlers who understood the phrase 'pursuit of happiness' to mean owning their own land." This would require the absolute conquest of the Indians wherever found. It was incumbent on three people to act on behalf of both the Indian tribes and the white settlers: President George Washington, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Knox. They had no intention of removing the Indians, because, as Ellis puts it, "revolutionary fires still burned inside them and they knew, deep down, that Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished." Washington brooded that failure to solve the Indian problem would be a permanent stain on his reputation and bode ill for the new republic. Jefferson, more than any of the others, believed Indians to be equal to whites but for their culture.

Together, this triumvirate attempted to shape a model for future generations by making a firm treaty with the Creek tribe of Mississippi that was led by a racially mixed and diplomatically savvy chief by the name of McGillivray. McGillivray had no reason to trust the whites, as he and his people had seen treaties broken since the incursion of Europeans onto American soil. But after lengthy negotiations, the Treaty of New York was duly signed, and the Creeks sang a song of "perpetual peace." This treaty, like all others, proved unenforceable; Washington decried the "land jobbers" who, in their zeal for territory, constantly broke over into the newly delineated Creek homeland. McGillivray went for help to the Spanish, thus exacerbating the conflict on America's southwest border.

Ellis points out that one failing of the Treaty of New York was that it was a "top-down" operation engineered by Washington, Knox and Jefferson, the sort of fiat that heretofore had been reserved for monarchs. For that reason, if no other, it was unsustainable.

AMERICAN CREATION traces with fine lines the earliest stirrings of democratic thinking that led to the formation of our government. The congressional representatives had to contend with the argument that they, by their aristocratic heritage, were in danger of ignoring the men who wore "leather aprons" --- and Abigail Adams was only too pleased to remind them that they ignored women at their peril. Her gentle admonition "Remember the ladies" was no doubt a constant and considerable irritant. Nor did it help that an anonymous letter was received by John Adams in 1775 asking, "Whot has the negros the africans don to us that shuld tak them from thar own land and mak them sarve us to the da of ther deth?" --- and pointing out that "the gentelman that leads the army" was a slaveholder. It was Abigail who succinctly queried, "If we separate from Great Britain, what code of laws will be established?"

That "code of laws" and its establishment are the essence of this artfully conceived and finely researched book, which strives like no other to present the American founders as human beings engaged together in an exciting workshop of ideas --- ideas with living and lasting consequences. Partly because the founders were unable to deal adequately with certain issues such as slavery and the Indian question, or with the proper balance between federal and states rights, Ellis contends, "The very purpose of government was subtly transformed from an ultimate arbiter to a framework for ongoing argument." This left room for great leaders to follow, new solutions to be sought and found --- and further argument.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

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Not reader friendly

His hitorical insight is valuable.
Unfortunately his writing is bloated and clumsy.
It's quite a trudge to get to the nuggets.

Worth suffering through the read. Where was his editor?

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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