The New Nation was defined by Thomas Jefferson’s presidency and the political party he built occupying the White House for 24 continuous years of the Constitution’s first 36 years. “Jefferson’s America” gives us a political survey from 1760 to 1815, now in its third edition. The transformations both democratic and commercial are conveyed in “The Failure of the Founding Fathers” by focusing on Jefferson and John Marshall.
“Jefferson’s Empire” describes the development of nationhood, “What Kind of Nation” takes up the differences between Jefferson and Marshall, and “Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause” illuminates the United States expansion west and the spread of slavery.
For book reviews of this historical period in other topics, see Revolution-Constitution-New Nation. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Virginia history divided by time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Jefferson’s America
Jefferson’s America, 1760-1815 was written by Norman K. Risjord in 1991 and reprinted in 2009 third edition. It provides a synthesis of fifty years of American political history from the eve of the American Revolution to the end of the War of 1812, when American nationalism was firmly established.
The social history of pre-revolutionary America is conveyed through the eyes of traveller diaries. The changing roles of women and blacks through the Revolutionary era, the role of the West and its encounters with Native Americans, and state and national experiments in republican government along with their liberal democratic reforms are all addressed.
In Risjord’s view, Jefferson “either instigated or wholeheartedly participated in the major forces of the age”. Learn more to buy “Jefferson’s America” here for your bookshelf.
Failure of the Founding Fathers
The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy was written by Bruce Ackerman in 2005. While the Founders gave the U.S. an Enlightenment machine of government that was fatally flawed on several counts, Ackerman illuminates the self interest and statesmanship that crafted a Constitution of “experience”. The New Nation result was Thomas Jefferson’s popular plebiscite presidency and John Marshall’s judicial review.
In Stuart v. Laird in 1803, the Court acquiesced in the Republicans taking control of the lower federal courts. In Burr’s trial of 1807, Jefferson acquiesced in the rule of law dictated by the letter of the Constitution as interpreted by Marshall. The outcomes of partisan struggles unanticipated by the Founders were a new kind of presidency and a new kind of court.
The persisting legacy is an inevitable tension between the “will of the people” as expressed in fundamental Constitutional law, and the “voice of the nation” as made by the sovereign people at the ballot box electing their representatives. Learn more to buy “Failure of the Founding Fathers” here for your bookshelf.
Jefferson’s Empire
Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood was written by Peter S. Onuf in 2000. It interprets Jefferson’s political ideology as being grounded in nationhood as the expression of the people’s will and in a commitment to national self-determination. His “Empire of Liberty” was to be a hierarchy of legitimate hierarchies based on the people, ascending from the village or county ward, to an all-inclusive union of state-republics. The establishment would rely on independence, mutual respect, consensus and equality among its constituent parts.
Onuf addresses three persistent problems in the American experiment confronting Jefferson: the peril of sectionalism, the emergence of political parties, and slavery. Jefferson’s solution to slavery was national self-determination for blacks in Haiti, Africa or the American far West. In the wake of the Missouri crisis of 1820, Jefferson dispaired. Learn more to buy “Jefferson’s Empire” here for your bookshelf.
What Kind of Nation
What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States was written by James F. Simon in 2002. It is an analysis of the clash of two perspectives of government. Marshall, appointed Chief Justice by John Adams, saw a federal government fortified by effective executive and judiciary branches of government. Jefferson saw a national government of consensual consensus among co-equal federal and state governments.
Marshall developed the judiciary into an independent, co-equal branch of government with unanimous, nonpartisan decisions. Jefferson viewed his progress as dealing blow after blow to the state sovereignty ratified in the Constitution. Jefferson denied the Supreme Court as the final arbiter between branches of the federal government or between states and national government.
Both Marshall and Jefferson were moderates within their respective parties who were often closer on issues than they admitted, and they both avoided a showdown between executive and judicial branches. Both were in their own way nationalists devoted to a United States. Learn more to buy “What Kind of Nation” here for your bookshelf.
Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause
Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery and the Louisiana Purchase was written by Roger G. Kennedy in 2003. Here Jefferson’s “lost cause” is the ideal of an agrarian republic of independent yeomen as the cornerstone of American nationhood and its expanding empire. Kennedy maps three moments of his personal failure: Virginia reform during the Revolution, the southern trans-Appalachian west in the mid 1780s, and the lower Mississippi region at the Louisiana Purchase.
Kennedy makes connections among several important interests in the New Nation: American political elites, British mercantile and industrial cotton interests, enslaved African-Americans and the diverse Native American peoples of the southeastern forests.
The entire enterprise was contingent from the beginning, dependent as it was on American diplomats disobeying their instructions and the Congress overlooking the absence of any explicit authority in the Constitution to purchase additional lands. Jefferson is the central character, supported by Creek chief Alexander McGillivray, the Indian trader William Panton and the American diplomat Fulwar Skipwith. Learn more to buy “Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause” here for your bookshelf.
For book reviews of this historical period in other topics, see Revolution-Constitution-New Nation. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Virginia history divided by time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.