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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation | 
| Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.28
You Save: $11.67 (78%)
Rating:  390 reviews
Sales Rank: 1749
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0375705244
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.40922
EAN: 9780375705243
ASIN: 0375705244
Publication Date: February 5, 2002
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Amazon.com Review
In retrospect, it seems as if the American Revolution was inevitable. But was it? In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis reveals that many of those truths we hold to be self-evident were actually fiercely contested in the early days of the republic. Ellis focuses on six crucial moments in the life of the new nation, including a secret dinner at which the seat of the nation's capital was determined--in exchange for support of Hamilton's financial plan; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; and the Hamilton and Burr duel. Most interesting, perhaps, is the debate (still dividing scholars today) over the meaning of the Revolution. In a fascinating chapter on the renewed friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at the end of their lives, Ellis points out the fundamental differences between the Republicans, who saw the Revolution as a liberating act and hold the Declaration of Independence most sacred, and the Federalists, who saw the revolution as a step in the building of American nationhood and hold the Constitution most dear. Throughout the text, Ellis explains the personal, face-to-face nature of early American politics--and notes that the members of the revolutionary generation were conscious of the fact that they were establishing precedents on which future generations would rely. In Founding Brothers, Ellis (whose American Sphinx won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997) has written an elegant and engaging narrative, sure to become a classic. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney
Product Description
In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award—winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals–Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison–confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation.
The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers–re-examined here as Founding Brothers–combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government. Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes–Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence–Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 385 more reviews...
 Ellis' Founding Brothers should be on any book list January 5, 2009
Simply constructed, well researched and delightfully written, Founding Brothers reads like a news anchor's report on what went through the minds of USA's first leaders while they were making policy. Like a fly on the wall, Ellis relates the events from each participant's innermost subconscious all the way out to their recorded historical actions. Vigniettes drawn from the subjects' letters are like biographies woven together to provide an understanding greater than the sum of its parts. I really got a taste not only of the raw history but the acceptable practices of late 18th century society and governance. A peek into the personalities and values of our founding fathers as revealed through their relationships with one another. Original, thought-provoking and well done.
The Struggle For Equality and Freedom Continues December 14, 2008
In this book author Joseph J. Ellis takes a look at the founding fathers which makes you see them as men who were a collection of men from different backgrounds that never could have existed in an old world country with it's established aristocracy.
The title `Founding Brothers' reflects the outlook he brings to this book which is to change our perception of manifest destiny to one of intelligent men doing their best to keep a fragile union together creating the largest and longest lasting (and unprecedented) republic.
The author makes the point that in school, in any country, we are taught bare facts about our history that has the perspective of `it was all inevitable'. It was inevitable that our country would be formed, and after being formed we moved forward growing stronger till today where we are at our most evolved point. The fact that we exist right now is seen as `manifest destiny'.
The founding fathers disagreed with each other to the point of becoming political enemies, yet they were united by one overriding goal. That America the Republic must stay together. The Greek city states had failed at maintaining their sovereignty and the founding fathers knew what they were doing had never been done before to this extant.
This union was unprecedented in yet another way. This was the first revolution where the revolutionaries didn't turn upon each other and kill each other. Accept for "the Duel" that killed Hamilton, with extraordinary disagreements between the founding fathers/brothers they did not stoop to animalistic behavior. This was the most civil group of revolutionaries of all time.
The founding brothers came from backgrounds ranging from aristocratic landowners to poor immigrants. In a country with established nobility people like Benjamin Franklin and Hamilton (dirt poor self-made men) would not have been a part of such an elite group.
To the founding brothers, who may have used terms like `self-evident' that America be independent, they knew it wasn't necessary that the union of America will last. So the entire time was a struggle to keep the American Federation together.
Between the political battles of the founding fathers we see outright disrespect towards one another on their differing views yet a determination to succeed through debate and negotiations. Brothers may disagree on what is the best way to achieve a goal, but what the goal was freedom and equality, was never questioned.
Since the American colonies were in part founded by people fleeing religious persecution the state had to guarantee religious freedom. Since people like Hamilton (who was seen as a genius) would never have had an opportunity to be a major player in any other country and be helped allot in the revolution, the brothers had to make sure individual intelligence and freedom of speech did not get squashed as America slowly formed into a nation. In all the chaos and uncertainty they managed to create an independent republic through peaceful means, which is the longest standing republic of all recorded history.
In the words of the author, the challenge of the brothers were facing, "If the infant American republic could survive it's infancy, if it could manage to endure as a coherent national entity long enough to consolidate it's natural advantages, it possessed the potential to become a dominant force in the world."
People tend to lump the revolution of 1776 and the constitution (1787-88) together, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
The constitution was a compromise between the colonies natural aversion for centralized government (i.e. their sense of liberty) and the need to create the structure needed for a state to grow.
"With the American Revolution, as with all revolutions, different factions came together in common cause to overthrow the reigning regime, then discovered in the aftermath of their triumph that they had fundamentally different and politically incompatible notions of what they intended"
"The revolutionary generation found a way to contain the explosive energies of the debate in the form of an ongoing argument or dialogue that was eventually institutionalized and rendered safe by the creation of political parties"
"And the subsequent political history of the United States then became an oscillation between new versions of the old tension, which broke out in violence only on the occasion of the civil war. In its most familiar form, dominant in the nineteenth century, the tension assumes a constitutional appearance as a conflict between state and federal sovereignty. The source of the disagreement goes much deeper, however, involving conflicting attitudes toward government itself, competing versions of citizenship, differing postures towards the twin goals of freedom and equality.
But the key point is that the debate was not resolved so much as built into the fabric on our national identity. If that means the United States is founded on a contradiction, then so be it. With that one bloody exception, we have been living with it successfully for over two hundred years. Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument on what that proposition means."(/i>
An excellent example is Hamilton's struggle to rearrange the financial structure of the new republic.
Hamilton was worried that the fiscal plans he had for America would never be implemented. It was for that reason that he walked into a duel with a man he considered to be a danger to the future of America. This man, Burr (a Vice President), had a tendency to switch political sides whenever it suited his advantage and later he was even involved in a conspiracy to let the British take over a piece of America so he could be Governor. So Hamilton and Jefferson, although political enemies, knew that Burr was a real threat to America's union and both were against him. Burr was Jefferson's Vice President so it's an unusual circumstance to say the least.
As events would play out Hamilton's unnecessary death made him a martyr and his cause for a federal financial system came true after his death (while he was alive there was so much resistance against his system that it had stalled ). America would not have become the economic powerhouse it is today without it's credit and financial system that was created by Hamilton.
One of the points the author is making is that it may seem, looking back, that America's wealth was meant to be but the financial structure which has increased everyone's standard of living was a struggle to attain and NOT inevitable.
This incident of the Duel is considered to be a key story by the author and he has one for each of the other founding brothers as well. The book is an easy, yet deep and fascinating revelation of the struggle for America.
Conclusion:
This is a nation of individuals. The founding brothers were a group of individuals who knew that freedom and equality were the only noble ways to make a nation but each had their ideas of HOW that equality and freedom should be achieved.
Over the decades of their angry but never bloody debates they stood steady giving the republic a chance to gain its footing. They saw that the best way to keep equality and freedom going was to institutionalize the debate, which goes on today in the form of the two part system. It is the debate, the ability to debate and take part in it, that keeps American freedom and equality growing.
It has grown past slavery, it has grown past institutionalized segregation, and racial prejudice, although common, is dissolving more and more with each succeeding generation. America has been the leader for the world, who followed in their footsteps throwing off British colonials everywhere (except Canada). Although there are occasional back-swings to more primitive behavior America still has the intellectual and financial resources for turning it's population into one of the smartest and most successful (and therefore innovative and productive = wealthy) in the world - on a general social level and not just lining the pockets of the already rich. That is the dream of America, combined with the freedom and equality to attain it, which - though under constant attack - is still alive today.
great book December 4, 2008
This was a birthday present for my hubby who is a history nut. By the 2nd chapter he was hooked. He says great writing, keeps your interest and hasn't been able to put it down.
 Sibling Rivalry November 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It looked a lot prettier in those Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull paintings. If there's an overall theme to Joseph Ellis's 2000 book "Founding Brothers", it's that the United States was tempered as much by internal conflict as by war with Great Britain.
Ellis's approach deals with the aftermath of the American Revolution, post-Constitution, in six drawn-out narratives exploring various facets of the often-feuding Founding Fathers. He begins with the most famous and deadly of them, when Aaron Burr, then a sitting vice president, killed Alexander Hamilton for expressing disapproval of Burr's character. It was a duel, agreed to by both men, but a strange way for Burr to uphold his honor.
Ellis's treatment feels weak. As a story-teller, he muddies the waters by flipping back and forth in time, losing the suspense of "Interview at Weehawken" by teasing out various pet theories about the reason for the duel. As a historian, he misses some vital, commonly-known points, like Burr's gloating right after the duel and conjecture that Hamilton's pistol shot down a tree branch, which if true could confirm he had no intention of shooting Burr that day.
Ellis's middle chapters take on the question of how Washington, D.C. became the nation's capital; why slavery was allowed to remain in effect for so long; and what Washington was thinking when he either penned, or merely signed, his famous Farewell Address.
All of these chapters are readable, occasionally poignant. You get a sense of Washington as the supreme stoic in his standing behind an unpopular treaty. "Clouds may and doubtless often will in the vicissitudes of events, hover over political concerns, but a steady adherence to these principles will not only dispel but render our prospects brighter by such temporary obscurities," he writes.
But there is a lot of nothing in them, too. The chapter about Washington, D.C., "The Dinner", for all its scene-setting, doesn't establish any such dinner, to talk over locating the Capital and assuming state debts, really took place at all. Ellis presents the slavery question well enough, but struggles with coherent storyline. The idea was the South didn't want to end slavery, and the North didn't want the South to leave the Union. But as with the Dinner, there is some mystery as to the particulars which Ellis doesn't dispel.
The last two chapters of "Founding Brothers" give it life, memorableness, and probably that Pulitzer. It focuses on two Founders, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in kind of a bookend way to Burr and Hamilton. Jefferson and Adams also had a bitter fallout, but patched things up and corresponded over their last 14 years. Adams is portrayed more positively, which seems to me fitting, but not without his peevish flaws. Jefferson was a hypocrite on slavery and a consummate fabulist about everything, but it was hard to hold that too much against him when one of those inventions was America.
Ellis presents the pair as the yin and yang of early America; Adams earthy and rooted to reality, Jefferson the dreamer. Jefferson had the ability to construct an edifice, Adams the cussedness to look for structural flaws with brilliant argumentation. In the end, you had a sturdy dwelling, but some hard feelings it took the two a while to resolve.
They did resolve it, though, holding out hope for Americans decades and centuries hence that what unites us can overcome what divides us. It's a nice lesson, presented subtly, but feels more tacked on than it should in this somewhat unfocused book.
Really there was no syllabus to follow! October 27, 2008
Joseph Ellis has written another book which is completely different than all his other historical efforts. He has taken a rather different look at America in its infancy.
In this effort, Ellis focus is on a half a dozen political personages. The six people in this study are John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
This rather eclectic group helped to form the precedents and the very foundation of our government.
Ellis goes on to explain how each of these people contributed to the formation of our government. He explains the settlement of the issue of the placement of our capital of Washington. It was determined to be an area in Virginia to placate the Southern Republicans. The trade off was the Federal Government assuming all state debts thus strengthening Hamilton's Federalist position as Secretary of the Treasury.
Also noted was the beginnings of party politics which was not done as it is today in doing direct political attacks. In our Country's infancy it was done with pseudonyms in the newspapers to attack opposing ideas.
These attacks became so severe that in John Adams' administration the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed. In reality this was the suppression of the first amendment. One must remember this was before the strong Supreme Court of John Marshall! One must realize, everything was new and untested. The Country was young and was seeking its own direction.
As Ellis recounts all was not easy in the formation of our government. As Michiko Kakutuni explains in her New York Times Book Review Ellis' book is a "lively and illuminating epic, if somewhat arbitrary book that leaves the reader with a visceral sense of a formative era in American life."
I agree with her. This is an excellent read of which you will learn much.
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