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Founding Brothers ::
I’ve always been annoyed with the pomp of American History. I also find the deification of the Founding Fathers to be more than I can handle. As a result, I haven’t read all that much history. But I was curious about this book, if only because I was intrigued by the title. Founding Brothers conjures up an image of equality, of humanity, and (potentially) fallibility that I thought I would find much easier to believe than all the mythological tales the history text books try to pawn off as fact. So I read it.
I found that Jefferson, Madison, and to a lesser extent Washington and Adams were all quite uncertain of their newly founded government, and were even less faithful that what they were creating could endure both the internal and external struggles it was facing. These Founding Brothers fought relentlessly with each other about their policies, and it seemed to everyone that if they made the wrong decision early on, the new nation would fall apart and the colonies would be brought back under English rule. It was during these battles that I saw the nuanced, conflicted, and human character of the Brothers.
Jefferson was especially intriguing. A relentless idealist who believed in a utopian government in which all of the laws would be effective only for a single generation, then be rewritten for the next generation. But during the first years of the founding of the Government, I also saw him as a pragmatist who abdicated on the issue of slavery because he felt that the inclusion of the southern states in the Union was more important than fighting for his personal belief that that institution was a moral abomination.* (As we saw in the following century, the southern states would have seceded when the legitimacy of slavery was questioned). Madison was also fascinating. On the one hand he believed very strongly in allowing for the dissent within the democracy, and he believed that the minority should always be protected. But this belief also manifested itself in his desire to ignore any abolishionist talk within the Congress.
Ellis’s thesis in Founding Brothers is that the success of the United States was not always as much of a foregone conclusion as it is today. Connected to that thesis was the Brothers belief that in order for the U.S. to be seen as legitimate by other, potentially threatening nations, all of the states would have to remain together. The Brothers believed that any dissent among the states would be a weakness, and thus all they fought for during the revolution would have been for naught. As a result, the issue of slavery was ignored and avoided by the Government and advocated by the southern states for years, in spite of the fact that it became increasingly clear that it was a fundamentally unfair and destructive institution that went against all of the beliefs on which the new government was based. The Brothers knew this was the case, and the struggle it caused within them (Jefferson especially) made me see them as actual human beings. That’s what I’ve been looking for in an American History book for a long time.
* Yes, I am aware that Jefferson had slaves, and the book makes clear that this was in fact the case. Both Ellis and I know about Sally Hemmings, as well. While these are important facts to understand about Jefferson, what is most important, at least in the context of this book, is the lifelong internal battle that Jefferson had between his ideals and his desire to help create a new government that allowed for freedom, consensus and dissent.
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