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Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States)
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Item Description...
Overview
Offers an account of the early years of the United States as a nation, including politics, law, culture, and the economy.
Publishers Description
The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.
As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country.
Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 778
Dimensions: Length: 2.5" Width: 6.5" Height: 9.5"
Weight: 2.96 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Oct 28, 2009
Publisher Oxford University Press
ISBN 0195039149
EAN 9780195039146
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Availability 10 units.
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 | Empire of Liberty is the story of America from 1789-1815 told by the superb historian Dr. Gordon S. Wood Jan 4, 2010 |
Empire of Liberty (a phrase used repeatedly by Thomas Jefferson) is the newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States. All of these long and expertly written books are excellent and serve as the sine qua non of the
particular era under review. This 738 page opus focuses on the little known timespan (to the general reading public) of the early post-Revolutionary age from 1789 to 1815, It was a period marked by a decline of aristocratically ruled government and the emergence of the middle class.
This was a crucial period for the fledgling United States of America. Wood makes clear the bitter rivalry between the Anglophilic, monarchial favoring, banking and wealthy aristocratic party of the Federalists and their Republican opponents. The Federalists under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton favored a Bank of the United States, internal improvements and a strong federal government. They were strongest in New England. First President George Washington and second chief executive John Adams were standard bearers of this party. The Republican-Democratic party was led by the Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. These two men would serve as our nation's third and fourth presidents. The Republicans favored limited goverment, opposed the Bank of the United States, favored the aspirations of the common person and were supporters (at least at the beginning) of the French Revolution. Jefferson wanted the United States to become a utopian land of independent farmers content to be isolationistic in foreign affairs. Alexander Hamilton, his arch enemy leader of the Federalists, wanted America to become an industrial power centered in urban areas with strong central leadership from the president.
Gordon Wood takes us on an exciting journey with Lewis and Clark's Corp of Discovery as they travelled from St.Louis to the West Coast. America expanded by 50% during this era with the development of the Northwest Territory, the addition of several statees and the Jefferson's administration (1801-1809) of the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleonic France. (The European conflict between Great Britain and Revolutionary France is the backdrop to American diplomacy in the 1792-1815 period).
Wood spends two long chapters on the development of the American judicial system and judicial review under the skilled leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall (The Virginian was a distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson). Marshall was a Federalist.
Other chapters deal with the spread of evangelical religion and the cancer of African-American slavery which was a time bomb awaiting explosion. Thomas Jefferson referred to slavery as a "firebell in the night." Slavery would grow like Topsy only to be exorcized by the horrific American Civil War (1861-65) which left over 600,000 Americans dead and countless more wounded. It is ironic that many of our founding fathers calling for American liberty were slave owners of vast plantations in Virginia and the South.
The Yankee spirit of self-improvement and business acumen became manifest as Americans used their inventive genius to become wealthy. Men like Robert Fulton the inventor of the steamboat soared to prominence. Though an overwhelmingly rural society, Americans were becoming shrewd in the ways of business and the making of money.
Wood describes the careers and accomplishments of such men as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe who forged a new nation in what had been 13 separate British colonies. Early America was a rough, wild and woolly place in which Indians, the British in the northwest and harsh climate challenged hardy pioneers.
As the book comes to an end following US victory in the War of 1812 (this most controversial of US wars cost America over 6,000 lives), the United States was a rising glory of democratic but imperfect freedom. The huge gorilla in the room was slavery.
Wood's book is authored by a scholar who has devoted overe fifty years to the writing of outstanding books on early America. He is an emeritus professor of History at Brown University. His book is erudite without being stuffy.a huge challenge. This volume is a magisterial effort as Wood enlightens the era for the modern reader. Excellent and essential to anyone who wishes to know more about the emmpire of liberty! | | | | Dynamics of early American history Dec 21, 2009 |
| Gordon Wood has written an absorbing description of life in early America. It is rich in details that help to explain the dynamics of the formation of our republic. It is a brilliant book! | | |  | Insightful history of the post-Revolution period Dec 12, 2009 |
Gordon S. Woods is a distinguished scholar of the American Revolution and the early history of the United States. His previous books, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 and The Radicalism of the American Revolution, were both excellent (5 star) works, the former covering the intellectual developments that lead to the creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and the latter covering the enormous social changes that transformed American society from a hierarchical, monarchical society in the decades before the Revolution to a democratic society after 1800.
"The Empire of Liberty" is a very insightful history of the early years of the United States after the formation of the new federal government that the Constitution had defined. While there are many books that focus on the American Revolution itself or the Jacksonian period of 1815-1848, this might be the first comprehensive treatment of the entire period in-between, 1789-1815; at least, it's the only one currently available. It is a worthy addition to the Oxford History of the United States, filling in the gap between The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 and What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, which were both excellent books.
Woods is a good historian and writer and does a good job balancing coverage of the politics, key events, and social and cultural changes of the period. He also is reasonably fair towards the opposing political factions of the period, the Federalists and the Republicans. While he might come across as biased towards Jefferson's Republicans, I think this is a consequence of his overarching focus on the democratization of American society. Readers should read the entire book before judging Woods's political bias. While he does criticize the Federalists in the first half of the book for being out of touch with the majority of the American public, he does give them credit for their economic and political contributions; he also criticizes Jefferson and Madison for their inept economic embargo policies prior to the War of 1812. While I'm a big fan of the Federalists and the Whigs that succeeded them and think Jefferson was a terrible President, it is true that the Federalists were trying to maintain the rule of a social elite (the gentry or gentlemen) which could not be maintained at a time in which common farmers and artisans had been politically empowered by the same American Revolution that had put the Federalists in power between 1789 and 1800. The fact that the Federalists withered away is the ultimate proof that they were out of touch; while it is true that they failed to organize their party as quickly as the Republicans, they could have bounced back if their political and social positions had had broader appeal.
My main problem with this book is that I had already read The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 by Elkins and McKitrick and Woods's other books. Covering a shorter period, Elkins and McKitrick were able to provide a lot more details on the main political and historical events of the years up to 1800. In contrast, I felt that Woods's treatment seemed thin. Additionally, having already read "The Radicalism of the American Revolution", I did not learn anything new about the social transformation of the period. There are also better books about the administrations of Jefferson and Madison and the War of 1812, for instance: The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson and 1812: The War That Forged a Nation.
While I don't feel that I learned much that I hadn't already read in other books, I am glad I read "Empire of Liberty" since I appreciated getting Woods's point of view on the events and trends of the period. I certainly recommend it to anyone who does want a single account of the entire period. But if you want to explore the period more deeply while also covering the social developments, I recommend reading "The Age of Federalism", "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" and other books. | | | | Ambitious and comprehensive look at a complex period in American history Dec 11, 2009 |
This book is an ambitious and fairly comprehensive attempt to describe and explain the transformation of the United States in the 1780s from a poorly structured, powerless collection of states to a nation that finally achieved an independent identity and standing in the world community by 1815. In that transformation, no areas of American life escaped profound changes, be it demographics, infrastructure, culture, economics, law, religion, etc. Most important, however, given that the American Revolution was in the first instance a political revolution, the author focuses on the attempt of conservative aristocrats to rollback the democratic excesses of farmers and artisans in the 1780s through the checks and balances of the Constitution of 1787 and on the resultant profound clash waged throughout the 1790s and beyond between the Federalists, led by Washington and Hamilton, and the Jeffersonian Republicans, including Madison, concerning the direction that the US would take politically, economically, and diplomatically.
The chaos engendered by the French Revolution, the two-decade war beginning in 1793 between France and England, the neo-British financial plan of Hamilton, and the pro-British diplomacy of the Federalists exacerbated fears among Republicans of a latent desire to reestablish a monarchial order, while Federalists found pro-French views to be indicative of pending anarchy. While not really like a modern political party, the Democratic-Republican societies of the mid-90s became an organized Republican opposition, playing a major role in Jefferson's election in 1800. Federalist paranoia of pro-French and democratic sentiments reached both its height and nadir with the passage of the Sedition Act in 1798, resulting in the shutting down of several Republican newspapers and the jailing of their editors. It was a last gasp of those desirous of retaining the old order before being swept away by the democratic promise of the Revolution.
As also told in Wood's "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," the most profound change across this span of thirty years or so was in the reordering of society. The automatic deference to landed gentry, the learned, priests, and the like slowly eroded as people began to trust their own instincts and emphasize their self-interests. This was entirely consistent with the radical principle of placing total sovereignty of the nation in the hands of all the people. The framers undoubtedly little understood the forces that they had unleashed. Americans essentially rejected social orders. Public opinion became an amorphous amalgamation of all views and was credited with more wisdom than elite opinion. As the author points out, this general social leveling was cause for consternation among the more learned as classical and enlightenment views were scarcely known to "middling" folk; furthermore, artistic endeavors did not measure up to European standards. Americans were not philosophers and scientists; they were tinkerers. Interestingly, Benjamin Franklin, with his series of books offering practical advice, was the most admired founder in the 19th century, over the philosophers of the founding. This is not to say that there was no idealism in the American psyche. Virtuous republicans were concerned with education, humanitarian societies, and prison reform.
Though the Republicans may have been anti-Hamilton, they were not anti-commerce. In fact, the Republicans were staunch advocates of free trade to give farmers markets for their surplus production. Subsistence farming was seen to be stultifying for the human spirit. The Jeffersonian promotion of westward expansion was the mechanism for the US to remain a largely agricultural society, while also remaining commercially active. The Hamiltonian vision of widespread manufacturing was evocative of the horrendous conditions found in European cities filled with factories. The author points to the disingenuous views of the Jeffersonians that the world community would welcome a system of free trade, completely ignoring political realities. In fact, it was the restriction of US trade involving the seizing of ships and sailors by both the British and the French in the mid-1800s that directly led to the Republican embargo in 1808. The self-inflicted hardship on the US, with no noticeable effect on Britain, resulted in the War of 1812. The War of 1812 was a stalemate at best with many casualties, but more importantly and ironically, the US actually achieved a real independence, commericially and otherwise.
The changes in the political and social makeup of the US in the decades of the 1790s and 1800s were of such significance that Jefferson contended that his election was part of a second American revolution. It is hard to argue against the casting off of the psychological and commercial dependence on Britain, the democratization of US political and social life that more or less continues today, the formation of a working national government from a mere constitutional blueprint, and all the other developments of the era as constituting profound, even revolutionary, changes. It would be difficult to compare the extent of these changes with other American periods - for example, the profound changes from 1860 to 1900 come to mind. The one constant of American life has been change.
No other book comes to mind that attempts to bring together all of the elements of American society of this complex period, hence a label of being ambitious. For its length, the book is amazingly readable, organized into nineteen focused chapters. As far as any Jeffersonian bias on the part of the author, Jefferson was the principal figure and symbol of a way of thinking that ultimately did prevail in the US and largely continues today. That is simply reality. The author does not dismiss Hamiltonian financial ideas that also exist today. It is the elitism of the Federalists that was swept away by a newly formed "people." He does acknowledge that Jefferson misunderstood the need for the US to develop a manufacturing capacity - it took the War of 1812 to convince him. Yet one can look at the urban degradation with the coming of US industrialization to know that Jefferson's concerns were correct. At this point, this book stands as the preeminent book on this era in its willingness to take on most all aspects of the entire period.
| | | | Superior Work Dec 4, 2009 |
It is difficult to miss with any of the "Oxford Hstory of the United States" series. They are all uniformly excellent. And this is no exception.
I am not a breathless fan of Gordon Wood. However, this centrist work does an incredible job of weaving together most of the socio-political forces working within the young United States during the Constitutional period to 1815 in a thoroughly comprehensible read. Generalist history does not get much better than this, and the other reviews in this thread do a superior job of evaluating the merits of the work in detail.
Since I have little to add, I will confine my own review to perhaps the highest of all praises. Worth opening your wallet!
Recommended without reservation.
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