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The more things change, the more they remain the same. Modern American politics may often resemble a demented circus, but thus it has always been. So writes historian Joanne Freeman in this vigorous account of America's first national leaders, those entrusted with creating a nation unlike any other on Earth, one "egalitarian, democratic, representative, straightforward, and virtuous in spirit, public-minded in practice." The reality was less noble than all that; as Freeman writes, the first postrevolutionary Congress, convened in the spring of 1789, was marked by regional and private rivalries, mudslinging, acrimony, favor-seeking, and backroom bargaining, all of which produced far more discord than unity. In that climate, as John Adams and George Washington would often complain, these early politicians were more interested in "their interests, careers, reputations, and pocketbooks" than in matters of the public good. Yet, Freeman suggests, it could scarcely have been otherwise; an "emotional logic" governed the governors, involving a shared code of honor that drew no lines between the personal with the political, so that any disagreement over policy was liable to turn into a duel or campaign of slander; a day-to-day style of conduct in which panic, paranoia, and shrill accusations were the norm; a fortress mentality in which anyone who was not a sworn friend was a sworn enemy.
Amazingly, it sometimes seems, they made a nation. Freeman's well-crafted study makes a useful corrective to the view that contemporary politics represents a freefall from some golden age, and it adds much to our understanding of America's past. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
This study illuminates the founders, but it also promises to reshape the way historians think about politics, which in their time, contends Freeman (an assistant professor of history at Yale), was girded by the notion of honor "reputation with a moral dimension and an elite cast." John Adams and Aaron Burr were no less conscious than Bill Clinton of how they were being perceived and how they would be remembered. The elected representatives in the early republic, Freeman says artfully, were "constructing a machine already in motion, with few instructions and no precise model." They were not only reinventing the shape of the government from monarchic colony to loose confederation to national republic. They were also reinventing the way people did politics. One mark of this new politics was theater, which Freeman illustrates by way of the career of Pennsylvania senator William Maclay, a consummate thespian. Another new political tool was gossip, which Freeman locates in the contretemps between Burr and Hamilton and in the career of Thomas Jefferson. She also examines the early national "paper war," investigating how newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides and correspondence shaped political opinion. Freeman demonstrates that our conception of politics is often too narrow; that the "private" papers of Jefferson and co. reveal every bit as much about politics as their official state papers; and that the highly charged emotions of the founders are political data to be taken seriously, not individual idiosyncrasies to be overlooked. Freeman's prose is lively, and she balances entertaining narrative with sharp analysis. The last few years have seen a spate of books about the founding fathers and the early republic: Freeman's elegant study of honor and politics in the new nation will easily tower over most of them. (Sept.)Forecast: Launched with a blurb from Joseph J. Ellis, this should find a ready audience if it is widely reviewed, as it deserves.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Study of the Founding Fathers never quite goes out of style, but the last few years have seen rising interest in the men who served in Congress and the White House in the early years of the republic. Freeman, a Yale historian, seeks to establish a context for the sometimes puzzling behavior of the founders by exploring the "honor culture" that structured their political status before political parties developed. In those early years, she argues, "the culture of honor met with a burgeoning democracy and an ambiguous egalitarian ethic of republicanism; the former questioned assumptions about political leadership, the latter renounced the trappings of aristocracy without offering a defined alternative." Freeman describes the challenges and the "theater" of national politics in the new nation, devotes chapters to three major techniques wielded by political players--political gossip, "a paper war," and dueling--and then examines, as a case study, the 1800 presidential election. A fascinating analysis of the interaction of politics and culture in the early U.S. Mary Carroll
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