American Founders

Author : Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0804172471
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Dialogue written by Joseph J. Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning author of Founding Brothers and The Quartet now gives us a deeply insightful examination of the relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today. The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Jefferson and the issue of racism, Adams and the specter of economic inequality, Washington and American imperialism, Madison and the doctrine of original intent. Through these juxtapositions—and in his hallmark dramatic and compelling narrative voice—Ellis illuminates the obstacles and pitfalls paralyzing contemporary discussions of these fundamentally important issues.

Author : Francis J. Bremer
Publisher : UPNE
ISBN 13 : 1584659599
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book First Founders written by Francis J. Bremer and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2012 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the diverse lives of the Puritan founders by a leading expert

Author : David Hackett Fischer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982145099
Total Pages : 960 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book African Founders written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A ... synthesis of African and African-American history that shows how slavery differed in different regions of the country, and how the Africans and their descendants influenced the culture, commerce, and laws of the early United States"--

Author : Willard Sterne Randall
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1524745928
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Founders' Fortunes written by Willard Sterne Randall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating financial history of the Founding Fathers, revealing how their personal finances shaped the Constitution and the new nation In 1776, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers concluded America’s most consequential document with a curious note, pledging “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Lives and honor did indeed hang in the balance, yet just what were their fortunes? How much did the Founders stand to gain or lose through independence? And what lingering consequences did their respective financial stakes have on liberty, justice, and the fate of the fledgling United States of America? In this landmark account, historian Willard Sterne Randall investigates the private financial affairs of the Founders, illuminating like never before how and why the Revolution came about. The Founders’ Fortunes uncovers how these leaders waged war, crafted a constitution, and forged a new nation influenced in part by their own financial interests. In an era where these very issues have become daily national questions, the result is a remarkable and insightful new understanding of our nation’s bedrock values.

Author : Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691241414
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fears of a Setting Sun written by Dennis C. Rasmussen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment. As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings. A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.

Author : Alf J. Mapp
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742531154
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Faiths of Our Fathers written by Alf J. Mapp and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the author cuts through historical uncertainty to accurately portray the religious beliefs of 11 of America's founding fathers. (Motivation)

Author : Gregg L. Frazer
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700620214
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Religious Beliefs of America's Founders written by Gregg L. Frazer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were America's Founders Christians or deists? Conservatives and secularists have taken each position respectively, mustering evidence to insist just how tall the wall separating church and state should be. Now Gregg Frazer puts their arguments to rest in the first comprehensive analysis of the Founders' beliefs as they themselves expressed them-showing that today's political right and left are both wrong. Going beyond church attendance or public pronouncements made for political ends, Frazer scrutinizes the Founders' candid declarations regarding religion found in their private writings. Distilling decades of research, he contends that these men were neither Christian nor deist but rather adherents of a system he labels "theistic rationalism," a hybrid belief system that combined elements of natural religion, Protestantism, and reason-with reason the decisive element. Frazer explains how this theological middle ground developed, what its core beliefs were, and how they were reflected in the thought of eight Founders: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington. He argues convincingly that Congregationalist Adams is the clearest example of theistic rationalism; that presumed deists Jefferson and Franklin are less secular than supposed; and that even the famously taciturn Washington adheres to this theology. He also shows that the Founders held genuinely religious beliefs that aligned with morality, republican government, natural rights, science, and progress. Frazer's careful explication helps readers better understand the case for revolutionary recruitment, the religious references in the Declaration of Independence, and the religious elements-and lack thereof-in the Constitution. He also reveals how influential clergymen, backing their theology of theistic rationalism with reinterpreted Scripture, preached and published liberal democratic theory to justify rebellion. Deftly blending history, religion, and political thought, Frazer succeeds in showing that the American experiment was neither a wholly secular venture nor an attempt to create a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. By showcasing the actual approach taken by these key Founders, he suggests a viable solution to the twenty-first-century standoff over the relationship between church and state-and challenges partisans on both sides to articulate their visions for America on their own merits without holding the Founders hostage to positions they never held.

Author : Woody Holton
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807899860
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Forced Founders written by Woody Holton and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions against their own rule. The Virginia gentry's efforts to shape London's imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by a coalition of Indian nations. In 1774, elite Virginians suspended trade with Britain in order to pressure Parliament and, at the same time, to save restive Virginia debtors from a terrible recession. The boycott and the growing imperial conflict led to rebellions by enslaved Virginians, Indians, and tobacco farmers. By the spring of 1776 the gentry believed the only way to regain control of the common people was to take Virginia out of the British Empire. Forced Founders uses the new social history to shed light on a classic political question: why did the owners of vast plantations, viewed by many of their contemporaries as aristocrats, start a revolution? As Holton's fast-paced narrative unfolds, the old story of patriot versus loyalist becomes decidedly more complex.

Author : Thomas G. West
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110714048X
Total Pages : 431 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Political Theory of the American Founding written by Thomas G. West and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a complete overview of the Founders' natural rights theory and its policy implications.

Author : Bruce Elliott Johansen
Publisher : Ipswich, Mass. : Gambit
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Forgotten Founders written by Bruce Elliott Johansen and published by Ipswich, Mass. : Gambit. This book was released on 1982 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Native Americans contributed to the early American Republic and its Constitution.