North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. EllisReview by: William S. Price Jr.The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 3 (JULY 2001), pp. 390-391Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23522344 .

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390 Book Reviews

Gov. James Wright, almost alone among colonial governors, was popular and efficient

as a royal administrator, and he played a key role in retarding the flame of revolution in

Georgia long after it had hurst forth violently in every other colony. Nevertheless, by 1776,

Georgia's government was in chaos, and through six years of war, both Whig and Royal

governments struggled to maintain order and secure the allegiance of Georgia's people. As

this book makes clear, the Revolution in Georgia was a messy and violent process, but Hall

is to be applauded for guiding the reader seamlessly through the maze of governing factions,

political feuds, and wartime upheaval toward a better understanding of the seminal

importance of land in shaping the events of the American Revolution in Georgia. This is

a welcome addition to the small shelf of books on Revolutionary Georgia.

The Georgia Historical Society

Stan Deaton

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. By Joseph J. Ellis. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2000. Acknowledgments, preface, notes, index. Pp. xi, 288. $26.00.)

Not often does a scholar's work achieve best-seller status, but Joseph J. Ellis is that rare

academic historian who can write profoundly enough to impress his fellow Ph.Ds. and

engagingly enough to attract thousands of nonspecialists. His new book follows upon the

earlier success of his penetrating study of Thomas Jefferson, American Sphinx, which took

the National Book Award in 1997. In six chapters, each of which can stand independently of the others, Ellis treats various

intriguing episodes and ideas of leading figures of the Revolutionary generation. He opens

with the tragedy of the Burr-Hamilton duel and closes with the renewed friendship of

Jefferson and Adams in the final fourteen years of their lives, following two decades of

estrangement emerging from the Federalist-Republican split. In between are revelations

about siting the federal capital, the tacit agreement between congressional leaders to keep

silent on the matter of slavery in the early Republic, and the Olympian presence of the

one figure in the early nation who not only rose above faction but possessed the surest sense

of what the infant nation could do on the world's stage and (equally important) what it

could not. That figure, of course, was George Washington.

The jacket of Founding Brothers contains contemporary images of the seven men who

dominate the story: Madison, Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Washington.

Other figures intrude from time to time, like John Jay, John Marshall, or Benjamin Rush, but the focus remains on the seven principals. If Washington is the apex and Burr the nadir,

Ellis has instructive things to say about the others as well. No one escapes judicious criticism

(Adams and Jefferson receive more than the others, in part because Ellis pays them more

attention), but there are no detestable villains here. Ellis's profound appreciation for the

acumen of the founders in the face of frightening challenges is palpable.

Amid the accounts of these astonishing "brothers," one "sister" does insert herself and

for good reason. Abigail Adams, wife of one president and mother of another, emerges as

a perceptive critic, a clear-eyed seer, and a solid judge of character in ways absent from most

of her better-known "brothers." Her roles in helping her husband endure his embattled

presidency and in dealing with the enigmatic Jefferson are engagingly told by Ellis.

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Book Reviews 391

The author's notes are instructively annotated to lead those readers interested in

knowing more to the best sources of illumination. For a stimulating narrative of major facets

of the crucial first decades of the nation's founding, Ellis's Founding Brothers is both sound

scholarship and a "good read."

Meredith College

William S. Price Jr.

States' Rights and the Union: lmperium in Imperio, 1776-1876. By Forrest McDonald. (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2000. Preface, prologue, epilogue, notes, index. Pp. viii, 296. $29.95.)

Forrest McDonald, one of America's premier historians, has produced a masterful

summary of sovereignty for a hundred-year period following 1776. Almost nothing is

overlooked, and the student and teacher who are reaching for evidence to explain the

conflicts that frequently arise between federal and state governments will likely find it

within these pages. The aptly subtitled Imperium in Imperio ("sovereignty within

sovereignty") is a monument to the genius of the Founding Fathers, who transformed the

sovereign—the court from which there is no appeal—into twins. And this innovation is

a recipe for conflict, as McDonald illustrates in this illuminating work.

While the Articles of Confederation was the first political framework for the United

States of America, this book makes it clear that the nationalists who believed in a

consolidated government launched a reform movement during the 1780s. Their crowning

achievement came at the Philadelphia convention in 1787 with an affirmative vote for

"a national Government ... consisting of a supreme Legislative, Executive & Judiciary."

Nationalist reforms did not stop there, McDonald explains. They had witnessed the excesses

of state authority during the "Critical Period," with state legislative interference extending

to contracts, judicial decisions, and legal tender. The framers in Philadelphia wanted also

to restrain the states. Hence, in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution are clauses that

limit state power.

The Founding Fathers can never be said to have been a harmonious group. Of the fifty

five delegates who attended the convention, only thirty-nine of them signed the

Constitution in September. And they signed it as a statement of fact that the work had

been done in convention and not as their personal endorsement of the document. But the

Federalists had reached a consensus, which, McDonald concludes, "Harmony's end began

in 1790." From the rift in the ranks of the Federalists came political parties; and from that

well sprang a series of conflicts involving the twins—the dual sovereigns.

Just as the true Federalists prevailed in the debates involving Hamilton's financial

program, they prevailed over many of the controversies that followed. The Supreme Court

in such cases as Marbury v. Madison, Fletcher v. Peck, and Dartmouth College v. Woodward

managed to affirm its authority to interpret federal and state laws, as well as affirm the

validity of contracts. In McCulloch v. Maryland, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of the national bank and deprived the states of the authority to tax the institution. However,

the states also won a few victories, as in 1793 when Georgia refused an appearance before

the Court in the Chisholm case on the grounds of sovereign immunity. Congress joined

Georgia by passing the Eleventh Amendment, making the states immune from suits from

alien residents.

VOLUME LXXVIII • NUMBER 3 • JULY 2001

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