Format:
Online-Ressource (xix, 476 p)
,
ill., 1 map
Edition:
Online-Ausg. 2009 Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
ISBN:
0195130553
,
0195140559
Content:
This book restores Aaron Burr to his place as a central figure in the founding of the American Republic. Abolitionist, proto-feminist, friend to such Indian leaders as Joseph Brant, Burr was personally acquainted with a wider range of Americans, and of the American continent, than any other Founder except George Washington. He contested for power with Hamilton and then with Jefferson on a continental scale. The book does not sentimentalize any of its three protagonists, neither does it derogate their extraordinary qualities. They were all great men, all flawed, and all three failed to achieve their full aspirations. But their struggles make for an epic tale. Written from the perspective of a historian and administrator who, over nearly fifty years in public life, has served six presidents, this book penetrates into the personal qualities of its three central figures. In telling the tale of their shifting power relationships and their antipathies, it reassesses their policies and the consequences of their successes and failures. Fresh information about the careers of Hamilton and Burr is derived from newly-discovered sources, and a supporting cast of secondary figures emerges to give depth and irony to the principal narrative. This is a book for people who know how political life is lived, and who refuse to be confined within preconceptions and prejudices until they have weighed all the evidence, to reach their own conclusions both as to events and character. This is a controversial book, but not a confrontational one, for it is written with sympathy for men of high aspirations, who were disappointed in much, but who succeeded, in all three cases, to a degree not hitherto fully understood.
Content:
Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- PART ONE: Character and Circumstance -- CHAPTER 1 -- Character -- Gentlemen -- Hotspur and Bolingbroke -- Sacrificial Suicide -- Pretensions to Character -- The Chesterfieldian Fallacy -- Candor -- CHAPTER 2 -- Circumstance -- Party and Faction -- Emulation, Rivalry, and Ambition -- The West and Slavery -- The Character of Burr -- CHAPTER 3 -- The Fatal Twins -- Burr, Hamilton, and the Consolations of Religion -- Hamilton and the Consolations of Home -- Pain and Wrath -- CHAPTER 4 -- I Wish There Was a War -- Staff Work -- The Cincinnati and Thomas Jefferson -- Colonels Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson -- Where Is Jefferson? -- John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and the Question of Character -- CHAPTER 5 -- Politics, Love, Learning, and Death -- The Women -- Burr and Washington -- A Hypocrite or a Dangerous Man? -- Oaths and Other Words to Be Kept -- Dueling Founders -- Dr. Cooper Eavesdrops -- CHAPTER 6 -- Fascination -- Jachin and Boas -- Equal and Opposite -- Assisted Suicide -- The Code -- PART TWO: Character Tested by Slavery and Secession -- CHAPTER 7 -- The Civil Rights Movement of the 1790s and the First Jim Crow Period -- The Fourteen-Year Campaign -- Good Company -- Religion, Conviction, and Abolition -- The Manumission Society -- The Presence of Washington -- Burr, Hamilton, Jefferson, the French, and the Blacks -- The Center Holds: Burr, Jay, and Moderation -- Removal: Red and Black -- CHAPTER 8 -- Misdemeanors in Kentucky and Tennessee -- Secession, Filibustering, and James Wilkinson -- Washington Copes with Secession -- The French Incite Secession and Filibustering -- George Rogers Clark: Frustrated Filibuster -- CHAPTER 9 -- Filibustering as Policy, Glory, or Adventure -- Wilkinson and Wayne -- Hamilton and Wilkinson -- Hamilton's Will -- Strict Construction -- Burr and Disunion.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references (p. 435-451) and index
,
Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780195140552
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9780195140552
Language:
English
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