also interdisciplinary... art, history ( )

2/13/23

This short book of five essays focuses on the role played by the unique circumstances of the American Revolutionaries as strangers in a strange land, and the effect of their isolation and newness (no landed aristocracy, no imbedded nobility, no grand manor houses generations old, no luxurious lifestyles as were possible on the Continent, no pomp, and constrained circumstances) on their creative thought. Bailyn writes with intelligence and vision without being abstruse, in five chapters on: American provincialism in general; Jefferson; Franklin; The Federalist Papers; and the influence of the American Revolution around the world. Adams, Madison and Hamilton are also discussed throughout.

Bailyn’s most controversial statements, in my opinion, are in the chapter on Jefferson. He acknowledges Jefferson’s contradictions, but spends much more time on his virtues than his failings. Further, he seems overawed about Jefferson’s encyclopedic interests and prodigious output. I’m sure there would have been others who accomplished as much if they owned over six hundred slaves during their lifetimes; Bailyn seems not to have considered how much one could have gotten done as a white male with a household full of slaves to address every quotidian (and not so quotidian) need.

Slavery aside, morality is a large topic of consideration throughout the essays, mostly in the sense of needing to balance freedom with control, in order to account for the “degree of depravity in mankind” (Madison). And, as Adams pointed out, since equality cannot be mandated, it is important to figure out ways to keep the plutocrats from taking over the body politic.

Bailyn rightly insists that since we still struggle with these issues, the concerns of the Founding Fathers remain our concerns. He charges us to continue “to probe the character of our constitutional establishment.” Good advice, and good reading. ( )