The Forging of the Union 1781 - 1789

The New American Nation Series

by Richard B. Morris

Looks at the history of the United States during the period between the end of the Revolution and the establishment of the federal government, and discusses the country's economic and social conditions

Genres: History, American History, American Revolution, Nonfiction

Library Binding

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Richard Brandon Morris was Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia University & past president of the American Historical Association. He wrote more than 40 books spanning legal, labor, diplomatic, political & social history, including The Peacemakers: The Great Powers & American Independence, The Forging of the Union 1781-89, Witnesses at the Creation, Government & Labor in Early America & Studies in the History of American Law. He lectured throughout the world, serving as Fulbright Research Professor at the Sorbonne & Distinguished Professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin.

Reviews

[michael]

Morris is a pretty strong nationalist, but he looks at the period between the revolution and the new constitution in a fairly even handed way. The book is a development of an argument put forward in an early essay, reviewed next.

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In what may be a sort of valedictory work (in which authors often feel compelled to throw in everything they know on the subject) - the author was born in 1904, the book published in 1987 - there are about 125 pages of introduction that are outside the interesting period of the title. While what is there is not bad, I would have greatly preferred to have those pages devoted to the period.

Some of the scholarship is outdated. On finance, it's updated by 7 The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776-1790 by E. James Ferguson, on the constitutional convention by Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention by Mary Sarah Bilder and on the construction of the House and Senate by lots of works.

But what's here is mostly good, even if slightly overviewish at times.

The author is apparently no relation to either of the founders, Robert Morris or Gouverneur Morris, but did hold the Gouverneur Morris chair of History at Columbia.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very informative but the writing style is one of the most painful I’ve ever encountered. The astute reader will notice numerous similarities between the 1780s and today - the most interesting example of which is the paranoiacs who were convinced that Shays’ Rebellion was a false flag, being run in order to bring in an absolutist central government and possibly an elected king.

Considering the tendencies of people like Alexander Hamilton that may not have been an entirely unreasonable fear, but the inclusion of the Bill of Rights and Hamilton’s unlamentable death render his opinion moot.

[STUART J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read, but a comprehensive account of the government of the United States before the adoption of the Constitution.