After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture

by Joseph J. Ellis

Through portraits of four figures―Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster―Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations. An entrepreneur, a writer who wanted to depict an ideal society, a dramatist who tried to reconcile high aesthetic standards and populism, and a Connecticut Yankee who ran into the contradictions of conservatism and liberalism―each of the four men depicted in this book had a vision of what kind of society post-Revolutionary America should be. Through portraits of these bellwether figures, the prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the currents that were shaping the new country.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, American Revolution, Biography, American, American Revolutionary War

274 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

Joseph John-Michael Ellis III is an American historian whose work focuses on the lives and times of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His book American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson won a National Book Award in 1997 and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for History. Both of these books were bestsellers.

Reviews

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph J. Ellis is one of the great historians of our time, but "After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture" is not what I would consider one of his great works. It certainly allows the reader to think about culture and the arts, and why they didn't take immediate hold once we became a country but for me it just didn't add up. When a country first comes into existence, its main function is to protect, feed, and shelter its citizens and not to put money toward the theater or the arts. That comes next, and like in Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance it will live on forever... represented in the culture, the paintings, books, poetry, and eventually the cinema.

To Quote the final words of William Butler Yeats engraved on his tombstone:"Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by!"

In short, art will live on, but first people need to survive for art to flourish.

[David Kopec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well Written and Researched but Incomplete

Contrary to a previous reviewer, I do feel the preface and early chapters have value. Ellis is attempting to tell a unified story regarding the expectations for American cultural greatness, the roots of these expectations, and the reasons for their lack of flourishing immediately following the revolution. The early chapters and preface provide a context for that story, which plays itself out through the lives of the four individuals recounted in the in the latter part of the book.

These short biographies do complementarily tell this grand story well, but Ellis falls short by not wrapping up the volume with an examination of the common and uncommon characteristics of the four personalities that are detailed. Ellis's superb command of the English language is nearly as present here as it is in his later much lauded works. i did at times feel I was missing important information from the life stories that shaped the ideas of the four studied individuals but this is a reflection of the structure that Ellis chose. It is impossible to get too into the details of any one individual's life in a volume that is using these individuals as supporting evidence for a grander narrative without boring the reader or straying far from the central subject matter.

All in all this is a valuable read - especially for those well acquainted with the triumphs of the founding generation, but not as much its failures and the more minor characters behind the scenes.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

American arts and letters took time to flourish immediately after independence. With the swiftness of the changes, and the optimism permeating the air, Americans assumed that a rich cultural life would spring to life with democracy. Ellis examines four failed American artists who were nonetheless influential at the time, but not considered world class: Charles Willson Peale in art, Hugh Henry Breckinridge in literature, William Dunlap in drama, and Noah Webster's Dictionary. Why are those Americans not world class? Because the individualism and the leveling of aristocracy were still working their way into the American cultural blood stream. Not until the mid 19th century - and Emerson - would American culture find its individual voice. Webster accomplished this with his American Dictionary, which is responsible for the varied spellings between Britain and American English today. This accomplishment would pave the way for Americans to find their true cultural voice.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ellis makes two main points and the book felt repetitive to me as he argued those points in the introductory chapters and the four profile chapters of Charles Willson Peale, Noah Webster, Hugh Henry Brackenridge and William Dunlap. First, he argues that there was a general feeling of cultural potential in the early Republic, even though there was no tangible evidence of a cultural flourishing. He believes that it was based on a general feeling that artists would thrive, along with commerce, in an atmosphere of freedom. “Artistic creativity and economic productivity were expected to flourish together in the free and stimulating conditions of the American marketplace.” 29

As someone whose graduate studies focused on the literature and culture of the times, I know as well as anyone the failure of that flourishing. His argument:

“Here was the crucial point at which so many Americans of the revolutionary generation had gone wrong. They had failed to recognize the inherent antagonism between the bourgeois values of the marketplace and the sensibilities essential to the life of artists and intellectuals. By leaping into the marketplace, they had in effect, and quite unknowingly, committed cultural suicide.” 216 Or as he writes of Peale, It was easy for him "let his political convictions overwhelm his aesthetic judgment.” 53

I think it is part of the truth. I don't feel, for instance, that this is why Charles Brockden Brown's novels fail--it is interesting that Ellis does not include him. I think the reasons are a lot more complicated though he is right about it being one of the main reasons for the failure of the arts to thrive in early America.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I should say I was duped into buying this book. It was billed as "written by the author of Founding Brothers", which it certainly was. And I assumed since the title was After the Revolution, it would be a follow up book on Founding Brothers. However, it was written over 30 years prior to most of Ellis' best known books. As such the preface was nearly unreadable and Part I wasn't much better. However, those are only the first 20 pages or so. Part II was very good and displays a glimpse of Ellis' future writing style.

Part II contains mini-biographies of Charles Wilson Peale (painter), Hugh Henry Brackenridge (novelist), William Dunlap (dramatist), and Noah Webster (educator). This biographies not only show how and why culture floundered in early America, but provide a detailed look at Americans themselves, their politics, and revolutionary principles (especially republicanism). The book ends with a brief look at Emerson, who Ellis believes was the founding father of American culture.

[Mark Stidham · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book sketches four main figures in post-Revolutionary War America. But the premise of the book is quite curious. That is, Ellis asserts there was a conventional wisdom in certain circles that the circumstances of the American scene would result in an unprecedented wave of new art. People believed that the arts (specifically, painting, literature, and stage productions) would experience a boost in the newly found country. The expectation was based on having independence from monarchy and aristocracy, the release of creativity from the confines of a dominating church, and an unprecedented level of literacy. Ellis continues his assertion that the conventional wisdom soon following the founding of the U.S. is that there was zero fulfillment of the expectation, and that the U.S. was viewed as a desert for the arts. Ellis examines the lives of four artists in the analysis, a painter, a poet/novelist, a playwright, and Noah Webster (uncategorized, but maybe non-fiction literature). Each failed to thrive in creating their art, although Noah Webster emerged as the all-time champion of book authors with his speller and its successor dictionary). Ellis explains that the reasoning behind the expectations seemed logical, there were fatal flaws. In painting, it is clear that patronage in those times could only come from wealth and power. With the new country and its relatively democratic distribution of resources, there was no central power with the excessive capital to sponsor art in general and painting in particular. Another factor perhaps hidden was the overall puritanical ethos of Americans in their newly created country. Utility was the virtue most highly prized. Paintings, novels, and plays seemed frivolous and just about unpatriotic. Lastly, Ellis reasons that genius in the arts is not linked to democracy and republicanism. There is simply nothing about American exceptionalism that accounts for artistic creativity.
I obviously enjoyed the book, and I certainly admired the author's effort to address a somewhat unexamined non-achievement of the American Revolution. In a strange way, I felt a deeper understanding of the 'culture' in the new country, through understanding its deficits. The 3-star rating only reflects what I imagine is the interest in this strange dimension of American history.
It has spurred me to search for books on some other dimensions of the new country that might have been expected. Why was the abolitionist movement so firmly stymied? Why were women's rights not on the agenda? How did the immigrant Americans so blithely deny the rights of native Americans?

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why did the young American Republic, in its first decades after throwing off the yoke of imperial tyranny and unleashing the forces of individual freedom and self-government, fail to become the "American Athens" of arts and sciences that many of the Revolutionary generation had predicted? This is the question Ellis addresses in this book written in 1979, two decades before his masterpieces on the Founders generation. I found this book a bit of a struggle to get through, which is not my usual experience with Ellis's histories. While it is, as you would expect from Ellis, thoroughly researched, informative and persuasive, the themes repeat and you get the picture of the inherent and stifling social and political contradictions of early American culture in Part One. I am not sure that Part Two, the profiles of the four early American artists that constitute the bulk of the book, adds anything new to the book's analysis.

[Madaline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repetitive, but well-researched.

Ellis argues two main points throughout the book:
1. Everyone thought American independence would naturally allow art and culture to flourish.
2. Capitalism and the lesser concentration of wealth in art, plays, and writing held back the cultural floodgates.

The preface, first and second chapters, and the epilogue were the most informative parts of the book in regard to the "whys" and "why nots" of cultural creation. The profiles of Peale, Webster, Dunlap, and Brackenridge did little for me. I found them interesting, as far as the trivia within them goes, but they did not provide anything more than extra context on a point already pounded into oblivion. The book was very well-researched, even though this contributed to the dragging of the chapters. This reviewer suggests skimming the book but would recommend skipping the profiles unless they are of particular interest.

[Donald Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of the idea of "culture" just following the American Revolution. He discussed a painter (Charles Peale), a writer (Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a playwright & theater owner (William Dunlap), an educator/lexicographer Noah Webster and another author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, to analyze the beginning of "culture" in America. With references from George Washington to Alexis de Tocqueville, he conducted a thorough review of how the hopes and dreams of culture in America resulted in a debased phenomenon of money first and foremost. Meaning "culture" had a bad go of it in this new experiment of government.
While America has not shed this problem of avarice and cupidity, we do have much more artistic and cultural endeavors than in the early republic.
This was a interesting and thought provoking slice of history by an excellent historian.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure there is audience for this one but not for me. I love Ellis's books and have read most but I found that this one is a lot older so he didn't quite have it yet. I'm sure there's great info in it but the first part was a drag and then reading some mini biographies about a few folks (most I kind of heard of but didn't know too much about) didn't do it for me. I'll read the few others he has written that Im sure to enjoy. Not every book has to be great :/

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whenever I am in New England, I am compelled to read something about the Revolutionary War period. I thought an Ellis book would be a good pick - eh, not so much. This is a very early book - maybe even his dissertation - and does not have the readability of later works. There are some interesting ideas, including the lives of the four men profiled, but this was a slog.

[Leah Angstman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come in my Pedantic Literary Historian column at The Coil. Will crosspost when published.

[Jake Schell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable to learn about writers and artists who were directly influenced by the American Revolution.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is composed of vignettes about four American culture makers (authors, artists, dramatists, etc.) in the first generation after the Revolutionary War. Although the individuals profiled are generally not household names, the book includes a lot of information about early American culture, and explains why it took such a long time for the newly independent United States to develop an artistic tradition.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. An early book by Ellis on why the revolutionary generation widely assumed that overthrowing tyranny would lead to a massive bloom of artistic genius and why it didn't happen. To make this concrete, Ellis looks at a painter, a playwright,a novelist and dictionary creator Noah Webster to see what they hoped for in their careers, how things worked out, and how they dealt with the shift from a world of revolutionary idealism to a growing emphasis on commerce.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Ellis is a wonderfully clear writing and writes primarily about the American REvolutionary period. This 1979 study of four colonial artists--painter, playright, novelist and wordsmith (?Noah Webster)--is a wonderful look at colonial life. It makes it clear that America was a whole new invention, not a new Europe or a new anything else. It is simply itself and is still becoming that.

[Marian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read, good for a textbook, but could have been a lot shorter. The biographies of Peale, Brackenridge, Dunlap, and Webster contain an interesting balance of chronology, trivia, and analysis. Naturally, they all tie into Ellis's theme/thesis, which centers on the conflicts between democracy and American art. Overall, it was pretty good, if somewhat repetitive.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it interesting to see the expectations of the post-revolutionary generation for the greatness of American culture. I wonder what they would think of our culture today!

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my area of interest, however, it was interesting to learn.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is important information to know, but it is a slow read. I used it like Nyquil, but I read it.

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book. Simple thesis and well written and well documented history of the cultural ideas of the immediate post-American Revolutionary period.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellis has not yet refined his ability to synthesize and accurately define the figures and character of a given age. Or perhaps I must reread Founding Brothers...

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave this a shot because Joseph J. Ellis is one of my favorites, but I couldn't get into this one. It just wasn't what I was expecting.

[Rick Cheeseman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. Kinda boring.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only really liked the chapter on Noah Webster.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to American history buffs like myself, but not very entertaining. A bit dry.

[Rena Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on the growth of literature and other arts in the colonies. Not the huge growth of it that was anticipated, then the author compared to the Greek and Roman eras. They had their greatest, lasting arts created just before their downfall, not at their beginnings!!

Good in depth look at society and the arts following the Revolutionary War.