Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

by Joseph J. Ellis

In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award—winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals–Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison–confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation.

The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers–re-examined here as Founding Brothers–combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government. Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes–Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence– Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, American Revolution, Politics, Historical

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2000

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

[Anne Rife · Rating 1 out of 5]

While reading the first part of this book, I wished Aaron Burr had shot me.

[Ginger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was the first book that ever made me cry because it was too hard to read pleasurably. I felt like the author took stories we all already know about, and locked himself in a dark room with a thesaurus and babelfish and used the LOLZCATZ approach to writing, only in historese. I frustra-cried, it was that bad.
I felt double bad about this book because I had bought it for my dad earlier in the year as a birthday gift, and when it was on the required reading list of my American History course I felt special because it was like, ---ooooh book club with dad!---, then I felt like a loser because this tiny book, that won a freaking National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997, was the bane of my existence, I was felled by this verbose dribble. I still get red in the face when I think about this book.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

You would figure that the history of America’s “Revolutionary Era” would be milked dry by now and the stories of its players a stale drama. This book represents the effort of a professional historian to forge new insights by looking collectively at the so-called Founding Fathers, stretching a metaphor for their alliances and conflicts as being emblematic of the very checks and balances that they built into the Constitution in 1787. Through a set of six lively essays, he probes the diverse personalities and substantive interactions among these figures in relationship to the major issues that arose in the decade after the new government was formed (essentially the 1790s). His focus is on Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton, with supplemental attention given to Madison, Burr, and Franklin. Because they all knew each other and worked together in collaboration and strife over such a long time, Ellis adopts the phrase “Founding Brothers” for his title.

In his preface, Ellis points out that despite these white dudes being lionized and mythologized by so many for so long, each generation sees the launch of the nation a bit differently, with different implications for contemporary controversies according to who is looking:
A golden haze surrounds this period for many Americans, but as a contaminated radioactive cloud for those unhappy with what we have become and how we got here.

The draw of this book for me is in the opportunity to understand personalities of these players on history’s stage a bit better and to appreciate how their human strengths and flaws came into play in shaping the country’s course. As an effective way to clarify the impact of personality on amplifying political differences, Ellis kicks off his book by examining the pistol duel between Vice President Burr and Hamilton that ended in the senseless death of the latter. I have had the pleasure of a satirical dose of the quirks and dark spots in Burr’s character from reading Vidal’s novel “Burr”. I didn’t realize how much Hamilton brought on the challenge from Burr by his campaign of continual gossip and insults of Burr in social situations. I pictured Hamilton as an effete snob, but learned he came from humble roots. Through prior readings I’ve gotten to know and admire Adams, Washington, and Franklin, but for Jefferson and Hamilton what little I know makes me somewhat biased against them. I came away with some fresh angles on the first three and for the latter two substantially more about what made them tick (though little to make me love them any better). Regardless of personal appeal or distaste, their alliances and conflicts moved the country through the bad patches.

In a wonderful chapter called “The Collaborators”, Ellis compares and contrasts the early close collaboration between Adams and Jefferson, best seen in their teamwork on the Declaration of Independence, with that of Jefferson and Madison, a match of strategist with tactician that led to Jefferson beating Adams in his run for a second term. In between, we get the falling out between Jefferson and Adams during their competition to replace Washington and the full bloom of Adams’ productive collaboration with his wife Abigail during his presidency.

I get a kick out of Ellis’ evocative language in the challenges to the friendship between Adams and Jefferson:
They were an incongruous pair, but everyone seemed to argue that history made them into a pair. The incongruities leapt out for all to see: Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams, the highly combustible., ever combative, mile-a-minute talker, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, the always cool and self-contained enigma, who regarded debate and argument as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head. The list could go on—the Yankee and the Cavalier, the orator and the writer, the bulldog and the greyhound. They were the odd couple of the American Revolution.

For Washington and Adams, a strong central government was essential to achieve the nation’s great opportunity to settle and harness the resources of a continent, negotiate beneficial trade agreements with other nations, and develop an adequate defense from threats. Adams wrote of the need to retain a “monarchical principle” of power in the government to get things done as the only pragmatic way to achieve national cohesion over territories so much vaster the Greek city states that first developed a democracy. For Jefferson and his protégé Madison, any conferral of substantial power at the federal level came to represent a revival of the kind of tyranny for which the revolution was waged. When Hamilton and the group of Federalists began machinations to establish a national bank to facilitate economic growth, this pushed Jefferson’s buttons even more as a betrayal of a revolution for individual rights and agrarian values and a return of power to a monied and largely urban elite, i.e. a new aristocracy. Thus, the “all-for-one and one-for-all” sense of unity that emerged when the Revolutionary War was on soon came to an end, and the age of vicious party politics began.

Forever after, party loyalty would threaten to belie the ideal that the elected government was to serve the entire populace. Dirty tricks, smear campaigns, and fake news came out of the woodwork surprisingly early. In the election to replace Washington, Jefferson is guilty of paying a “scandalmonger” to do a hatchet job on Adams’ character in the press and in a pamphlet, painting “Adams as ‘a hoary headed incendiary’ who was equally determined on war with France and on declaring himself president for life, with John Quincy lurking in the background as his successor. When Jefferson’s role was definitively revealed, “Jefferson seemed genuinely surprised at the revelation, suggesting that for him the deepest secrets were not the ones he kept from his enemies but the ones he kept from himself”. (Another choice quote: “Jefferson’s nearly Herculean powers of self-denial also helped keep the cause pure, at least in the privacy of his own mind”; elsewhere Ellis notes that Jefferson could probably pass a lie detector test denying each of his various duplicities).

After his narrow victory, Adams invited Jefferson into his cabinet, but party politics and ideology kept Jefferson from acceding to revival of their old collaborative spirit. Adams had filled his cabinet with Hamilton and his followers, whose manipulations on behalf of their agenda disgusted Adams himself. He resorted to using his wife Abigail as his effective cabinet of one for all important help with his deliberations. The breach with Jefferson yawned even wider when Adams undermined Jefferson’s longstanding goal of an alliance with France by forging a secret agreement with England to secure umbrella protections from their fleet in exchange for a favorable trade status for them. More fuel for their personal conflict was added to the fire when Adams acceded to his wife’s unfortunate push for the Aliens and Sedition Act to protect him from libelous attacks in the press. When the law came to be used as a political weapon selectively against the Republican-leaning press, the gloves really came off.

Only much later, after Jefferson’s term and retirement, did the pair take up correspondence and slowly let go of their mutual sense of betrayal. Their remarkable correspondence over many years until their deaths on the 50th anniversary of Independence Day reveals a return to true friendship and a great repository of their attempts to make sense of history. Ellis’ coverage of the correspondence makes for a nice complement to the in-depth treatment of the rapprochement in McCullough’s wonderful biography “John Adams.”

Ironically, it was Adams that succeeded in achieving a parallel treaty with France to balance out the English one, though it came too late in his presidency to affect the election of Jefferson. He had been trying to follow Washington’s lead on navigating a path of neutrality with respect to the centuries old struggle between England and France for dominance of western Europe. However, these was not a stable government to negotiate with for a long time, and the attempt by Tallyrand to extract a hefty bribe just to get to the table set progress back. In turn, it was ironic that it was Jefferson who achieved the Louisiana Purchase and thereby unleashed true imperial spirit for taking over the continent. And it was he that helped achieve the banning of the slave trade.

With hindsight we can see the raw deal that was being set up for the future for blacks and Indians. Mostly, the leaders at the time colluded in an active deferral in addressing the slavery issue. Too hot to handle. The southern colonies wouldn’t have joined the Union if slavery was in the lineup for federal interference. In an important chapter of this book, “The Silence”, it was disturbing to see how a simple petition to Congress by some early Quaker abolitionists in 1790 could reveal the terrible instability of the nation. Endorsed by Franklin, it couldn’t be ignored. Their presentation of the contradiction between trafficking in human beings and the precept of “all men are created equal” was clear, as was their argument that is was the duty of Congress was to resolve it. Despite the consensus buried in the Constitution that no law could be passed restricting the slave trade for 20 years, the Pennsylvania petitioners maintained that Congress could still do its constitutional duty of abolishing slavery under its “general welfare” clause that empowered them to “take whatever action it deemed ‘necessary and proper’ to …’Countenance the Restoration of Liberty for all Negroes'.” That brought out plenty of tap-dancing from the southern delegation about state rights and the practice being okay with God according to certain biblical passages. With a few states making threats about seceding, the petition was ignored.

In retrospect, it’s easy to be forgiving that it would take some time to call the bluff of hard-core states like South Carolina. But Ellis takes a surprising tack by arguing that this point in time was near the end of the period when slavery could be abolished with limited impact. The census for 1790 revealed exponential growth of the population of slaves similar to that of whites since 1776, reaching 700,000 out of nearly 4 million total non-Indian population (I was shocked that New York and New Jersey still had 33,000) . With the added likelihood of new slave states being added to the Union, the door was closely quickly on the economic feasibility of a compensated emancipation from the federal coffers.

None of the Founding Fathers really countenanced a fully bi-racial society. All imagined shipping the massive number of freed slaves somewhere else, to some colony in Africa, South America, or to some place out West (not too different from the mindset during Lincoln’s presidency 75 years later). Jefferson may have loved his slave Sally Hemings and had children by her, but he did not free her and did not conceive of blacks worthy of full citizenship. In the case of his fellow Virginian, Washington, Ellis provides bits of evidence that he did imagine a fully integrated society. Some quote shows he believed that low expectations of their capabilities arose from the outcomes of their environment and not intrinsic character. Also, his will specified that after his wife also died that his Mt. Vernon estate be sold and proceeds be used to support opportunities for his freed family slaves and their descendants over a few generations.

That Washington had an unusually egalitarian streak about the races is also suggested in his “Letter to the Cherokee Nation", in which he encourages them to seek assimilation into white society as the only solution for all Indians given the inevitable settlement of all their lands by the unstoppable whites. Washington acknowledged that he was asking a lot, that “this path may seem may seem a little difficult to enter … because it meant subduing their understandable urge to resist and sacrificing many of their most distinctive and cherished tribal values. “ I appreciate Ellis’ summary:

Whatever moral deficiencies and cultural condescensions a modern-day audience might find in Washington’s advice, two salient points are clear: First, it was in keeping with his relentless realism about the limited choices that history offered; and, second, it projected Indians into the mix of people called Americans.

I wonder if in this Age of Trump whether Ellis will feel obliged to change this view of this roller-coaster of America’s first decade :
..in terms of shrill accusatory rhetoric, flamboyant displays of ideological intransigence, intense personal rivalries, and hyperbolic claims of immanent catastrophe, it has no equal in American history.

[Brynan · Rating 1 out of 5]

"And so while Hamilton and his followers could claim that the compromise permitted the core features of his financial plan to win approval, which in turn meant the institutionalization of fiscal reforms with centralizing implications that would prove very difficult to dislodge, the permanent residence of the capital on the Potomac institutionalized political values designed to carry the nation in a fundamentally different direction."

This is a sentence found on page 80 of Joseph J. Ellis's Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.

Personally, I don't understand this sentence at all when I read it once, so lets dissect this sentence, shall we?

First phrase:
"And so while Hamilton and his followers could claim that the compromise permitted the core features of his financial plan to win approval..."

-The main part of this sente... I mean phrase is that "the compromise permitted the core features of [Hamilton's] financial plan to win approval." Who in the world of academia talks like this? Anyway, this phrase pretty much boils down to, "...the compromise satisfied the main parts of Hamilton's financial plan."

Second phrase:
"...which in turn meant the institutionalization of fiscal reforms with centralizing implications that would prove very difficult to dislodge..."

-Okay. This is a little more difficult. So, if Hamilton approves this "compromise" that satisfies the main parts of his financial plan, it would result in "the institutionalization of fiscal reforms", which I take to mean the government will have more financial responsibilities. This reform will have "centralizing implications that would prove very difficult to dislodge," which I'm guessing is a fancy way for saying that this will make the central government more powerful, which will be difficult to change in the future.

Third phrase:
"...the permanent residence of the capital on the Potomac institutionalized political values designed to carry the nation in a fundamentally different direction."

-Well, after reading this phrase 5 times over, I think it means that because the capital is permanently in Potomac, the nation is actually heading in the opposite direction that Hamilton's plan is.

So after 10 minutes of dissection, this sentence is saying that "While the compromise potentially satisfied the core of Hamilton's financial plan, which would place more financial responsibilities on the government that would be difficult to repeal in the future, the fact that the capital was permanently in Potomac suggested that the nation was heading in a different direction."

...

Wow. Even after simplifying the sentence and reducing the word count from 64 to 48 and the syllable count from 125 to 88, that is still one beast of a sentence.

Ellis's excessive, pretentious use of multi-syllabic words shows that Ellis is married to his Thesaurus. No one, not even scholars, talks like Ellis nor can understand Ellis. One may be able to get a general sense of what is going on, but I'm sure there are better, less painful ways to learn of these stories.

After doing this sentence dissection for a deceptively short, grueling, uneventful, draining, brain-mushing, incredibly taxing 248 pages, I have come away with a sure fire way to make me feel like my IQ is in the negative range... and with a significantly higher vocabulary.

Good luck, fellow readers.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an exciting book! Ellis conducts you right into the political chaos of the early republic, when the revolutionary fraternity was splintering in feuds, faction and duels (which are preferable to purges, terrors, and nights of long knives):

The very idea of a legitimate opposition did not yet exist in the political culture of the 1790s, and the evolution of political parties was proceeding in an environment that continued to regard the word party as an epithet. In effect, the leadership of the revolutionary generation lacked a vocabulary adequate to describe the politics they were inventing…Lacking a consensus on what the American Revolution had intended and what the Constitution had settled, Federalists and Republicans alike were afloat on a sea of mutual accusations and partisan interpretations. The center could not hold because it did not exist.

The old warhorse Washington had offered the semblance of a center; but in his second term as president, Treasury Secretary Hamilton’s fiscal plans and the brokering of a British-skewed neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars pushed Washington’s fellow Virginians Madison and Jefferson into the opposition. Ellis argues that Washington’s experience of the army as a social adhesive availed him of a visionary nationalism that non-veterans like Madison and Jefferson simply could not comprehend. Washington said of the war: “a century in the ordinary intercourse, would not have accomplished what seven years association in arms did.” Washington’s remark echoes in the decision of President Taylor, another Virginian general, to admit California as a free state in 1850, an act seen as a class betrayal by other Southern slaveholders. (McPherson writes, “Forty years in the army had given Old Rough and Ready a national rather than sectional perspective.”)


Washington’s realistic valuation of the federal government as a social adhesive and the fiscal-military organizer of the coming scramble west contrasted with Jefferson’s dreamy attachment to a static, Encyclopédie-plate republic founded on the fancied commercial innocence of the American farmer—just as Washington’s foreign policy, which bet shrewdly on Britain as the superpower of the coming century, contrasted with Jefferson’s romantic mist of Anglophobia, Francophily, and abiding faith in the Utopian promise of the French Revolution. Note the sentimental hysteria, the Manichean bravado in what Jefferson wrote a friend about the Reign of Terror:

The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of that contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed I would rather have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now.

He seems to reach across the years, and grasp Sartre and Louis Aragon by the hand. In Ellis’s portrayal, Jefferson’s personality is one compartmentalized with a view to containing and denying to himself awareness of his more undignified ambitions and behavior. And for the American slaveholder, the pricer of souls in the land of liberty, what more requisite features than compartments and denial? Beginning with the first political challenges to slavery in the 1790s—to which Ellis devotes an absorbing chapter—slaveholders defended the institution by calling it the sole check against race-mixing. Meanwhile, what was observed down on the plantation? Rainbow harems, and broods of beige bastards.


This book is the first substantive thing I’ve read on John Adams, and I like him. Ellis writes that his was an “iconoclastic and contrarian temperament that relished alienation”—a temperament destined to become a family pattern; great-grandson Henry would inherit a nervous brilliance mismatched to his, or any, time. Adams’ correspondence is full of trenchant deconstructions of the mythic revolutionary narrative then solidifying in the public mind. I like his historically-informed, disabused, mercurial style; his suspicion of the illusory equality that democracy seems to offer; his wariness before the rigidity and abstraction of French Revolutionary ideology. And though he, like all the Founders save Franklin, agreed to an official silence on slavery—that powder-keg nested in the foundations—restless apprehensions gleam through:

This subject is vast and ominous. More than fifty years has it attracted my thoughts and given me much anxiety. A folio volume would not contain my lucubration on this subject. And at the end of it, I should leave the reader and myself as much at a loss what to do with it, as at the beginning.

I could easily trade The Education of Henry Adams, with its sour stylistic monotony, for that lucubratory folio!


Purely for his reputation in posterity, Alexander Hamilton was lucky to have been killed in that duel. Aaron Burr thereby assumes the mantle of Dangerous Man, Cataline of the republic, and Hamilton’s flirtations with “Bonapartism” fade into the background. Hamilton undermined President Adams by manipulating his cabinet behind the scenes; and while Adams pursued a peace treaty with the French, whose privateers had been seizing American ships in the West Indies, Hamilton was agitating for war (Adams was following another of Washington's recommendations: 20 years minimum of growth and consolidation before we tangle with a European power). Hamilton was then Inspector-General of the New Army, and planned, with the outbreak of war, to lead a chastising march through Jeffersonian Virginia, en route to seize Florida, Louisiana, and, even more grandiosely, Mexico and Peru. Those are big dreams! Hamilton wanted to do himself, and in one campaign, what would take Napoleon in a giving mood, Jefferson in a nation-building mood, Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott, Grant, Sherman, and six subsequent decades to accomplish. Adams’ conclusion of a treaty with France abolished the prospect of such folly.


Ellis leaves one with so many images. Abigail Adams overhears the ex-president cursing his enemies as he works in the fields alongside the hired men. James Callender, the scandalmongering pamphleteer Jefferson hired to smear Adams before the 1800 election, languishes, accused of libel, in a Richmond jail, where he hears rumors of Jefferson’s slave mistress, rumors he publishes once he decides the payment for his hatchet job on Adams is inadequate. Washington gallops along the Potomac, sighting the prospects of the capitol to bear his name. James Madison, at the Constitutional Convention, confides to his diary the observation that “the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but principally from their having or not having slaves. It did not lie between the large and small States: it lay between the Northern and Southern.”

[Vincent Masson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Ebert once said that a movie isn't epic in it's runtime, but in it's ideas. Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, isn't a great film because it's almost four hours long, but because of how much it packs into those hours. Similarly, Joseph J Ellis' book, "The Revolutionary Brothers" is a short but epic book that tackles and clarifies some of the issues and notable moments that the founding fathers faced with great skill and beautiful language. I learned a lot.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellis gives us six insightful vignettes of leaders of the early American Republic. The author reminds us that the founders did not know whether their creation would last. They did know that it was historic, that it was fragile and that it was a bold experiment. We have to judge them and their actions in that context, in light of what they knew not what has since come to be true. The underlying theme is the dichotomy between the suspicion of central government and the need for a durable union for survival and prosperity. The Federalists led by northerners Hamilton and Adams were for a strong unified America that would take its place in the world; the Republicans led by Virginians Jefferson and Madison represented southerners who wanted minimal government that would not interfere with the states. That compromise could be reached, that political vitriol could be overcome, and that a document as strong, flexible and enduring as the Constitution could be crafted was a great and not inevitable accomplishment.

Ellis takes us into the minds of the founders to show us how the interplay of ideas and personalities actually worked, how history shaped the men and how in turn the men shaped history. He starts with a story where compromise failed, where political infighting succumbed to the revolutionary era’s code of honor, the duel. Alexander Hamilton, past his prime and with his own reputation sullied, had vilified Aaron Burr for the past fifteen years. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. But rather than apologize Hamilton risked everything and lost his life against the self-serving Burr, Jefferson’s Vice President. Hamilton would not repudiate what he stood for, a strong union. Ellis focuses on trying to determine who shot first and whether they aimed to kill, but I was more fascinated by the strength of Hamilton’s belief.

In the second story we learn where a compromise did work, one vital to the future of America. The assumption of state debts into a national debt pushed by Hamilton and the Federalists was accepted by Republican Virginians Jefferson and Madison in trade for placing the nation’s capital on the Potomac. Each side felt it walked away with a victory. While the Virginians gave in to Hamilton’s vision of a commercially vibrant union despite their disdain for central economic authority, they felt their proximity to the new capital would give them greater influence with the new government. At least this is the impression Jefferson gave. Jefferson also realized as a former foreign minister that lack of a cohesive economic policy rendered America impotent in the eyes of Europe and left the southern plantations at the unbridled mercy of European banks.

The third story deals with the inability to deal with slavery. Seen as an issue so divisive it would disassemble the republic, silence and obfuscation were employed to keep the subject at bay. Madison was the master of doubletalk. He seemed to support northerners’ belief that slavery was an evil that made a mockery of the Declaration of Independence, but Madison was only paying them lip service. He made sure that no action was taken and that even discussion of slavery was considered out of bounds. The Constitution itself was carefully crafted to make no direct mention of slavery. In spite of this it allowed each slave to count as 3/5ths of a person and denied the federal government any right to prevent the importation of slaves for twenty years. Northerners believed the emancipation of the slaves was inevitable thinking ultimately everyone would want to end such evil. But in the south, slavery was seen as an economic necessity and any argument or ambiguity was appropriate to keep it. Thus again a compromise, if only tacitly agreed to, was made to keep the union intact, but at what ultimate cost?

The fourth story is about George Washington’s Farewell Address. With his larger than life persona and reputation he was the one person who could cement the new republic together. But his desire to centralize authority smacked too much of monarchy for many who had just fought against it. With Washington retiring, the country was at risk of scattering into separate states. Not surprisingly then, Washington’s first point in his address was about the importance of national unity and the danger of single issue politics, a warning still relevant.

Washington sought to ensure peace with the Jay treaty aligning US interests with England. While beneficial territorially and economically to America, opponents felt the U.S. had succumbed to British power. Why had we fought the revolution just to give our freedom back? Jefferson was appalled. Jefferson was a Francophile even approving of the French Revolution. Jefferson took Robespierre, The Committee of Public Safety and heads rolling in the streets of Paris in stride. It was Jefferson who later used the phrase “entangling alliances” sometimes mistakenly attributed to Washington.

Jefferson had first turned against Washington when Washington raised a militia to quell the Whiskey Rebellion. Jefferson asked what right the federal government had to make these farmers pay a tax. Jefferson began denigrating Washington behind his back, questioning his judgement and whether senility was setting in. Washington was well aware of Jefferson’s attacks when he with Hamilton’s considerable help wrote the Farewell Address. Washington thus took care to produce a well thought out statement. Worried that future presidents might not be able to hold the country together, he proposed federal programs to strengthen the union: a national university, national military academy, larger navy and even agricultural subsidies. The underlying issue remains contentious to this day: Is the federal government the friend or foe, the problem or the solution.

Nothing better symbolizes the acrimonious political division of the country between supporters of weak government and those of strong, than the split between Jefferson and Adams. Their story is Ellis’s fifth. These friends and collaborators during the revolution became political enemies following Adams election as President. Adams reached out to include Jefferson in his administration, but Jefferson refused, perhaps more from political expediency than policy differences. Jefferson following Madison’s advice saw that any president following Washington was doomed to failure. All the differences Washington’s stature enabled him to keep at bay would now spill out into open hostility. Jefferson with the help of Madison took every opportunity to undermine Adams, spreading rumor and innuendo. Adams didn’t help himself signing the deeply unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts at the urging of his closest advisor, wife Abigail. Adams was also facing an arch enemy in his own party, Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to lead the New Army to take over America. Despite all this, Adams for the most part acted prudently and displaying great fortitude struck a peace treaty with France. Unfortunately, this came too late to help him in the 1800 election which he lost to Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson would not communicate with each other for another 12 years.

The sixth and final story is that of the Jefferson-Adams correspondence that marked the beginning of reconciliation 12 years later. It would continue for 13 years, written as much for posterity as for each other. Adams is more visceral presenting his view of a contingent world subject to chance, good fortune in the case of the revolution but uncertainty for the country’s future. Jefferson is eloquent depicting the young nation’s history as a natural flow of events leading to independence, freedom and a future of prosperity and hope. They worked through their differences with Adams spilling out his frustrations and Jefferson putting them in perspective. The one huge exception was the dispute that the nation had swept under the carpet - slavery. Even the blunt anti- slavery Adams did not bring this up with Jefferson. The smooth spoken slave owning Jefferson felt it a topic to be resolved by the next generation. Of all their disagreements the one they avoided is the one that would tear the republic apart. Incredibly, hundreds of miles apart, both died within hours of each other on the fiftieth anniversary of their signing of the Declaration of Independence. Two disparate spirits tightly intertwined.

Ellis takes us from a period when the nation was singular in purpose, when there were no political parties. Then underneath Washington’s unifying presidency, the first parties, the Federalists and Republicans, were forming. Each party became a vociferous advocate for its view of the proper role of government. As Jefferson wrote Adams, it was this way even before there was an America, “The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed all thro’ time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.” Today as Jefferson presciently saw, the same divisive politics are still the norm. Exceptionally gifted, thoughtful leaders like Washington, Adams and Jefferson are not.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in high school, trying to impress myself with how learned I could be. I really wasn't prepared for how much I enjoyed this book. I didn't think I was going to read more than a bit of it. Instead, I read it cover to cover and did it in less than two weeks. Which for a book about revolutionary war history is pretty unusual for me. This book deserves all the awards it got. It's impressively researched, fascinating, shows sides to these men that I never would have learned about otherwise. It read like a novel to me. Except it's true. Which is SO MUCH BETTER. If you have any interest at all in the time period or history in general, read it! I promise you won't be disappointed!

[David Eppenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellis doesn't write bad history and this effort is no exception. An effort that illuminates the real men that our founders were.

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
by Joseph J. Ellis

This is the second book of my reading of early American History. It is also the second Ellis book I have read and I have become a big fan. The first was American Dialogue which I have mentioned if previous reviews. He write an intellectual history that explains the ideas, policies and politics of the period. He states in the following quote an opinion of narrative histories that I agree with entirely.

The insight was precocious, anticipating as it did the distinction between history as experienced and history as remembered, most famously depicted in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. (The core insight — that all seamless historical narratives are latter-day constructions — lies at the center of all postmodern critiques of traditional historical explanations.) (Page 216)

It deals with a generation of Americans, “present at the creation”, that not only formed our government, but spawned a global movement that ended colonialism and toppled monarchical dynasties.

The book deals with some of the major issues of the times. It discusses Washington’s advice to avoid getting involved in European wars. It has a major discussion of the slavery issue that they cannot resolve. It describes all the sectional arguments regarding the debate including the first mention of “States Rights” by Jefferson.

The last chapter deals with the renewed friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They worked out their differences through correspondence over several years until their death. There is an interesting discussion between them of “natural and artificial Aristocracy”.

The writing can be very entertaining, even lyrical, as in the use of metaphors and symbolism in the following passage used to describe the mythology of the “Founding Fathers”.

A kind of electromagnetic field, therefore, surrounds this entire subject, manifesting itself as a golden haze or halo for the vast majority of contemporary Americans, or as a contaminated radioactive cloud for a smaller but quite vocal group of critics unhappy with what America has become or how we have gotten here. (Page 12).

I consider this an essential history of the period. Although the American Revolution won independence from Britain, the survival of the nation was not a sure thing. With the potential of other European countries trying to take the continent for themselves and the issue of slavery threatening to break apart the confederation, this group of politicians developed a republican government that succeeded and flourished to become the longest-lived republic in World History.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, illuminating, immensely readable. A must for any history buff interested in the American Revolutionary leaders with all their flaws and ideals. Ellis brings the people to life and peels back the layers, into the arguments, and compromises made to get the Republic jump-started. This gem sat for WAY TOO long on my bookshelf without reading. Bad on me!

[Alan Tomkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a masterpiece. A word to the wise, though: it is not "history light" or pop history written for the masses. This is a very intellectual work; it could reasonably be characterized as fairly heavy reading. It is primarily an examination of the founders and their political activities during the 1790s, though the final chapter tells the story of Jefferson's and Adams' resurrected friendship and unprecedented 14 year exchange of 158 letters, ending with them both dying within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This book won the Pulitzer Prize, and I can see why: the writing is precise and exquisite, the research impeccable, and the illumination of the founders' characters and comportments as revealing as the descriptions of their actions and professed beliefs. In reading this book, one comes to vividly comprehend that the course of our nation's history was not a foregone conclusion. The founders were making it up as they went along, and nothing seemed certain about how any of it would work out. Furthermore, they couldn't agree whether the constitutional federal government that had just been put into place was the fulfillment of the Revolution, or a treasonous betrayal of it. All the various sides were invoking the Spirit of '76 as justification for their views, while vilifying anyone who held opposing views. Most of all I was struck by how history was shaped by the personalities of a handful of hard driving individuals on the scene, and how easily everything could have turned out so very differently. This is history for thinkers. Be prepared to put your brain to work when you pick this book up, but believe me, it is worth it.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm late to the Ellis party. I've long had his name circled but this is the first time I've read one of his books. His style is so distinct that you'll only need one page to decide whether or not you're in, and my sense is that there's no middle ground—you'll either love it or hate it. I loved it.

His distinguishing feature is that he's verbose. He uses more words than he needs and takes the long way home in his arguments. But I found his word choice so vibrant and sentence structure so electric that I didn't find the extended journey a drag. I quite enjoyed meandering with him on unnecessarily long trails of thought.

As for substance, the book basically seeks to answer one simple question: How the heck did these guys pull this off? The American experiment had all odds against it and was completely unprecedented. There wasn't a road map for this sort of thing. How did they do it?

What makes answering that question so difficult is, as Ellis articulates, at least twofold. One is the bias of hindsight. History has stitched together a clean narrative of events when the reality of the time was anything but tidy.

The other is that the Founding Fathers were actors in the great drama of world history, and they knew it. They therefore actively tried to shape the narrative that would be embraced by posterity, not always recording events precisely as they occurred, but rather as they wanted them to be remembered.

In order to reach the true answer to the question then, you have to cut through the golden halo surrounding the American origin story, realizing it was cast by the men themselves and has been calcified by time.

That is Ellis's endeavor.

He also acknowledges that, really, it's an unanswerable question. Everyone will have their own opinions. But his framing of the issue is so compelling that it at least gives the reader the right lens through which to interpret the scenes for themselves.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis' Pulitzer Prize for History from 2001, is an amazing read. I remember learning about the American Revolutionary War in high school and finding it and most of American history pretty boring (I preferred European history class much more), and so until recently, I kind of avoided the subject in my reading. Well, I have come around on that opinion. In an effort to read about real presidents (in my disarray about Drumpf and a sort of delayed reaction to Dubya before that), I read Dallek's FDF biography and then Ellis' His Excellency about George Washington and now plan to read more presidential biographies. While not a biography per se, Founding Brothers is a fascinating look at several of the major players during the period immediately following George Washington's presidency (so between about 1795 to about 1805 roughly) built around several themes. This form of narration draws the readers in and makes them want to know more about these titanic actors on the world stage. Now, that sounds awfully pompous, but when you think about what they were doing in creating the world's first elected republic and the fact that it did not devolve as in all previous cases and sadly many, many future situations, into am autocracy (which is what many of us fear is happening now as I write).

The first story is about the fatal dual between economist and patriot Alexander Hamilton and one of his arch rivals Vice President Aaron Burr. Having read the Washington biography, I knew a little about how much Washington trusted Hamilton who was on hand during the military campaign and the two terms as president. I did not know how far out of normalcy he had gotten by 1804 in terms of extreme Federalist ideals and even creating (at considerable cost) a sort of private, but publicly funded, militia. Without going into the details (because that would spoil your enjoyment of the book), the chapter describes Hamilton's verbal and later literal physical duel with Burr which draws a sort of telling parallel to the ideas and principles that made up each of the actors in this drama.

The next chapter talks about a fateful dinner at Thomas Jefferson's house several years earlier where a major compromise was struck between the advocates of the federal government assuming the states' accumulated debt versus those that wanted the capital of the newly United States to be located on the Potomac River near George Washington's property at Mount Vernon. These issues on the surface appear unrelated, but Ellis does a great job explaining in fact how the issues of states rights on the Republican side (ominously including slavery) and the idea of a strong federal government (the Federalist side) were actually far more divisive and could easily have led to a major outbreak of hostilities between the northern and southern colonies at this critical start of the country. At stake also was the legacy of the omnipresent American hero and demigod, George Washington, who some felt was too monarchal despite his having voluntarily retired after the war and only reluctantly having become the first president.

There is a chapter about slavery that is extremely enlightening as well. There was an unspoken agreement to not talk about slavery lest, as I mentioned above, the situation degenerate into a civil war. There was even an agreement to put off any discussions of the slave trade in Congress until 1808. However, in 1798, some Quakers put forward motions about emancipation and nullification of slavery which were debated in the House before being suppressed and forgotten in the Senate. During these debates however, the spectre of white supremacy reared its ugly head quite publicly as South Carolina and Georgia expressed their fears of a dying white race due to miscegenation (yes, the same argument that Hitler used against Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and handicapped people to justify the Holocaust and the argument still used by the alt-right today to justify White Lives Matter and incidents such as Charlottesville in late 2017). The issues of payment for loss of property to slave owners (which would have been the equivalent of 10-20x the GNP at the time) and the relocation of the slaves (who constituted nearly 30-40% of the population of most of the slave-holding southern states) were too divisive for any sane debate to take place. The real tragedy here is that, since many of the Framers (Washington, Jefferson and Madison among others) were slave-holders themselves, the issue was muddled despite any moral compunctions that it might raise. The real missed opportunity here according to the author was having someone as revered and infallible as Washington not jumping in to take the moral high ground and abolish slavery forthwith. He could conceivably have done this just with the force of his personality (and he did in fact free his slaves...but posthumously), but he decided not to act. It is interesting to note that ALL of the actors knew that they were just postponing the eventual Civil War by refusing to debate it in the Senate.

The other chapters deal with the relationships between the various men and in particular, the last two chapters talk about the interesting and stormy relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. This was another massive reveal for me that makes me want to read more biographies to understand these men, their lives, and their impact on American history. There is also a lot here about the touchy issues of isolationism vs global trade that had major effects on history and were ever-changing as the French Revolution became the Directory and later the Empire and as England evolved from American enemy to American trading partner.

I think this is a deceptively thin book that actually requires lots of time to fully appreciate as it is stocked full of anecdotes and contextual information that really makes the Revolutionary Age stand out and feel real and relevant. I found it incredible that many of the issues that cleaved the nation in two and threatened to tear it asunder continue in today's USA particularly in the Drumpf era when, not unlike towards 1800 when the Federalists and Republicans could not stand to be in the same room together.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think giving this book five stars actually does a disservice to the author: It deserves 20! Joesph Ellis' work, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, is a wonderful narrative that immerses the reader in the minds of the founders of the United States of America, and explores the consequences of their actions (or inactions).

Ellis divides the book into six chapters, each revolving around a pivotal point in time, or around specific persons. People mentioned, specifically:
* George Washington,
* Alexander Hamilton,
* Aaron Burr,
* Thomas Jefferson,
* James Madison,
* Benjamin Franklin,
* John Adams, and
* Abigail Adams, his wife.

This book is more than an "autobiography" of the foundation of the country. Ellis dives into the relationships that these men, and woman, had with one another and explains, very well, why they were "Founding Brothers." It most certainly was a fraternity that built this country. Think about it, they put their names to a document that went right into the face of King George III, and that meant certain death had they lost the war with the British Empire.

I came away with the following insight after finishing the book:
* Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr both got what was coming to them.
* Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Munroe were vindictive curs. (Although Jefferson redeemed himself in 1812.)
* John Adams, and, more importantly, Abigail Adams, should be considered true American heroes. Especially Abigail; for all that she did for John, and the advancement of women.

I highly recommend this book to everybody--history buff or not.

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew I was gonna hate the reviews for "Founding Brothers" the moment I noticed its composite rating is, depressingly, less than four stars...

...Wait. Am I allowed to make fun of other reviewers on Goodreads? Will that get me banned?

I'll just say this: the word for a "nonsensical work" is "drivel," not "dribble." And "Founding Brothers" is not drivel. It's a beautifully written, smartly argued, and ACCESSIBLY succinct masterpiece (accessibly in caps because some Goodreaders seem to be under the impression that Ellis writes "purple prose" that's too full of "big words"... I dunno guys. He's writing about political disputes among aristocratic philosophers from the 18th century. What do you expect? Fucking "Frog and Toad are Friends"?). Its portraits of the "Revolutionary Generation" are human portraits, and Ellis resists the simplifying urges to make the Founders Gods (a la whatever story the right wing is telling you these days) or Monsters (a la whatever story the left wing is telling you these days). It's got me all fired up about American history again, and in October of 2016, that's a pretty weird feeling.

(To clarify, for you readers of the future out there: in October 2016, Trump wasn't yet president, so we still had a democracy to be excited about. And just what is this "democracy," you ask? Well, that's a long story. And you probably aren't allowed to hear it anyway, because your America is a totalitarian wasteland where any opinion other than "America is Great Again" will get you deported or killed.)

[Daniel Villines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Founding Brothers focuses on short episodes of history rather than the life of a single person or a prolonged event. This approach allows for the main characters consisting of Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson et. al. to enter and leave each story as scripted by history and leads to enhanced depictions of the interactions that these revolutionary figures had with each other. No single individual is the focus of the book, which makes the stories feel more complete as each one comes to its end.

At the same time, however, the approach or the writing did not bring the Founding Fathers any closer to being human in spite of the fact that the book’s title could be taken to imply the opposite. The key characters of the Revolution all tend to keep their politically deified personas. They moved through each story as the wise men in the Romanesque togas that are depicted on the murals inside the National Archives. Before reading Founding Brothers I was hoping for a more ‘brotherly’ look at the characters, meaning depictions that were closer to being human.

The stories did spark a desire for further reading. They brought to light John Adam’s pragmatic realism and emphasized Thomas Jefferson’s utopian dreams. All of the stories suggested a far more contentious political climate at the very start of the nation and illuminated parallels in today’s political climate. It was tempting, after reading Founding Brothers, to conclude that our present-day political conflicts will also pass into history, but the stories brought to light fundamental differences between today's political impasses and those faced at the birth of the nation. We may indeed be in the midst of our own demise as pondered by John Adams near the end of his years.

[Nanette Bulebosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellis is a great storyteller who has much to say about the men (and a few women, notably Abagail Adams) who formed our country. He focuses on six specific events that, he believes, crystallize and best exemplify the magnitude of the founding fathers' work and their dramatic legacy. Among his topics: the Burr-Hamilton duel, Washington's farewell address, the infamous "dinner" at Jefferson's house, Benjamin Franklin's poignant, end-of-life attempt to end the slave trade, John Adams' turbulent presidency (undermined at every turn by Madison and Jefferson), and the final reconciliation between Adams and Jefferson through correspondence.

The most moving chapter is the one on Benjamin Franklin. He attempted to cajole the Constitutional Congress into ending the slave trade, if not slavery altogether, through a satirical pamphlet he published just three weeks before he died. The southern states, of course, would have none of it. They threatened to secede from the union unless the northern states agreed to drop the issue for at least 20 years. The northern states consented, declaring that Congress did not have the right to infringe on any state's "property" rights. Most of the northerners felt uncomfortable with slavery but, in their view, keeping the union intact took precedence very everything else, even human bondage. It was a tragic missed opportunity and, as we all know, led to a horrific war 70 years later.

I came away from this book with enhanced respect for Franklin (what an incredible wit he had!) and Washington, and much less respect for Jefferson, who comes across as devious and something of a hypocrite.

[GoldGato · Rating 3 out of 5]

The men who created the United States have always amazed me. They could easily have gone the way of the French Revolution, but they didn't. Franklin, not Robespierre. Hamilton, not Danton. Perhaps this is why I have a tendency to collect books about these men, hoping I can always learn more about them.

The first founding declared American independence; the second, American nationhood.

The United States should have faltered in the 1790s, it's really amazing that it didn't. No money, squabbling among states, egos galore. Yet it survived because it had leaders. Flawed leaders, sure, but each one offset the next (something that seems to be missing today). Adams was New England with a bias for the old country. Jefferson was Virginia with a preference for France. Franklin was the calm while Hamilton was the fire. And Madison probably couldn't see over his desk. Their works endure.

My three star rating is because I had problems with some parts of the book. Sentences seemed to go on forever, which meant I had to re-read some paragraphs just to ensure I knew what was going on. Yet some chapters flowed nicely, so comme ci, comme ça. The book ends with the last years of Adams and Jefferson, who both died on the same day (4 July, 1826): the nation's birthday fifty years on. A good read overall and not a bad starting point for readers who want to focus on a few of the titans who took such giant steps.

Book Season = Spring (glorious relics)

[Dani · Rating 1 out of 5]

no

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While nothing "new" if you have any familiarity with the Founding Fathers, the analysis of their relationships proved surprisingly insightful. I genuinely enjoyed this one. In particular, I appreciated the author's rebuttal of the allegations that the founders stated "all men are created equal" but didn't know what that actually meant (since many still owned slaves) and the description of Jefferson and Adams's final letters. I was genuinely emotional by the time the book mentioned their deaths!
While not the most engaging book in the world, it is worth a read if you like revolutionary war history.

[Quo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis represents a masterful, insightful account of 6 pivotal moments or episodes in early American History. What seemed most compelling was the author's manner of contrasting the personalities & resultant philosophies of the key figures. I began a rereading of Founding Brothers quite unintentionally, wanting to check the segment on the Hamilton vs. Burr duel just after reading Gore Vidal's novel Burr, ending up reading the Ellis book a 2nd time.



The book begins with a brief look at the origins of the former American colonies, an overview of the "revolutionary generation", a term that Ellis contends began as an epithet, made in reference to "an inferior, provincial creature." Meanwhile, the word Democrat was initially a reference to "someone who panders to the crude & mindless whims of the masses".

Early on, coverage of "The Duel" analyzes what Ellis considers "a momentary breakdown in the dominant pattern of nonviolent conflict within the American revolutionary generation." Burr is reckoned to have been a genius at positioning himself amidst competing factions, at the disposal of whoever needed his services the most, a quality that sounds quite familiar even today. The author contends that at the point of the duel, neither Hamilton nor Burr had much of a political future, two legendary American figures acting out a desperate scenario neither was really committed to.

The section titled "The Dinner", portrays Thomas Jefferson brokering amity between Hamilton & Madison, who co-authored the Federalist Papers with John Jay having played a considerably lesser role. Madison is seen as exceedingly subtle & having "an intellectually sophisticated comprehension of the choices facing the new American republic of any member of the revolutionary generation." Hamilton is pitted as a Horatio Alger hero who aspired to fame but not necessarily to fortune. The dominant issue separating and defining many of this generation was how each sided with the issue of agrarian vs. commercial sources of wealth and whether to give sway to a relatively powerless vs. a more potent federal government, this at a time when the newly created government was so very vulnerable.



"The Silence" covers the attempt in 1790 to resolve the issue of slavery, with Ben Franklin's last words having urged this but James Madison fearing disunity at this early stage of America's development convinces his colleagues to leave slavery in place--perhaps forever, or so it seemed. Jefferson meanwhile sketched out a plan whereby all slaves born after 1800 would eventually be freed & proposed a bill in congress that would prohibit slavery in all of the western states, a bill that failed to pass by a single vote.

From the beginning, any clear resolution of the slavery question one way or the other rendered ratification of the constitution virtually impossible. For this reason, Ellis contends that the stalemate over the issue of slavery fostered an unwillingness to meet the problem head-on, or a "prudent exercise in ambiguity". Any serious debate involved "the political potential to destroy the union." In spite of that, Madison more than most understood that slavery violated the promise of the American Revolution.

The author juxtaposes the figure of Washington with Jefferson, suggesting that the former was "a rock-ribbed realist who instinctively mistrusted visionary schemes that floated seductively in men's minds, unmoored to palpable realities." And later, he comments that "Washington's realism was rooted in his commitment to control, over himself & all events with the power to determine his fate." America's first president is contrasted with Jefferson for whom ideals constituted the supreme reality. And here is just one sample of the manner in which Ellis compares & contrasts two key members of America's revolutionary generation:

The heroic portraits of all of the great men were romanticized distortions. Franklin for example was a superb scientist & masterful prose stylist but a vacuous political thinker & a diplomatic fraud who spent the bulk of his time in Paris flirting with younger women of the salon set. Washington was an indisputable American patriarch, but more an actor than a leader, brilliant in striking poses in an almost Shakespearean fashion but was also poorly read, seldom wrote his own speeches & apparently had little sense of grammar or syntax.

One of the many areas of coverage that I found worth the rereading of this book was the eventual reconciliation between Adams & Jefferson, with Adams making the decisive move but with Benjamin Rush also playing an important role, declaring to Adams that "I consider you & him the North and South Poles of the American Revolution". Ellis declares that Jefferson seemed to think that once unmoored from the British the American ship would sail freely into a proverbial sunset, while Adams thought the new nation required a "fully empowered federal government on the Federalist model." Almost wonderfully, Founding Brothers ends on a most upbeat note with the reconciliation of these two giants of the revolutionary generation.

There is no small measure of criticism of Prof. Ellis for his use of what some at this site consider overly elaborate vocabulary in relating the 6 segments in Founding Brothers but I did not find this to be the case. Neither did I sense that Ellis was speaking as a professor to students or as a professor to other professors. Rather, having read Founding Brothers twice, I find the audience for this & the 2 other books I've read by Joseph Ellis to be very broadly-based & likely of special interest to anyone keen to learn more about the cast of characters who served to set the direction for American History during the revolutionary phase & just after.

I've also been fortunate to hear Ellis speak locally & enjoyed his meticulous but hardly pedantic approach to American History. The author does however occasionally employ words that were common at the time of the American Revolution but are uncommon today, an example being the word manumission rather than emancipation.

The first photo image within my review is of the author, Joseph Ellis; the second image, (left to right) is of Hamilton, Jefferson & Madison.

[Rosalyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first reading experience with Ellis was The Quartet, which quickly became one of my favorite books of all time. I was eager to start on this one, however, the intent of this book is quite different, so it took some time getting used to. I'm a bit simple, I like my history told chronologically, LOL.

Ellis states in the preface that this book is not a chronological telling of a certain time but rather his analysis on it based on vignettes of key issues, relationships, events that reveal the passion, struggle and the main point, fragility of our fledgling nation and the ideals or expectations we bound ourselves too. While the Founding Fathers were knowingly mythologizing themselves, painting the success of "the cause" as a moral certainty, Ellis aims to demythologize them, revealing their doubts, fears and fierce, sincere attempts to reconcile competing values. The battle for nationhood was easy, but the effort towards national unity continues to this day.

It takes special skill to be concise yet eloquent, and relate the past to the future, and Ellis has made it his signature writing style (this book is only 248 pgs!). I only dock a star because his intent with this book is too broad, he really could've picked any person or event to highlight, and the opening chapter, which featured Burr and Hamilton's duel, was a bit weak in its analysis, or how it related to Ellis's thesis, like he was trying to make it fit. It was dramatic, yes, but his conclusion on it being "honor above all"...eh. The strongest chapters are the two at the end, which explained the two main camps of thinking through their main champions, the titans, Adams and Jefferson.

Ellis is the perfect author for the general reader, without dumbing down, he distills the information and strengthens with his interpretation. I see many rereads of this in my future.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

As it is in most families, siblings can be very different both in physical characteristics as well as personality traits. It was no different for these founding “brothers”. After independence was gained in 1776, Ellis shares with us the good, the bad and the ugly of these seven men and how they personally thought the republic should be carried out based on their ideas of the constitution, what our independence meant and their own personal convictions and goals. As Ellis points out, these guys knew they were making history and everything we see today was intentionally shared for posterity. At times, they seemed like egotistical, cry babies. Even George Washington felt he had to justify himself in his farewell address. This is a interesting read and I do appreciate history more now than I did 25 years ago in high school. Ellis does an excellent job breaking down a decade of history for a non-historian like myself to enjoy and understand.

[Julianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a lover of all things historical and a casual reader of history books, I thought that Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation was very informative and educational. I learned many things about America's founding fathers and the revolutionary period of history that I didn't previously know. The book is laid out in six separate vignettes, each following a crucial event in that era of history: the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton; a private deal that was made between Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson on the location of the new capitol in exchange for passage of Hamilton's finance plan; the silence of the founding fathers on the issue of slavery; George Washington's farewell to public service; the sometimes contentious collaboration between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the years following Washington's presidency; and the renewal of Adams and Jefferson's friendship in their waning years. The book is also something of a character sketch of each of these key players in America's history.

The thing I enjoyed most about Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, were all the little facts and anecdotes I was able to glean from the text. Things like the loving, devoted marriage that John and Abigail Adams shared, in which he seemed to view her as his equal and value her political counsel above all others. Joseph Ellis has compiled a volume of John and Abigail's letters to each other which I think might make for interesting follow-up reading. Another fascinating little tidbit I learned was that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1826). Also, as someone who is intrigued by forensic science, I found the forensic-style analysis of the Burr/Hamilton duel to be very engaging. It's all the little things that always help to bring history alive for me, and many small details like these were woven in with lots of scholarly prose to make a strong narrative that would, in my opinion, be useful to anyone looking to learn more about American history. I would warn the casual reader though, that the academic nature of the book does not make for light reading, but neither is it so complex as to be completely inaccessible to the general reader. While I didn't find it to be entirely dull and boring, it did have a slow pace that failed to fully spark my interest and hold my attention. It actually took me quite a while to finish the book, but I'm glad that I did. I was not at all surprised to find that this book was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for history.

[Lowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful book... save for one item that bothers me so much I give it a 3-star review instead of 4. Joseph J. Ellis tries to convince us that these great men were "posing" for history; that they knew the historic significance of everything they did, and wanted to set a standard for generations to follow.

I respectfully disagree, and prefer David McCullough's approach to history. Speaking at Brigham Young Univeristy in 2005, McCullough said:

"[N]obody ever lived in the past. Jefferson, Adams, George Washington—they didn’t walk around saying, “Isn’t this fascinating living in the past? Aren’t we picturesque in our funny clothes?” They were living in the present, just as we do. The great difference is that it was their present, not ours. And just as we don’t know how things are going to turn out, they didn’t either."

I propose that what we now call the "posing" and "posturing" of great men three centuries ago was more an effort to refine themselves and be the highest quality men they could be, as opposed to being so worried about history would record them. The drive to continually improve oneself isn't as popular an idea in our current world - and may never be popular again. I wish Joseph Ellis represented this as an essential trait in the Art of Manliness, rather than saying they were constantly looking into the generations ahead, wanting to be considered as giants. Their magnitude came from efforts to improve their person; not from worrying about the future generations.

[Jodie Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was told to read this for my APUSH class. Would I read it again? I think I would rather pay someone my life savings to flay me alive and drop sulfuric acid all over my exposed muscle tissue with an eyedropper until my bones were exposed and then take a knife and whittle my facial features to match the exact bone structure of Alexander Hamilton, as was so wonderfully described by Joseph Ellis, than ever suffer through this dull garbage again.

This book is written like a fourteen-year-old trying to win an argument in a youtube comment section with thesaurus.com open in the other tab so he can try to sound smart. The entire point of this book was SUPPOSED to be to share the founding fathers’ stories so we could see them as people, not just figures in a history textbook. He completely and utterly fails at this. His writing is dry, dull, and convoluted to the point where half the time I would be halfway down a page before realizing he was just repeating the same point over and over worded slightly differently so we could get a full taste of his delightful vocabulary.

This book hides behind a pretense of “sharing the founding fathers’ stories”, but that’s not what it’s about at all. This is Joseph Ellis’s personal showcase, and he wastes no time in reminding you every time you have to read his rambling, over-written sentences.

Overall, a solid 0/10, this book made me question if this world is really real at all, or just a figment of my darkest nightmares.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Founding Brothers is a deep look at the men who gave the United States its foundation. This book is a Pulitzer Prize winner, but I had trouble enjoying the stories it told. It is such a indepth look at this era that I felt I could only handle small chunks at a time. This would be a great read for someone who has a wealth of prior knowledge about this time in history and wants a closer look at the characters who played a role in our government.

[Donald Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent review of some of our earliest leaders. Great information your standard history book does not reveal. Ellis is a great writer and brings his characters to life in a vibrant and informative style.