''Unless the principles of the federal government were properly But he could not be sure the people were up to the task. To work out for themselves a new social and political order for the benefit of man. The one hand, they had won their independence, which offered them ''enlarged prospects of happiness'' almost beyond ''the power of description,'' together with an opportunity In the last of the ''General Orders'' Washington issued to his troops, he acknowledged the uncertain future Americans faced. Root.'' To be sure, their mettle was put to a mighty test. Their stature, Ellis prefers ''brothers'' to ''fathers'' as the less adoring term but unlike Strachey, a true iconoclast, he never veers toward caricature.Īs Ellis sees it, the founding brethren not only ''created the American republic'' but ''held it together throughout the volatile and vulnerable early years by sustaining their presence until national habits and customs took His object (after the manner of Lytton Strachey's ''Eminent Victorians'') is to include only what is significant, and to untwist the raveled strands of rumor woven about their lives. Ellis, a leading scholar of the period, gives us succinct and telling portraits of each of them by taking a close look at six critical episodes in the interrelated story of their lives. Burr was the least of them, and in a pantheon of such exalted character Abigail Adams (the one undoubted ''sister'' of the group) may fairly take his place. These men included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James To view him as the foremost member of a remarkable fraternity that collectively determined the nation's early course. But once Washington is allowed to descend a step or two from his acknowledged heights, it is possible He paternity of America has never been in doubt. Michiko Kakutani Reviews 'Founding Brothers' (Nov.Ellis portrays the select fraternity that founded our nation.
0 kommentar(er)
