At the close of the Revolutionary War
Americans tended to view themselves as citizens of sovereign states
that were organized into a loose cooperative, not as citizens of a
new nation composed of united states. That understanding was codified
into the Articles of Confederation. Any hint of a united nation
was anathema to the colonists-turned-revolutionaries: that sort of
unity smelled like the monarchy they’d just spent precious blood
and treasure to escape. Nationhood was the farthest thing from their
mind, something viewed with suspicion, not favor.
It was the prescient knowledge of the
“quartet,” the four uniquely talented patriots of whom Ellis
writes that foresaw coming disaster if the thirteen states failed to
unite firmly into a national government worthy of the name. The
Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was called by the Confederation
Congress to correct the deficiencies of the Articles that had by this
time become glaringly obvious. These four men, with the help of
several others, hijacked the Convention and wrote a wholly new
constitution. Their action—which went far beyond the commission
granted by Congress—was technically illegal and constituted a
second American revolution.
This is the thesis of Joseph Ellis’s
remarkable book, and using primary sources he builds an airtight case
for it. Heavily documented but so engagingly written it reads like a
novel, the book traces the upbringing and early careers of the
quartet: George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James
Madison. Ellis manages to explain—very believably, I might add—how
their backgrounds influenced these four to think and act as they did.
The author points out the flaws in the Articles of Confederation, but
also explains the political temperature of the populace so we can
understand why the Articles came to have such short-comings. Ellis
does a great job tracing the sometimes secretive and circuitous means
by which three of the four principals managed to put together a
convention that would take the radical step of replacing rather than
revising the Articles. Along the way they also faced the difficult
task of convincing the fourth, George Washington, to throw his
considerable political clout behind the effort.
Ellis treats us to the best of the
debates and behind-the-scenes maneuvering as the Convention squabbles
its way through the creation of a blueprint for a strong federal
government capable of administering the massive continent of North
America, while leaving a great deal of sovereignty in the hands of
the states.
Having recently read The Federalist
Papers, this book greatly added to my understanding of the
crucial moments and movements of that important post-war period. In
closing I should also say that Ellis boldly resists the modern error
infecting much contemporary historiography. He refuses to judge the
Founding Fathers by the canon of contemporary post-modern “correct”
behavior. Ellis evaluates them by their own times and morals and
avoids the trap of turning the Founders into either semi-divine
saints or slave-holding devils. He has a refreshing objectivity and
offers the reader a much more accurate account of late
eighteenth-century America than will the politically-correct pieties
of many modern historians. I highly recommend this book.