By Joseph Ellis
Prof Ellis has published a number of books about our nation's founders. Here, in his latest book, he summarizes much of his considerable research in the form of abbreviated biographies of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and George Washington, highlighting their most important contributions to the formation of the new nation. After each section, he applies the political thinking of each founder to the current political situation in the United States.
Thomas Jefferson idealistically posited that all men are created equal. Strangely (to our way of thinking) he did not include slaves in that equation and, while he did feel blacks should be free, he did not envision a multiracial America that included black Americans, and that they should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture". Nevertheless, Jefferson still assumed social and economic equality would be the natural order of American life, even as the nation expanded. Ellis holds that the ongoing battle for racial equality remains the longest, most challenging struggle in American history.
John Adams, more the realist and pessimist, saw no way to prevent the consolidation of wealth and power by American oligarchs. "In every society known to man an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time...", wrote Adams. He felt it was naive to assume that American society would be immune to the class divisions so prevalent in Europe. History has proven Adams right. Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian society was over long before the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Looking back from the present day, while the US experienced several decades of relative equality following the reforms of the New Deal, Ellis asserts that we are in the midst of our second Gilded Age, "which replicates both the plutocratic politics and the high level of economic inequality of the first...the values of capitalism take precedence over the values of democracy and trump the right to pursue happiness for all but the favored few." (p 105) The brief "Golden Age" in the mid-20th century, when a large middle class could realize the American dream, was in fact a blip largely dependent upon government policies enacted during national crises, then continued by both parties into the 1950s and 60s. FDR had felt the federal government was responsible for enforcing a social contract, Ellis notes, in which the right to pursue happiness included the right to a job. Today, "something is not only missing but terribly wrong when these voices [representing the poor and jobless] are absent from our national conversation." (p 115)
James Madison is credited as the founder most responsible for creating our US constitution. He was the only participant at the Continental Congress who showed up with a plan, which turned out to be not a rewrite of the Articles of Confederation but a whole new document for a new nation - not just a confederacy. He endorsed a "Living Constitution" which would allow future Americans to interpret its meaning for evolving standards of justice. Brown v Board of Education (desegregation, giving black students the right to equal education) is one such example.
It fell on George Washington to lead this new nation, to force a group of state-based members of a confederation to act collectively, laying the foundation for a new nation. "It could never have happened without the guiding presence of a single figure whose transcendent stature was so acknowledged that the awkward contradiction the new republic was living became, instead, a lovely paradox." Washington set the stage for the new nation's foreign policy for over a century, and it was basically one of isolationism. With the North American continent isolated by two oceans, this policy was sustainable. By the turn of the 20th century, however, isolationism became less tenable and brought the US into a number of international wars, with the result that American power and resources turned it into the world's superpower. Ellis asserts that the govt failed, however, to develop a comprehensive strategy for American policy once the cold war ended in the late 20th century. Today, the US carries out its foreign policy mostly by wars, devoting most of its budget to the military and only a tiny fraction (16-to-1 ratio) to diplomacy.
George Washington had recognized that the American experience was exceptional in that the republican values and institutions created during the American Revolution were not likely transferable to other countries lacking the political, demographic, and geographic advantages of the United States. Unlike Jefferson, he cautioned subsequent American statesmen who sought to bring democratic principles to faraway places in Asia and the Middle East. Adams concurred with Washington, and his decision to avoid a war with France in 1800 probably cost him a 2nd term. John Qunicy Adams once put it, "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
Ellis concludes (in this section, p 216):
He adds later (p 221): "There are two Americas out there, one connected to the global economy, the older marooned in interior islands of joblessness, despair, and addiction. There is no question which one owns the future."
Throughout his narrative, Ellis refers to the fate of Native Americans (whose welfare greatly concerned Washington, and for whom he tried, unsuccessfully, to create a separate nation, carved from parts of present day Georgia and Alabama) and slaves. He considers slavery the signature sin of the founding. During the nation's founding, the moral effort to end slavery competed with the political effort to win independence from Great Britain, and both efforts required the cooperation of the slaveholding states. Many of the founders owned slaves, and even they, for the most part, were for abolishing the practice, but they failed to enact laws preventing slavery, e.g., in new states to be admitted to the union - and the result would be a war that divided the nation.
"The range of political creativity surrounding Washington, chiefly Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton, has no serious competitor as a gallery of greats" (p 223) and, while the founders differed in many respects, they also respected the other's view and considered it in shaping their own understanding. Ellis's book is dense with history and applications; no wonder it was among the 100 most important books of 2018 (NY Times). I thank God for these wise founders who provided the insight and accepted the input of other wise men in setting up the principles and laws by which our country is/should be governed.
PS. Ellis notes that, while the writing of the constitution was largely relegated to Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the editorial task was assigned to a representative from PA named Gouverneur Morris [one of my personal heroes!] who made revisions to the document over 4 days in September. "The finish given to his style and arrangement of the Constitution fairly belongs to his pen," Madison later said, "and a better choice could not have been made, as the performance of the task proved." During the convention, Morris rose to speak more than any other delegates and was one of the harshest critics of slavery as a cancer that must be removed before it spread. If you ever wondered who coined the phrase "We the people of the United States..." look no farther than the tall-peg-legged, witty Morris.
Prof Ellis has published a number of books about our nation's founders. Here, in his latest book, he summarizes much of his considerable research in the form of abbreviated biographies of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and George Washington, highlighting their most important contributions to the formation of the new nation. After each section, he applies the political thinking of each founder to the current political situation in the United States.
Thomas Jefferson idealistically posited that all men are created equal. Strangely (to our way of thinking) he did not include slaves in that equation and, while he did feel blacks should be free, he did not envision a multiracial America that included black Americans, and that they should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture". Nevertheless, Jefferson still assumed social and economic equality would be the natural order of American life, even as the nation expanded. Ellis holds that the ongoing battle for racial equality remains the longest, most challenging struggle in American history.
John Adams, more the realist and pessimist, saw no way to prevent the consolidation of wealth and power by American oligarchs. "In every society known to man an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time...", wrote Adams. He felt it was naive to assume that American society would be immune to the class divisions so prevalent in Europe. History has proven Adams right. Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian society was over long before the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Looking back from the present day, while the US experienced several decades of relative equality following the reforms of the New Deal, Ellis asserts that we are in the midst of our second Gilded Age, "which replicates both the plutocratic politics and the high level of economic inequality of the first...the values of capitalism take precedence over the values of democracy and trump the right to pursue happiness for all but the favored few." (p 105) The brief "Golden Age" in the mid-20th century, when a large middle class could realize the American dream, was in fact a blip largely dependent upon government policies enacted during national crises, then continued by both parties into the 1950s and 60s. FDR had felt the federal government was responsible for enforcing a social contract, Ellis notes, in which the right to pursue happiness included the right to a job. Today, "something is not only missing but terribly wrong when these voices [representing the poor and jobless] are absent from our national conversation." (p 115)
James Madison is credited as the founder most responsible for creating our US constitution. He was the only participant at the Continental Congress who showed up with a plan, which turned out to be not a rewrite of the Articles of Confederation but a whole new document for a new nation - not just a confederacy. He endorsed a "Living Constitution" which would allow future Americans to interpret its meaning for evolving standards of justice. Brown v Board of Education (desegregation, giving black students the right to equal education) is one such example.
It fell on George Washington to lead this new nation, to force a group of state-based members of a confederation to act collectively, laying the foundation for a new nation. "It could never have happened without the guiding presence of a single figure whose transcendent stature was so acknowledged that the awkward contradiction the new republic was living became, instead, a lovely paradox." Washington set the stage for the new nation's foreign policy for over a century, and it was basically one of isolationism. With the North American continent isolated by two oceans, this policy was sustainable. By the turn of the 20th century, however, isolationism became less tenable and brought the US into a number of international wars, with the result that American power and resources turned it into the world's superpower. Ellis asserts that the govt failed, however, to develop a comprehensive strategy for American policy once the cold war ended in the late 20th century. Today, the US carries out its foreign policy mostly by wars, devoting most of its budget to the military and only a tiny fraction (16-to-1 ratio) to diplomacy.
George Washington had recognized that the American experience was exceptional in that the republican values and institutions created during the American Revolution were not likely transferable to other countries lacking the political, demographic, and geographic advantages of the United States. Unlike Jefferson, he cautioned subsequent American statesmen who sought to bring democratic principles to faraway places in Asia and the Middle East. Adams concurred with Washington, and his decision to avoid a war with France in 1800 probably cost him a 2nd term. John Qunicy Adams once put it, "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
Ellis concludes (in this section, p 216):
These voices from the past speak from different contexts with distinctive political accents, but they constitute a chorus in sounding three clear notes. First, the US has committed the predictable mistakes of a novice superpower most rooted in overconfidence bordering on arrogance; second, wars have become routinized because foreign policy has become militarized at the same time as the middle class has been immunized from military service; and third, the credal conviction that American values are transplantable to all regions of the world is highly suspect and likely to draw the US into nation-building projects beyond its will or capacity to complete. If we ever have a sustained conversation about America's role in the world, in effect the conversation we did not have at the end of the Cold War, these three lessons learned over the last quarter century should be placed on the table at the start.
He adds later (p 221): "There are two Americas out there, one connected to the global economy, the older marooned in interior islands of joblessness, despair, and addiction. There is no question which one owns the future."
Throughout his narrative, Ellis refers to the fate of Native Americans (whose welfare greatly concerned Washington, and for whom he tried, unsuccessfully, to create a separate nation, carved from parts of present day Georgia and Alabama) and slaves. He considers slavery the signature sin of the founding. During the nation's founding, the moral effort to end slavery competed with the political effort to win independence from Great Britain, and both efforts required the cooperation of the slaveholding states. Many of the founders owned slaves, and even they, for the most part, were for abolishing the practice, but they failed to enact laws preventing slavery, e.g., in new states to be admitted to the union - and the result would be a war that divided the nation.
"The range of political creativity surrounding Washington, chiefly Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton, has no serious competitor as a gallery of greats" (p 223) and, while the founders differed in many respects, they also respected the other's view and considered it in shaping their own understanding. Ellis's book is dense with history and applications; no wonder it was among the 100 most important books of 2018 (NY Times). I thank God for these wise founders who provided the insight and accepted the input of other wise men in setting up the principles and laws by which our country is/should be governed.
PS. Ellis notes that, while the writing of the constitution was largely relegated to Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the editorial task was assigned to a representative from PA named Gouverneur Morris [one of my personal heroes!] who made revisions to the document over 4 days in September. "The finish given to his style and arrangement of the Constitution fairly belongs to his pen," Madison later said, "and a better choice could not have been made, as the performance of the task proved." During the convention, Morris rose to speak more than any other delegates and was one of the harshest critics of slavery as a cancer that must be removed before it spread. If you ever wondered who coined the phrase "We the people of the United States..." look no farther than the tall-peg-legged, witty Morris.
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