F. Federal America (1783–1815)

3273. Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. The Burr conspiracy. New York, Oxford University Press, 1954. 301 p. 54–6907 E334.A6

Bibliography: p. 276–284.

Set against the background of the period of unrest following the formation of the Union is this detailed account of a conspiracy hatched by the pretentious ambition of Aaron Burr (1756–1836), Revolutionary soldier, lawyer, United States Senator, and third Vice President of the United States. Burr envisioned himself as being at the head of an empire vaster than that which he had lost by a single vote in 1801. From 1804 Burr’s major objective was the separation of the Western States from the Union, with New Orleans as the capital and the Alleghenies as the eastern boundary of the new political unit. Also involved were filibustering expeditions into the Floridas and Mexico, and the settlement of the Bastrop lands. Ever an opportunist, Burr presented to anyone who would listen to his scheme only such portions of it as would appeal to him as a prospective conspirator. The success of the conspiracy, which, Professor Abernethy asserts, next to the Confederate War "posed the greatest threat of dismemberment which the American Union has ever faced," depended upon disaffection in the West, the intrigues of certain Eastern Federalists, the adherence of various land speculators, soldiers of fortune, and office seekers, a war between the United States and Spain, and help from Great Britain. The basic patriotism and common sense of the frontiersmen, along with the defection of Burr’s fellow conspirator, James Wilkinson, doomed Burr’s plot, which ended in the farcical treason trial of 1807 at Richmond.

3274. Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the administration of Thomas Jefferson. With introd. by Henry Steele Commager. New York, A. & C. Boni, 1930. 2 v. maps. ([His History of the United States of America, v. 1–2]) 30–10226 E302.1.A24, v. 1–2

CONTENTS.—1. 1801–1805.—2. 1805-1809.

3275. Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the administration of James Madison. New York, A. & C. Boni, 1930. 2 v. ([His History of the United States of America, v. 3–4]) 30–10227 E302.1.A24, v. 3–4

CONTENTS.—3. 1809–1813.—4. 1813–1817.

Adams (1838–1918), who is also discussed under Literature (nos. 688–700) and in the preceding section on Historiography (no. 3055), was in 1870 more or less drafted by Harvard College to teach medieval history, of which he knew nothing. During the academic year of 1874–75 Professor Adams added a course in American history, and found the periods in which his own grandfather and great-grandfather were major figures so absorbing that after two more terms he abandoned pedagogy for historical research and writing. The first fruit of his new interest was his edition of Documents Relating to New-England Federalism, 1800–1815 (Boston, Little, Brown, 1877. 437 p.). He had already begun searching and procuring transcriptions from national archives, and his History of the United States was evidently conceived by this time. It was, however, delayed, first by Adams’ concentrated work on the Gallatin papers begun in 1877 (see no. 3311) and by the shattering effect upon him of his wife’s breakdown and suicide in 1885. Pulling himself together after a long trip to Japan, he worked intensively at the History, which was published, in three installments amounting to nine volumes, during 1889–91. A completely individual work in outlook, style, and organization, it has fascinated three generations of students. The famous first six chapters, which survey the state of American society in 1800, were doubtless inspired by the equally famous third chapter of Macaulay’s History of England; the concluding four chapters, which view the social changes of the intervening 16 years in a balancing assessment and an agnostic temper, had no such model. The detailed narrative which intervenes is largely concerned with political, diplomatic, and military events; but those who complain of its deficiency in economic matters overlook the author’s special competence in the realm of finance. The chapters on foreign relations are written on a genuinely international level, for Adams had thoroughly familiarized himself withNapoleonic Europe. His sympathies, it has been pointed out, lie with the Northern Democrats; the Southern wing is ironically treated, while the Federalists are castigated. The essence of the History may be said to lie in its contrasting of the requirements of American nationhood with Jefferson’s ideal of weak government, and in underlining the confusion to which the latter inevitably worked out in practice. "Already in 1817 the difference between Europe and America was decided." "American character was formed, if not fixed," but circumstances and not national policy had brought about this result.

3276. Adams, John. Works. With a life of the author, notes, and illus., by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams. Boston, Little, Brown, 1850–56 [v. 1, 1856] 10 v. 8–19755 E302. A26

3277. Adams, John. Familiar letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution. With a memoir of Mrs. Adams. By Charles Francis Adams. New York, Hurd & Houghton, 1876. xxxii, 424 p. 4–16982 E322.A518

3278. Chinard, Gilbert. Honest John Adams. Boston, Little, Brown, 1933. 359 p. illus. 33–32200 E322.C47

3279. Haraszti, Zoltán. John Adams & the prophets of progress. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1952. 362 p. facsims. 52–5030 E322.H3

Born on a Braintree, Massachusetts, farm, John Adams (1735–1826), after attending Harvard and casting aside aspirations to a career in the Christian ministry, served for a short while as a Worcester schoolmaster, and then turned to the practice of the law. Despite his social conservatism and his avoidance of any step which would tend to compromise his position as a legal practitioner, Adams became a leader of the Patriots and was sent to Philadelphia as a member of Massachusetts’ delegation to the First Continental Congress. In the Second he soon became a wheelhorse of the Revolution, which took him out of his provincial surroundings and made him a national figure. Before retiring from public life in 1801, Adams served as a diplomatic representative of the United States in Paris, The Hague, and London, and then as first Vice-President and second President of the new Nation. In Honest John Adams, Dr. Chinard focuses his attention not on Adams’ politics, but on the personality and beliefs of the self-made New England aristocrat, John Adams. Adams’ defense of Captain Preston following the Boston Massacre was inspired by his fear of ochlocracy, but he was no less critical of rule by the few. He eventually incurred the enmity of both the radicals and their antagonists, and was eliminated from active politics. The author regards Adams as "themost realistic statesman of his age." A recent penetrating study is Stephen Kurtz’ The Presidency of John Adams; the Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957.448 p.). The author does not view the Adams administration as the kind of negative hiatus which it is usually made to appear. He concludes that Jefferson’s elevation to the Presidency "promised that political liberty might be assured of a healthy environment within which to grow, but it did not end the threat to liberty in America of that era. John Adams must be credited with having destroyed the instrument of repression and the influence of its champions [the Provisional Army and the Hamiltonian Federalists] months before the election took place. His struggle for independence in 1799 and 1800 was no less significant or remarkable than that in which he had taken a leading part during 1775 and 1776. In a very real sense, Adams’ bold conduct allowed Jefferson to say with plausibility, ’We are all republicans—we are all federalists.’" John Adams’ library, originally presented to the town of Quincy, has been deposited in the Boston Public Library since 1893. More than a hundred of its volumes contain Adams’ marginal notes, and these marginalia are the main substance of Mr. Haraszti’s John Adams & the Prophets of Progress. Excerpts from the texts upon which Adams commented are so arranged as to render the whole a running dialogue between him and the individual authors. The product is a rebuttal of the philosophes and a review of the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Mr. Haraszti has added accounts of the works upon which Adams commented, and upon their authors, ranging from Bolingbroke to Condorcet. In addition, there are chapters on Adams as a book collector and as a political theorist. In conclusion the author calls for a more general acceptance of Adams as a great political thinker. A new edition of the Adams papers is in prospect, but the standard one remains The Works of John Adams in ten volumes, edited by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, over a century ago. Included in it are Adams’ diary, sections of his autobiography, his longer essays, official papers, and personal letters. An indispensable supplement is the same editor’s Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution, a rich commentary on family and Revolutionary affairs. There are some recent abridgments: George A. Peek’s convenient edition, The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1954. 223 p.),reprints the more cogent portions of Adams’ rather diffuse theoretical writings on politics, with an introductory essay emphasizing his basic conservatism. The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, edited by Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York, Knopf, 1946. xxix, 413, xxix p.), are taken from diaries, autobiographies, public papers, and letters; many of the selections are prefaced by notes explaining their contents and the circumstances which produced them, and there is an introductory biographical essay.

3280. Baldwin, Leland D. Whiskey rebels; the story of a frontier uprising. Decorations by Ward Hunter. [Pittsburgh] University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939. 326 p. 39–11763 E315.B52

"This book is one of a series relating western Pennsylvania history, written under the direction of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Survey sponsored jointly by the Buhl Foundation, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh."

Bibliography: p. [303]–316.

Taxes on alcoholic beverages have been a regular resort of American public finance, but the excise act which Hamilton induced the Congress to pass in 1791 bore with uncommon hardship upon the small farmers of western Pennsylvania. They had no marketable commodity save the product of their own small stills, and their differences with the local collectors of excise could be settled only by judicial process in the Federal court at distant Philadelphia. Three years of strenuous agitation succeeded in producing a relaxation of the latter rule, but last-minute prosecutions under the old rule touched off a crisis and some violence at midsummer of 1794. Hugh H. Brackenridge and Albert Gallatin succeeded in persuading the potential rebels to disperse and adopt peaceful means. While there was no rebellion, there was also little submission, and the President mobilized a little army of 13,000 militia from four states, which marched to Pittsburgh and occupied the western counties for a few weeks while conspicuous offenders were rounded up—to be later acquitted by the courts. Professor Baldwin’s spirited narrative of this revealing episode is wholly in sympathy with the westerners, and he goes so far as to suggest that the whole affair was engineered by Hamilton in order to strengthen and perpetuate the Federalist regime.

3281. Bowers, Claude G. Jefferson and Hamilton; the struggle for democracy in America. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1933. xvii, 531 p. illus. 35–23547 E311–B6592. Bibliography: p. [513]–518.

A vivid description of what the author, a devoted Jeffersonian, defines as the struggle between the forces of democracy and aristocracy, which marked the first 12 years of the existence of the United States. Hamilton and Jefferson were the titans of the struggle, but behind them were others not neglected by Mr. Bowers. American society, with its drawing rooms, coffeeshops, and taverns, together with the more patently political arenas of the hails of the Congress, mass meetings, and public dinners, was the wellspring of this battle of fundamentals. To explain and give meaning to the controversy over the shaping of the Republic it is described complete with its prejudices and passions. To be sure, Federalist blackness is usually Stygian, and Democratic whiteness dazzling, and all the dramatic elements of the situation are much exaggerated. The work, originally published in 1925, is based upon printed sources, but gains color from its numerous quotations from contemporary newspapers.

3282. Brant, Irving. James Madison. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941–57. 5 v. 41–19279 E342.B7

CONTENTS.—[v. 1] The Virginia revolutionist.—[v. 2] The nationalist, 1780–1787.—[v. 3] Father of the Constitution, 1787–1800.—[v. 4] Secretary of State, 1800–1809.—[v. 5] The President, 1809–1812.

3283. Hunt, Gaillard. The life of James Madison. New York, Doubleday, Page, 1902. 402 p. 3–4211 E342. H943

On his retirement from the Senate of the United States, William Cabell Rives (1793–1868), who had been a protégé of Jefferson, embarked upon a large-scale life of James Madison (1751–1836). Rives’ work on his History of the Life and Times of James Madison was interrupted by his second mission to France and by the secession crisis, but before his death he completed three large volumes (Boston, Little, Brown, 1859–68) which reached 1797. Madison’s papers were purchased from Dolley Madison by the Government in several installments, leading to two official publications from them, in 3 volumes in 1840 and 4 in 1865; a more recent edition which does not, however, include everything in the older ones, is that of Galllard Hunt: The Writings of James Madison (New York, Putnam, 1900–10. 9 v.). Hunt published The Life of James Madison while this edition was in progress; it is a lucid and balanced treatment of its subject down to 1801, but has less than a hundred pages on Madison in Washington. Edward McNall Burns’ James Madison, Philosopher of the Constitution (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1938. 212 p.) is a concise formulation of Madison’s political views,setting his contributions to the Constitution against his theories of the State and of democracy, and indicating his relationship to other 18th-century theorists. Rives’ project of a large-scale life has been revived in our day by Mr. Irving Brant, a Middle-Western newspaperman who was led to constitutional questions and thence to Madison by President Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to change the Supreme Court. Five volumes published over a 16-year period have reached the Declaration of War in 1812. Their reception has been mixed: some critics are obviously delighted with the author’s trenchant espousal of the Democratic-Republican position; others find the work wearying in its incessant accumulation of detail, and the two latest volumes, which justify Madison’s diplomacy on all occasions, have met with some incredulity. All regard the work as based on vast research in primary sources, and as providing the only detailed analysis of Madison’s career after 1787.

3284. Cresson, William P. James Monroe. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1946. xiv, 577 p. illus. 47–652 E372.C7

"List of references": p. 549–559.

James Monroe (1758–1831) was the last and least endowed of the "Virginia dynasty," but by no means the least successful. Following his service as an officer in the Revolution, Monroe, impelled by financial necessity and fortunate in his gifts of honesty, ambition, influential sponsorship, and the ability to work hard and make friends, entered upon a career of public service which led him into a wide variety of offices, state and national, legislative and executive, at home and abroad. Though he was not particularly fortunate in his diplomatic missions, circumstance was not consistently favorable to success. When the Presidency was bestowed upon him in 1817, his industry and judgment, the advice of such friends as Jefferson and Madison, and a strong Cabinet all combined to launch a most successful administration. Though his career in public office was lengthy and varied, the fifth President of the United States is perhaps best remembered for the "doctrine" of foreign policy which bears his name. This biography, which was published 14 years after Dr. Cresson’s death, and received its final revision from other hands, grants to Monroe the genius of apprehending the opportune moment for the formal enunciation of a principle which previously had been simply a matter of American public opinion and aspiration.

3285. Dauer, Manning J. The Adams Federalists. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1953. xxiii, 381 p. maps. 53–11171 E321.D23. Bibliography: p. 351–373.

This study of the supporters of John Adams within the Federalist Party is a detailed account of political circumstances and events. Professor Dauer’s extensive geographical analysis of votes on major issues in the House of Representatives from March 1796 to May 1802 supports his main thesis: the Federalist majorities which put through the Constitution and established the Federal Government depended upon an alliance between commercial districts and agricultural ones—especially those which produced cash crops for the international market. Through the manipulation of Hamilton and the "High-Federalists," Federal policy became increasingly the servant of commercial interests. During the French crisis of 1798–99, expensive armaments were put on foot which could have been justified by war, but without it could only cost the Federalist Party the support of overtaxed agrarians. The war which the Hamiltonians desired was avoidable, and Adams, who had wanted neither the regiments nor the taxes, made peace with France. Between Adams’ lack of political finesse and Hamilton’s apparent lack of common honesty, the Federalist Party went to the wall, and Jefferson led a united agrarian majority.

3286. Dodd, William E. The life of Nathaniel Macon. Raleigh, N. C., Edwards & Broughton, 1903. xvi, 443 p. 4–4560 E302.6.M17D6

"Sources of information": p. xvi.

Macon (1758–1837), after serving an apprenticeship in North Carolina politics as an adherent of the upcountry democracy led by Willie Jones, and fighting the adoption of the Constitution, sat continuously for nearly 38 years in the Congress of the United States—in the House from 1791 to 1815, and in the Senate until his voluntary retirement from public life at the close of 1828. From the time that party divisions became discernible, he was among the most influential of the Democratic-Republicans, and he was considerably more representative of the Southern rank and file, and of the opinions which came to prevail in the party as a whole, than was its leader, Thomas Jefferson. To Macon strict construction of the Constitution became a kind of fetish. The interests of agriculture he regarded as paramount, and those of commerce as so antipathetic to them that no navy need be maintained to protect American merchantmen. Macon was one of the earliest to seize upon slavery as an essential interest of Southern agriculture, and to assert its constitutional immunity from national control; he was a forerunner of John Randolph and of Calhoun. The author hardly makes the most of Macon’s completely negative conception of the role of the Federal Government, and his passion to restrict its appropriations. Macon was himself completely disinterestedand devoid of personal malice, and retained his great popularity in his State and section through changing times.

3287. Driver, Carl S. John Sevier, pioneer of the Old Southwest. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1932. 240 p. 32–30370 E302.6.S45D8. Bibliography: p. [219]–225.

Sevier (1745–1815), frontiersman, Indian fighter, land speculator, state senator, Congressman, only Governor of the State of Franklin, and the first Governor of Tennessee, moved into the West with the frontier and participated in the various activities of the border. His whole life was connected with the development of the West, and he died in its service. The author, in Sevier’s behalf, points out that Andrew Jackson, Sevier’s antagonist, who became the representative of the West in the eyes of the Nation, reflected the ideals and aspirations of the West after its civilization had been firmly established. Sevier, a more provincial figure, overshadowed by Jackson, the national figure, was the true representative of the old West, the ideal of the man who struggled and fought for the acquisition of the soil.

3288. Hamilton, Alexander. Alexander Hamilton and the founding of the Nation. Edited by Richard B. Morris. New York, Dial Press, 1957. xxi, 617 p. 56–12132 E302.H2573

3289. Hamilton, Alexander. Papers on public credit, commerce and finance. Edited by Samuel McKee, Jr. New York, Columbia University Press, 1934. xxiv, 303 p. 34–18967 HC105.H18

3290. Schachner, Nathan. Alexander Hamilton. New York, Appleton-Century, 1946. 488 p. 46–3861 E302.6.H2S25. Bibliography: p. 473–481.

3291. Mitchell, Broadus. Alexander Hamilton. v. 1. Youth to maturity, 1755–1788. New York, Macmillan, 1957. 675 p. 57–5506 E302.6.H2M6. Bibliography: p. 647–666.

Hamilton (1755–1804) was the Founding Father who was different. Born on the West Indian island of Nevis, he was ineligible for the Presidency of the United States. Technically illegitimate and self-supporting from the age of 12, he was even more completely a self-made man than Franklin. He was the only member of the Constitutional Convention to disapprove of republican government and to propose an elective monarchy; but this did not prevent him from joining with Madison to present the most effective apology for a new frame of government that has ever been penned (The Federalist, q.v.). Whether his military abilities were so transcendent as he and his warmer admirers supposed must remain unknown, since he never held an independent command; but his past mastery of finance and of the techniques of public administration was placed beyond question during his service as first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States (1789–95). Total estimates of Hamilton will probably differ as much in the future as they have in the past, according to the estimator’s value of his concrete services as against what Henry Adams aptly termed "the adventurer in him." Both of the older editions of Hamilton’s writings took strange liberties with their texts; the new one undertaken at Columbia University has not reached the stage of publication. Professor Morris’ volume of selections is arranged in chapters, the progression of which is partly chronological and partly topical; there is a general introduction and much interspersed explanatory matter by the editor. The Secretary of the Treasury’s epoch-making reports to Congress on the public credit (1790 and 1795), on a national bank (1790), and on manufactures (1791), together with his letter to President Washington which, in justifying the constitutionality of the bank, develops his doctrine of implied powers, are separately published by Dr. McKee in a volume of attractive format. Mr. Schachner’s biography is well proportioned and solidly researched, using manuscripts to supplement printed sources. It takes a middle-of-the-road position, and certainly does not gloss over its protagonist’s errors of judgment or temper. Professor Mitchell is more enthusiastic in his admiration of Hamilton’s genius; his first volume, which reaches the ratification of the Constitution, is based on an exhaustive searching of the sources, but once more it is true that the fresh material turned up makes no great alteration in the old picture. For the period after 1788, The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton by his grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton (New York, Scribner, 1910. 483 p.), contains valuable material not to be found elsewhere.

3292. Jefferson, Thomas. Papers. Julian P. Boyd, editor. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1950–56. 13 v. 50–7486 E302.J463

Associate editors: v. 1–5, Lyman H. Butterfield and Mina R. Bryan; v. 6–8, Mina R. Bryan and Elizabeth L. Hutter; v. 9, Mina R. Bryan; v. 10–12, Mina R. Bryan and Fredrick Aandahl; v. 13, Mina R. Bryan.

CONTENTS.—v. 1. 1760–1776.—v. 2. January 1777 to June 1779.—v. 3. June 1779 to September 1780.—v. 4. 1 October 1780 to 24 February1781.—v. 5. 25 February 1781 to 20 May 1781.— v. 6. 21 May 1781 to 1 March 1784.—v. 7. 2 March 1784 to 25 February 1785.—v. 8. 25 February to 31 October 1785.—v. 9. 1 November 1785 to 22 June 1786.—v. 10. 22 June to 31 December 1786.—v. 11. 1 January to 6 August 1787.—v. 12. 7 August 1787 to 31 March 1788.—v. 13. March to 7 October 1788.

— — Index, volumes 1–6. Compiled by Elizabeth J. Sherwood and Ida T. Hopper. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954. 229 p. E302.J463 Index

3293. Jefferson, Thomas. Writings. Collected and edited by Paul Leicester Ford. New York, Putnam, 1892–99. 10 v. 2–5666 E302.J466

CONTENTS.—V. 1. 1760–1775.—v. 2. 1776–1781.—v. 3. 1781–1784.—v. 4. 1784–1787.—v. 5. 1788–1792.—v. 6. 1792—1794.—7. 1795–1801.—v. 8. 1801–1806.—v. 9. 1807–1815.—v. 10. 1816–1826.

3294. Jefferson, Thomas. Jefferson himself, the personal narrative of a many-sided American. Edited by Bernard Mayo. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1942. xv, 384 p. illus. 42–50339 E332.J464

3295. Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and his time. Boston, Little, Brown, 1948–51. 2 v. illus. 48–5972 E332.M25

"Select critical bibliography": v. 1, p. [457]–470; v. 2, p. [494]–504.

CONTENTS.—v. 1. Jefferson the Virginian.—v. 2. Jefferson and the rights of man. 3296. Randall, Henry S. The life of Thomas Jefferson. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1888. 3 v. 9–28978 E332.R19

First published in 1857.

3297. Nock, Albert Jay. Jefferson. New York, Harcourt, Brace, ©1926. 340 p. 26–13101 E332.N75

Jefferson (1743–1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the second Governor of the State of Virginia, the second Minister from the United States to France, the first Secretary of State of the United States, the second Vice President and third President of the United States, and the founder of the University of Virginia. Among the Founding Fathers, only Franklin was his peer in universality of mind, and his writings of every description, but particularly the voluminous correspondence which he maintained until a few weeks before his death, constitute an incomparable mirror of the general and especially the intellectual history of his age. The complete edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson planned and initiated by Dr. Boyd of Princeton University, with its careful inventorying of all surviving manuscripts and its abundance of elucidation in introductions and notes, naturally supersedes all previous editions as far as it has gone. But volume 13, the latest to appear, only reaches October 7, 1788, and the announced rate of publication has evidently slackened. It is still necessary, therefore, to resort to one of the older editions for the remainder of Jefferson’s career; that of P. L. Ford is listed above as being the easiest to use. Professor Mayo’s Jefferson Himself is a collection of extracts from Jefferson’s brief autobiography, his letters, and his other writings, arranged in a chronological sequence so as to make a reasonably continuous narrative of his career in his own words. Dr. Malone is engaged upon a full-scale biography of Jefferson, incorporating recent scholarship and working out many problems hitherto unsolved or unapproached. He can perhaps at times be reproached with putting Jefferson’s lack of straightforwardness in too favorable a light. Unfortunately his second volume, the latest to appear, only reaches the close of 1792. For a detailed narrative from that point one may turn to the older work of Randall, which has the endorsement of Dr. Malone; it has not, he justly says, enjoyed the reputation it deserved because its author, a convinced Democrat, had the misfortune of publishing on the eve of an age of Republican domination, especially of the journals of literary opinion. Among a variety of briefer biographies, that of the late A. J. Nock has had warm admirers through three decades for its selection of material, charm of style, intuitive insight, and delicate characterization. Special studies are legion, and may readily be located through the bibliographies in Malone and elsewhere.

3298. Lewis, Meriwether, and William Clark. The journals of Lewis and Clark. Edited by Bernard De Voto. Maps by Erwin Raisz. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1953. lii, 504 p. 53–9244 F592.4 1953

3299. Bakeless, John E. Lewis & Clark, partners in discovery. New York, Morrow, 1947. 498 p. illus. 47–12243 F592.7.B3

The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–6, from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River and back, is one of the high points in the exploration of the North American Continent and in the expansion of the United States; it is also one of the most fascinating of adventure stories. Planned by President Jefferson in order to make known thenorthern part of the Louisiana Territory purchased the year before, it was entrusted to a young man who enjoyed his personal confidence and was serving as his private secretary. Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) chose as his colleague William Clark (1770–1838), under whom he had served in the regular army. Under their harmonious leadership, the expedition enjoyed an exceptional blend of good management and good fortune, and was successful in all its objectives. The reader has here a choice between a selection from the original journals of the expedition, chiefly those kept by the two leaders, and a joint biography which includes a narrative of the expedition emphasizing its day-to-day incidents. Mr. De Voto’s narrative, written from a rather broader geographical viewpoint, forms the concluding portion of his The Course of Empire (no. 3161). His selection from the journals comes from the 7-volume set edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites in 1904-5: Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (New York, Dodd, Mead), and includes about half of the text available there, with a general introduction, some interspersed expository matter in italics, and brief footnotes. Dr. Bakeless devotes nearly three-fifths of his volume to his anecdotal narrative of the expedition, including a chapter on "Aboriginal Amours," and the rest to the earlier careers of his protagonists, to the brief later life and tragic end of Meriwether Lewis, and to the long public service and honorable old age of Governor Clark. For both the early and the late phases he has turned up much new information from scattered documents in archives and manuscript collections.

3300. Link, Eugene Perry. Democratic-Republican societies, 1790–1800. New York, Columbia University Press, 1942. 256 p. (Columbia studies in American culture, no. 9) 42–5915 E310.L6 1942a

Issued also as thesis (Ph.D.) Columbia University.

Bibliography: p. [213]–242.

A detailed study of the popular societies which were a prominent feature of the last decade of the 18th century, which President Washington sought to stigmatize as "self-created," and which indeed spread into most States of the Union in an apparently spontaneous manner. Dr. Link has identified 42 such societies organized between 1793 and 1798, of which 9 were in Pennsylvania and 5 each in Vermont, Virginia, and South Carolina. He has analyzed their membership in the few cases in which this is possible, and finds that it came from a rather wide range of society, with merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, and public officials the fellows of craftsmen and artisans of all descriptions. He finds that their membership was perceptibly continuous with the Sons of Liberty and other groups which advanced the American Revolution, and that they were conscious of their kinship with comparable organizations in England and on the Continent. After reviewing their activities he concludes that, although they were not without elements seeking political or economic self-aggrandizement, on the whole these societies aimed at the free and enlightened discussion of public issues, and were active in the promotion of schools and libraries as agencies of democratic education.

3301. McLaughlin, Andrew Cunningham. The Confederation and the Constitution, 1783–1789. New York, Harper, 1905. xix, 348 p. maps. (The American Nation: a history, edited by A. B. Hart, v. 10) 5–30250 E178.A54, v. 10

"Critical essays on authorities": p. 318–336.

3302. Jensen, Merrill. The New Nation; a history of the United States during the Confederation, 1781–1789. New York, Knopf, 1950. xvii, 433, xi p. 50–9344 E303.J45 1950

"Essay on the sources": p. 429–432.

The late Professor McLaughlin’s volume remains, after half a century, a concise and lucid narrative of the events of greatest national concern from the peace negotiations which terminated the Revolution through the ratification of the new Constitution. He thus states his central theme: "The political task that confronted the people when independence from Great Britain was declared was in its essence the same that had confronted the British ministry ten years before—the task of imperial organization." He regards the Articles of Confederation as "an advance on previous instruments of like kind in the world’s history"; they were chiefly defective in withholding from the central authority the powers of raising money and of regulating commerce. Attempts to make the best of the Articles were quite played out by the end of 1786, when a deep gloom had settled upon conservative men, which gave energy to their efforts toward a radical change in the following year. None of this gloom is to be found in the pages of Professor Jensen’s volume, which is a sequel to his Articles of Confederation (no. 3253). A spirit of optimism reigned in the new Nation, and is evident in the beginnings of a national literature. Society was in a state of vigorous health, and the grievances left over from the old order were under sharp attack from an active humanitarian movement. The economic prostration which follows protracted war was being alleviated by a remarkable outburst of commercial expansion and business enterprise. Even on the part of the central government there was substantial achievement: the domestic debt created bythe Revolution was reduced, a national domain created, and a responsible staff of civil servants built up. The change initiated in 1787 was carried through by men who feared democracy and who wanted a national instead of a federal government. The book provides a more detailed account of many aspects of this period than is available in any other general work, but it resolutely turns a blind eye on the impotence, impecuniosity, and defenselessness of the Confederation.

3303. Malone, Dumas. The public life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1926. xv, 432 p. (Yale historical publications. Miscellany, 16) 26–15381 E302.6.C7M2

Thesis (Ph. D.)—Yale University, 1923.

"Bibliographical note": p. [402]–416.

Cooper (1759–1839) was an Englishman, a scientific amateur, a religious and political radical, and a friend of Joseph Priestley, whom he accompanied to America in 1794. His American career was remarkable for its versatility, its vicissitudes, and its progress from a radical to an extremely conservative position in politics. As a Jeffersonian pamphleteer he was sentenced to fine and six months’ imprisonment for seditious libel against President Adams. He was appointed to office by the victorious Pennsylvania Republicans, but his independent course as a district judge cost him the favor of the more radical democrats, and in 1811 he was removed from the bench in consequence of an address by both houses of the legislature. Cooper then served as professor of chemistry in two Pennsylvania colleges, and soon after transferring to South Carolina College, in 1820, was chosen its president. Here he became the oracle of the state rights philosophy, repudiating the protective tariff, and defending slavery and nullification. Cooper’s own papers were destroyed in their entirety, and Dr. Malone’s volume is a fine work of reconstruction, illuminating the career of a man who, if not an original thinker, was a powerful agitator and controversialist, uncommonly influential in the political and intellectual developments of his time.

3304. Monaghan, Frank. John Jay, defender of liberty against kings & peoples, author of the Constitution & Governor of New York, President of the Continental Congress, co-author of the Federalist, negotiator of the Peace of 1783 & the Jay Treaty of 1794, first Chief Justice of the United States. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1935. 497 p. illus. 35–18227 E302.6.J4M6

"The sources": p. [465]–474.

A sympathetic narrative rich in the detail of the life and character of an aristocratic New Yorker who prided himself on the rectitude of his motives and his devotion to public duty. The author seeks to restore Jay (1745–1829) to public esteem, a task not facilitated by the fact that Jay, ever conscious of his dignity, wrote with the feeling that posterity was peering over his shoulder. In addition to the portrait of a moderate who felt that the British colonies were prompted and impelled to independence by necessity and not by choice, many details of the society of Jay’s era, such as an entertaining section describing the rigors of life on the judicial circuit, are provided.

3305. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The life and letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1913. 2 v. illus. 13–23631 E340.08M8. Bibliography: v. 2, p. [311]–317.

Orator, and attorney of the first rank, Harrison Gray Otis entered politics during Washington’s second administration. He was a leader in the movement of resistance to "Mr. Madison’s War" which culminated in the Hartford Convention in 1814, a movement in which this native Bostonian exerted his greatest influence. Having succeeded in keeping the convention’s action within the bounds of moderation and well short of even a hint of secession, Otis continued to justify the convention and its work during the remainder of his life, often to the detriment of his political career. In spite of the dying out of the Federalist Party, he continued to be elected to office by Massachusetts or Boston into the Jacksonian era. If no great statesman, Otis was an attractive figure who represented the best of the political and social organization which was the Federalist Party. The author has endeavored, in addition to setting forth the events of Otis’ life, to describe critically Otis’ ideas, feelings, and prejudices, and to discover the motives which guided his actions in the political crises of his day, whether they centered upon nationalism, sectionalism, or abolitionism. These volumes contain a wealth of information about the later and somewhat depressing years of the Federalist Party.

3306. Pratt, Julius W. Expansionists of 1812. New York, P. Smith, 1949, ©1925. 309 p. 49–9879 E357–P9 1949. Bibliography: p. 275–289.

A scholarly study, solidly based on contemporary manuscripts and newspapers, of aspects of public opinion, diplomacy, and strategy before and during the War of 1812. It shows that a general sentiment in the Northwest in favor of the acquisition of Canada, which had existed since the Revolution, became strongly activated when Tecumseh was supplied with British arms; that the South waseager to annex the Floridas, and East Florida was in part occupied before the declaration of war; that Northern sentiment compelled the Madison administration to withdraw from Florida, while the administration and Southern congressmen lacked enthusiasm for the Canada campaign; and that the idea of Manifest Destiny made its first general appearance at this time. At the time of its appearance Professor Pratt’s book was hailed with enthusiasm, and has been often taken to show that the "real cause" of the War of 1812 was not maritime grievances but Western land hunger. This conclusion the author had been very careful to disclaim: without those grievances, he declared, "it is safe to say, there would have been no war." To bring about the War of 1812, both sets of causes were probably essential.

3307. Roosevelt, Theodore. The winning of the West. New York, Putnam, 1889–96. 4 v. fold. maps. 1–8663 F351.R79

CONTENTS.—1. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769–1776.—2. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777–1783.—3. The founding of the trans-Alleghany commonwealths, 1784–1790.—4. Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791–1807.

Theodore Roosevelt was of the belief that the development of the Western country was such as to make the West peculiarly the exponent of all that is most vigorously American in the life of the United States. This vigorous study of the acquisition and settlement of the trans-Allegheny region from 1769 to 1807 concerns itself with the dramatic and picturesque. Of institutional or economic development one finds little information, but Indian warfare, intrigues involving the Westerners, French and Spaniards, and relations between the United States, Britain, and Spain concerning the Western country find places of prominence in a work which is clearly stamped with the emphatic personality of its author.

3308. Smith, James Morton. Freedom’s fetters; the Alien and Sedition laws and American civil liberties. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1956. 464 p. (Cornell studies in civil liberty) 56–2434 E327.S59

Passed in 1798, the Alien and Sedition laws were ostensibly designed to protect the United States during time of war, but in that era, when there was a strong link between foreign influence and domestic faction, these laws could also be used by their sponsors, the Federalists, as an instrument for the repression of political opposition. In this first of two projected volumes the author, pursuing an investigation of the relationship between liberty and authority in a popular form of government, "concentrates as exclusively as possible on the enactment and enforcement of the Federalist measures of 1798 and attempts to assess their influence in shaping the development of the political process of republicanism, with its goals of majority rule and individual rights."

3309. Starkey, Marion Lena. A little rebellion. New York, Knopf, 1955. 258 p. 55–9292 F69.S85

The "little rebellion" named after Captain Daniel Shays, of Pelham, Massachusetts, had few killings and no hangings, but great consequences in that it supplied power to the movement for a more perfect union. Miss Starkey retells this rather externally known episode of 1786–87 in the terms of human experience and achieves a dramatic presentation without ascribing wickedness to either side.

3310. Walters, Raymond. Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian financier and diplomat. New York, Macmillan, 1957. 461 p. 57–8267 E302.6.G16W3. Bibliography: p. 435–446.

3311. Adams, Henry. The life of Albert Gallatin. New York, P. Smith, 1943. 697 p. A 44–322 NNC

"Reprinted under the auspices of the Out-of-Print Books Committee of the American Library Association."

Gallatin (1761–1849), a native of the Republic of Geneva, came to the United States at the age of 19, and, largely because of a Rousseauist enthusiasm for wild nature, settled in the far southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The locale proved a disappointment, but Gallatin’s uncommon abilities improved by an excellent education led almost at once to a political career among his frontiersman neighbors, and both in the Pennsylvania legislature and in the Congress of the United States his mastery of fiscal policy made him indispensable to the agrarian Republicans with whom he had allied himself. The same reason, together with a general capacity for policy, administration, and hard work of any kind, made him a prime reliance of Presidents Jefferson and Madison, but after nearly 12 years’ service as Secretary of the Treasury he was forced out by the factious opposition of Southern party leaders in Congress. The remainder of his public career was employed in a succession of foreign missions, and his eighth and ninth decades were actively spent in private finance, enlightened publicism, and ethnological studies. Dr. Walters complains of his "relative obscurity today," but this is surely a consequence of the circumstances that Henry Adams did so solid a piece of work in his Life, originallypublished in 1879, and that the Gallatin family kept the papers closed to investigators for the next 60 years. Dr. Walters’ volume, which is guided by the wider interests of present-day historians and takes a deeper interest in Gallatin’s personality, supplements rather than replaces the earlier work.