American Creation

“Taken together, these triumphal and tragic elements should constitute the ingredients for an epic historical narrative that defies all moralistic categories, a story line rooted in the coexistence of grace and sin, grandeur and failure, brilliance and blindness. No aspiring historian, or novelist, could wish for more. But that is not the way the story has been told. Instead, we have been asked to choose between two simplistic narratives of the founding, one featuring the founders as demigods who were permitted to glimpse the eternal truths, or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, ‘to see God face to face,’ the other crowded with a cast of villains who collectively comprise the deadest, whitest males in American history.” 

Ellis makes his case for how to view the founders. He rejects the idea, fashionable in recent historiography, that they merely represent the “dead, white male” perspective of history. Their stories, he argues, had far too significant consequences to dismiss them so blithely. Instead, their lives and actions, while messy like those of all humans, are multi-dimensioned and contain the ingredients for an epic tale. 

“For George III and his chief minister, Lord North, it was akin to an axiom of political physics, a veritable Newtonian principle of political theory, that there must be one sovereign source of governance. To suggest otherwise was tantamount to arguing there was not one but many gods.” 

This shows the prevailing way of thinking about sovereignty at the time of American independence. Ellis argues that the revolution could have been avoided if the British had agreed to share sovereignty with the colonies. However, it is hard to change one’s mindset when no alternative perspective exists. This is partly what makes the Constitution a pioneering document—it proposed sharing sovereignty between federal and state governments. 

“Though a few all-black units were added later in the war, most blacks served alongside whites and comprised, at any time, between 6 and 12 percent of the fighting force. Here was a stunning if silent social statement far ahead of popular opinion. The next time any American army would be so fully integrated was the Korean War.” 

This fact about troops during the Revolutionary War illustrates that problematic issues like racial relations did not move in a straight line from unenlightened to ever more enlightened. The fact that troops during the Revolution were more integrated than they would be again for nearly 200 years turns this assumption on its head. Throughout the book, Ellis introduces paradoxes and ironies in the narrative of the founding, showing that the truth is often more complex than conventional wisdom makes it out to be.

“The careers of Knox and Greene serve as stellar examples of the dynamic role the American Revolution played in creating talent by providing it with an outlet impossible to imagine in any European nation at the time.” 

The colonists did not have the same restraints imposed upon them as the British did. By British standards, neither Knox nor Greene could have become a general because social status would not have allowed it. Yet both men went on to become brilliant military leaders essential to Washington’s military campaigns, proving the advantages of allowing individuals to rise according to their abilities. 

“With these words, Jefferson had smuggled the revolutionary agenda into the founding document, casually and almost inadvertently planting the seeds that would grow into the expanding mandate for individual rights that eventually ended slavery, made women’s suffrage inevitable, and sanctioned the civil rights of all minorities.” 

Ellis argues that the Preamble to the Constitution was the document’s crowning jewel, and part of what made the American Revolution an “evolutionary revolution.” While not every aspect of the political and social landscape changed, the door was left open for more changes in the future. Ellis claims this gave the American Revolution a stability that other, more drastic revolutions lacked. 

“On the one hand, if the war became a conventional contest between armies along the lines of the French and Indian War, the Americans could not hope to win. On the other hand, if it became a protracted conflict for the hearts and minds of the American populace, the British would almost surely lose. Or, perhaps more accurately, the British would be forced to recognize that winning came at a cost in troops and treasure that they were unprepared to pay.” 

This shows both the dilemma for the British and the opportunity for the Americans. Both sides thought of warfare in conventional terms at the start of the war, which gave the British a distinct advantage. However, the winter in Valley Forge provided Washington with a new perspective. The large area, or as he calls it “space,” of the colonies meant that the British troops would be stretched thin. By biding their time and working to win over the people in the countryside, Americans gained the advantage. 

“The key insight, which went against all of Washington’s personal instincts, was that both space and time were on the American side, so that the only way to lose the war was to try to win it.” 

Washington trained in conventional methods of warfare, so he automatically planned for meeting the British in formation on the battlefield. He realized, however, that this approach would lead to ultimately losing the war. Ellis credits this realization as the key to the Americans’ success.

“As a result, the seeds of a truly national vision were planted at Valley Forge for the first time. The war was still about American independence, to be sure, but unless a consolidated nation-state with powers to make domestic and foreign policy for all the states emerged after independence, all the wartime sacrifices would be for naught, because the infant American republic would most probably dissolve into a collection of state and regional sovereignties.” 

The winter at Valley Forge was important not only for the insight it gave Washington about “time and space” being on the side of the Americans, but also for teaching Washington about the need for a strong central authority. Individual states making decisions about the war led to inefficiency and wasted time. Washington would later draw on this experience when supporting the Constitution proposed in 1787 to replace the Articles of Confederation. He knew the United States could only thrive if the national government held the primary power. 

“The dominant view of most prominent and ordinary American colonists in 1776 was that they were joining together in common cause to defeat the British leviathan, but this union was a temporary necessity, less a marriage than a forced friendship. The only thing that had held the colonies together was their mutual membership in the British Empire. The only thing that had held the states together, and only barely, was their mutual opposition to the authority of the British Empire. Now that the war was won, the states began to go their separate ways.” 

The colonists saw the Revolutionary War as a fight for independence from Great Britain more than a fight to become their own unified country. The colonies had distinct identities and disparate interests, so the natural political structure after the war was a loose confederation. Both the elites who made the decisions and average Americans favored this type of government. 

“The gap between these two political camps was an unbridgeable chasm separated by a fundamental difference of opinion over the true meaning of the American Revolution. The outright nationalists, of whom Washington and most officers in the Continental Army were the most outspoken advocates, were a decided minority at war’s end. The staunch confederationists, on the other hand, were a clear majority who also enjoyed the incalculable ideological advantage of knowing that a powerful American nation-state violated the hallowed political principles embodied in ‘the spirit of ’76.’”

In the 1780s, the confederation that had followed independence was not working in the minds of some of the revolutionary leaders, particularly those who had served in the Continental Army. Washington, Madison, and other nationalists, however, had an uphill battle to try to create a more powerful central government, as the majority of Americans opposed it. Ellis includes this to indicate that a stronger federal government was not a foregone conclusion: the US Constitution might not have resulted from the 1787 Constitutional Convention at all.

“The star-studded supporting cast features George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and, perhaps most poignantly, Patrick Henry. Ironically, none of these players believed wholeheartedly in the constitutional settlement proposed in 1787 and ratified in 1788, which was more the product of painful compromise and elegant improvisation than any pure and sustained argument about political theory.” 

Ellis deflates some of the mythology around the founders: They were not demigods who knew exactly what they wanted and forged a new nation of perfection. Instead, they wrestled over the details, each side improvising and compromising in order to achieve the final resolution. No one got precisely what he wanted and no one was entirely happy with the result.

“The argument that eventually won out, which was a new and wholly unprecedented version of federalism, emerged from the messy political process itself rather than from the mind of any single thinker. In essence, the argument that triumphed defied logic and the accumulated wisdom of the entire European political tradition, for it made argument itself the answer by creating a framework in which federal and state authority engaged in an ongoing negotiation for supremacy, thereby making the Constitution, like history itself, an argument without end.”

This dispels the myth of the founders as demigods and the “great men” theory of their history. They were responding to events more than shaping them. It also introduces another theme—that the founders had better results because of their intense competition and varying ideas. In this case, due to lack of agreement, their compromise created a shared sovereignty between federal and state governments, resulting in a flexible form of federalism that allowed for continued debate. 

“Wherever the idea came from, in short, he grasped it so firmly because he was looking for it and knew he needed it. As we shall see, the very novelty of the idea, which essentially turned a core assumption of revolutionary ideology on its head, limited its influence in the Constitutional Convention and the crucial ratifying conventions. In a sense it was an idea so far ahead of its time that no one could fully appreciate its originality. But at the time of its actual birth in the spring of 1787, the idea was effectively forced upon Madison, or perhaps the urgent need for just such an idea primed his mind to grasp for it.”

One of Madison’s most famous and lasting ideas was that large republics would work better than small ones. This went against the grain of everyone’s way of thinking about the issue at the time. Ellis thus concludes it was “far ahead of its time” and would only flower in full force in the years to come. He writes that “twentieth-century political scientists would identify [it] as the earliest formulation of the pluralist conception of politics” (106). Yet scholars are hard-pressed to explain its origins. Ellis writes that it may just have come as a response to the rough-and-tumble competitive atmosphere of the Constitutional Convention, with Madison seeking a response to a question he knew would be raised.

“In short, as the apparently inevitable tragedy so clear to us began to unfold, neither side regarded it as inevitable. Washington went so far as to declare that a truly just Indian policy was one of his highest priorities, that failure on this score would damage his reputation and ‘stain the nation.’ No man in American history was more accustomed to getting his way than Washington, especially when he invested his personal prestige in the cause. The fate of the Native American population proved the exception to that rule, a case where his own efforts proved inadequate for reasons that not even he could control.”

The founders were human, but still noble in their efforts. Though they had incredible success overall, they also encountered failure. Washington had good intentions for dealing with the Native Americans and truly desired a just outcome. However, it was one of the few times when his personal attention to a cause did not lead to the result he was seeking.

“Whether they realized it or not, by signing the Treaty of Paris the newly created American republic was announcing its arrival as the youngest member of the imperial family and the successor to France and Great Britain as the sovereign power over all the people south of Canada and north of Florida.” 

This was one of the paradoxes of the American Revolution. After it gained independence, the United States sometimes found itself in the same position as England. “How could a republic be an empire?” Ellis asks (131). In this case, the nation actually acted like one with regard to Native Americans, until Washington tried to take a different tack when he became president. However, he failed, and the situation only worsened with the Louisiana Purchase. 

“What stands out is the exceptional quality of leadership on both sides at this defining moment. Knox and Washington, with an assist from Jefferson, chose to defy the odds and transform American policy toward the Native Americans. They did not do so because it was politically expedient, quite the opposite. They did so because the revolutionary fires still burned inside them and they knew, deep down, that Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished.” 

The Treaty of New York the US made with the Creek tribe failed. Despite the best intentions of leaders on both sides—Creek chief, Alexander McGillivray and President Washington—relations between the two nations broke down when the federal government could not enforce its own policies and prevent white settlers from encroaching on Native land. 

“For one of the ultimate implications of the two-party system that was so hard for most of the founders to accept was the realization that different versions of truth could coexist alongside one another and both claim, with considerable plausibility, to be true. Unlike mathematics, in politics there was no agreed-upon solution reached by sheer brainpower and logic, but rather an ongoing and never-ending struggle between contested versions of the truth. (The proper model, in effect, was not the Newtonian universe but the Darwinian jungle.)” 

Ellis explains the advantage of the two-party system. Though parties were explicitly shunned by most of the founders—even by Thomas Jefferson, who nonetheless worked assiduously and surreptitiously to create one—they allowed for opposing ideas to be worked out. Before parties, opposition to the government in power was often seen as treasonous. With parties, opposition was part of a dialogue in the search for truth. 

“By any neutral standard, the picture that Jefferson and Madison saw in their heads was a preposterous distortion. How could two men who had never fired a shot in anger during the war suggest that Washington and Hamilton, both military heroes, were in any sense of the word “Tories”? How could John Adams, the acknowledged “Atlas of independence,” be tarred with that same brush? As for monarchical ambitions, Washington had already demonstrated his immunity to all such ambitions by rejecting the crown at the end of the war, and his efforts to define the powers of the presidency all operated within a framework of republican presumptions.” 

The popular view of the founders is one of disinterested, rational, logical men—again, building them up to be larger than life. In this chapter on the rise of political parties, Ellis takes a moment to address the origins of the party system, which are decidedly less than coherent—so illogical, that he feels the need to state that both men were “wholly sane and thoroughly rational men” (171). It is difficult to know exactly why Jefferson and Madison subscribed to conspiracy theories about northern financiers. It only adds to the debunking of the myth that the founders were demigods— in fact, they come across as all-too-human at times. 

“Unlike Washington and Adams, Jefferson understood where history was headed, though even he found it difficult to acknowledge his de facto role as a party leader. The binary categories through which he filtered experience remained defiantly moralistic—Whig versus Tory, good versus evil, white versus black. And within that scheme the Federalists remained the evil empire that he hoped ‘to sink . . . into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection of it.’ In that sense, Jefferson took party politics to the doorway of modernity, but he himself could not walk through it.” 

Ellis credits Jefferson with being able to see the future of politics. A nonpartisan, “Patriot King” model had briefly ruled the American political scene, but that was soon replaced by a fledgling two-party system, largely thanks to Jefferson and Madison. As Ellis notes, there were distinct advantages to such a system. Jefferson recognized this and laid the foundation, but the full benefits of the party system would only appear in the future. 

“Throughout the 1790s he had labeled the Federalists ‘monarchists’ and insisted that any energetic projection of executive power violated republican principles. Now he had just performed the most aggressive executive action ever by an American president, a projection of executive authority that would stand the test of time as perhaps the boldest in American history. If one wished to acquire an empire, it turned out, one had to become an imperial president.” 

Certain ironies were present in the founding of the American republic. In addition, contemporary readers should not view the founders as preternaturally gifted individuals who could do no wrong. They, like all humans, struggled with faults and failure—in this case, hypocrisy. 

“In a justifiably famous letter to John Holmes, a congressman from Massachusetts, Jefferson claimed that the Missouri Question had aroused him ‘like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.’ No man on earth wished an end to slavery more than he did, Jefferson insisted, and banishing slavery from the entire United States ‘would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be affected,’ meaning a removal of the freed black population back to Africa or some location in the Caribbean. But until a realistic plan to compensate slave-owners and remove the black population could be devised, to raise the slavery question was a treasonable act.” 

The Missouri Question dealt with the expansion of slavery into the land acquired by the Louisiana Purchase, so this letter explains why Jefferson did not act in 1803 to end slavery. He claims to be opposed to slavery (something belied by the fact that he did not free his own slaves even after his death). He also claims to be unable to abolish it because blacks and whites could not live together, freed slaves would have to be removed from the United States, and slave owners (including Jefferson himself) would need to be compensated for the loss of what they considered “property.” He argued that the issue was impossible to resolve. 

“In that sense, Jefferson’s failure in 1803 to assume a leadership position on the issue of slavery in the territories was not an inadvertent act of negligence, but rather a conscious decision to avoid placing the nation on a road that he firmly believed led to the dismemberment of the union. Fifty years later, when Abraham Lincoln, rather ironically and misguidedly citing Jefferson as his role model, decided to go down the same road, the result was the Civil War, just as Jefferson had predicted.” 

The founders’ biggest failing, the inability to solve the issue of race and slavery, was a stain on their republican ideals. Jefferson remained in a holding pattern of doing nothing, kicking the can further down the road. To open that can of worms, in his mind, would inevitably lead to civil war and perhaps the end of the republic altogether. 

“There were, it turned out, some self-evident truths of the darker sort that Jefferson had neglected to mention in the Declaration of Independence. One was that blacks and whites could never live together in harmony. Another was that the way of life of the Native Americans was doomed to extinction. Yet another was that slavery defied resolution and any effort to do so would lead to a very bloody civil war. These were not the kind of convictions calculated to buoy the spirits. Tragedy trumped triumph in the story of the Purchase for several reasons, but mostly because race more than space defined the outer limits of Jefferson’s political imagination.” 

Chapter 6 concludes with a sobering assessment of a political document usually lauded as having few equals. The underlying truths of the United States formed a less rosy picture than is usually portrayed. The founders were simply people, flawed as all humans are. Even when they tried to do the right thing, events sometimes slipped out of their control. In the case of slavery, however, Ellis indicates that Jefferson lacked the imagination to view the issue in non-binary terms and thus find a solution.