1866, the critical year revisited Book

Embedded in one of those Goodreads update emails we subscribers get was the noticing of the fact that I had begun this book 170 days before—and it was another four days before I actually finished the last 90 or so of the book’s 1252 pages. So my first note to self was to no longer identify books that I am reading on Goodreads. Suddenly, as I read that email, I was back in 5th grade and the days when Susan Paer, with whom I had an unriciprocated crush, would walk by my desk and comment, “Are you still reading that?” My second note to self was to wait a few months, give or take a year, before I began volume two of the Adams History of the US, the 1300 plus pages that cover the Madison administrations. Adams is a very fine writer and an early practioner of the kind of intense document research that is the now the norm but was radically new then, so this is certainly a classic of both American Literature and of world history. Yet, yet, it’s 1252 pages long.

Jefferson administrations included allies and enemies such as John Marshall, Aaron Burr (he, of the duel that killed Hamilton and the conspiracy to separate the west--Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, etc.--from the coastal states and Jefferson’s first term vice president, was both), Napoleon, various European royalty and ministers, Andrew Jackson (straddling the fence of rebellion), James Madison, James Monroe, John Randolph, and Albert Gallatin. So an intersting cast of characters. Adams makes clear how fragile the country was in these its young years and how much still needed to be figured out if the country would survive. The Republican party was a small Federal government party, fearful that a strong Federal government, one that had a navy and a standing army, would become a tyranny. So Britain and France, two destructive big cats, play with the mouse that is the US, batting it this way and that. Jefferson was the party leader and its spokesperson but even he could not implement successfully a very unpopular non-violent alternative to war, the embargo. It worked as well as Prohibition.

Adams also makes clear that Jefferson, despite his small government leanings, took many steps that strengthened the Federal government, from the Louisiana Purchase to authorizing of national highways, canals, and other major public works in the national interest. He was not always well-served, or served at all by those whose job it was to serve him. Take General James Wilkinson, please. He was the head of the US's small army, stationed in the southwest frontier (shared with Spain’s colonies). He was a long-term paid agent of the Spanish crown. Wilkinson, an interesting if unimpressive figure, was also a conspirator of Burr’s, though he arrested him on Jefferson’s orders—the controversial trial would end with an acquittal, though Burr was blatantly guilty, because too many of the best witnesses would have incriminated Wilkinson and others connected to the government and the facts would have embarrassed the government for its negligence in responding to the very public Burr threat. It was a wild, uncertain time. Several leading Federalists were more than just confidants of the British ministers in the US. So while we often look back at the names of the leaders of our nation in its early years and think Great Men whose like we will never see again, what we see here is a mix of talented but highly flawed leaders and some perfectly mediocre and at time venal, incompetent, and occasionally dastardly individuals. Oh, and the press, the press was a rabid dog compared even to our worst talk radio and cable practioners today. O’Reilly and Obermann could have passed for fair and balanced then, however much they miss that mark now.

Jefferson was one of our giants for his contribution to American political thought and the writing of the Declaration of Independence but, despite the Louisiana Purchase and some other critical accomplishments, a fairly mediocre President. He had big dreams, not the least was the failed idea that peaceful resistance (the embargo) could overthrow military might, but like his recognition of the injustice of slavery and the ideal of an agrarian democracy of republican states, they were not dreams that his leadership could deliver to reality. Adams is a graceful, insightful, engaging writer (though there are dry spots as you might suspect) and despite having to push myself through the final third, I also had to resist taking the second volume off the shelf and begin it immediately.