Using visual documentation portraits, architecture, allegorical engravings as well as written sources, Bailyn, one of our most esteemed historians, paints a complex picture of that distant but still remarkably relevant world. He explores the powerfully creative effects of the Founders’ provincialism and lays out in fine detail the mingling of gleaming utopianism and tough political pragmatism in Thomas Jefferson’s public career, and the effect that ambiguity had on his politics, political thought, and present reputation. And Benjamin Franklin emerges as a figure as cunning in his management of foreign affairs and of his visual image as he was amiable, relaxed, and amusing in his social life.
Bailyn shows, too, why it is that the Federalist papers polemical documents thrown together frantically, helter-skelter, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in a fierce political battle two hundred years ago have attained canonical status, not only as a penetrating analysis of the American Constitution but as a timeless commentary on the nature of politics and constitutionalism.
Professor Bailyn concludes, in a wider perspective, with an effort to locate the effect of the Founders’ imaginative thought on political reformers throughout the Atlantic world. Precisely how their principles were received abroad, Bailyn writes, is as ambiguous as the personalities of the remarkably creative provincials who founded the American nation.
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Background Information
The American Revolution started earlier than the War of Independence and last until peace was signed in 1783. The Founding Fathers are those men who participated in the country's principal documents, primarily the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison composed the Federalist Papers in defense of the new Constitution during the ratification process. Alexander Hamilton was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, the first Secretary of the Treasury and died in a duel with Aaron Burr. James Madison helped draft the Constitution, collaborated on the Federalist Papers and became Americ'as Fourth President. John Jay was a Founding Father, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, and an early diplomat after whom several treaties are named. The United States Constitution is the written document by which both the federal government was instituted.