 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.
As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country.
Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation. |
Average Customer Rating:   Great Oxford History I am in the midst of reading Gordon S. Wood's excellent book, "Empire of Liberty." I am reviewing this now, firstly, this is a lengthy text which lends itself to being read through and or used as a reference tool.
Superbly written, with great source material, Gordon Wood writes as if he completely enjoys the subject matter.
Empire of Liberty takes us from the aftermath of the Revolutionary War through the write up of the first constitution to the first congress and senate and the first presidency. He does a compare and contrast between what were the colonies and what was then European society. Fascinating tidbits of information like language, in what was the new USA there was one language, not so in any of the European countries that these Americans came from. You learn that the term American was a perjorative used by the British and was come to be accepted gradually by the new Republic.
He does a compare and contrast of European society and the class system of sorts that had developed in the colonies and beyond where the Aristocrats (those with land, education, profession and time) were juxtaposed against those who were the middling sort, the middle class workers, farmers, traders and artisans who had to work for their moneys. There was not so much class envy as a desire by those in the highest strata of society to run things, with those middlings desiring and believing what they heard, a participative democracy.
Unlike some great reads where we hear only the rosey side of history, or those where you feel the author has a bone to pick or is stuck in critical mode, Woods writes this in a very even tenor. You feel he is telling things like it is, but mostly just factual, occassionally he shares irony and he seems much of a reporter without any particular point of view. He seems to want to inform us as to what really happened without commentary. Pretty cool, especially with the way he writes.
I have not been able to put this down so far and hope to complete it in short order. Yet, there is so much information to digest. I love it too that much of what he uses as source material is available online today.
Lastly, he takes us through the development of the USA and finalizes what we were when at last we broke free from British influences at last with the war of 1812.
If there is a desire on your part to learn about how we came to have this great society without the hooplah, this is the read for you.
Empire of Liberty is one of those reads that is rare indeed. Gordon Wood at his best Gordon Wood's "Empire of Liberty is an excellent addition to the outstanding Oxford History of the United States collection. Rather than offering any new points or perspectives as he did in "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" or "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin", Wood has managed to synthesize all the history written about this time period. While it is very extensive in its coverage, "Empire of Liberty" still reads well, as one would expect from Gordon Wood. Highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in this important time in our history. A brilliant analysis of a multi-dimensional "transformation"
Gordon S. Wood examines a period of U.S. history about which I knew very little before reading this book. That is, from the signing of the Constitution in 1788 until the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815 that finally ended the War of 1812. It is one of the volumes within "The Oxford History of the United States" series for which another distinguished historian, David M. Kennedy, serves as General Editor. As Wood explains in the Introduction, "By 1815, Americans had experienced a transformation in the way they related to each other and in the way they perceived themselves and the world around them. And this transformation took place before industrialization, before urbanization, before railroads, and before any of the technological breakthroughs usually associated with modern social change. In the decades following the revolution America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change but came to expect and prize it."
Thus does Wood prepare his reader for a rigorous and comprehensive examination of what was indeed a multi-dimensional "transformation" during which thirteen "separate republics" eventually became "the United States of America," with its people appropriating the name that belonged to all the peoples of the New World - "even though the term `Americans' actually had begun as a pejorative label the metropolitan English had applied to their inferior and far-removed colonists." Throughout the lively and eloquent narrative that follows, Wood explains who and what played major roles in that process from a "monarchical republic" struggling for survival to what had become, "in the minds of its citizens, a nation to be reckoned with."
Of special interest to me is Wood's discussion of what Jefferson once characterized as "the miseries of slavery." He claimed that slavery's role in Missouri "was not a moral question, but one merely of power." Wood disagrees. "He was wrong. It wad a moral question, and the passions of the sons of the Founders was neither unwise nor unworthy; indeed, they had been his passions as well - the love of liberty and the desire for equality...Yet [Jefferson] always sensed that his `empire of liberty' had a cancer at its core that was eating away at the message of liberty and equality and threatening the very existence of the nation and its democratic self-government; but he had mistakenly come to believe that the cancer was Northern bigotry and money-making promoted by Federalists priests and merchants." Wood leaves no doubt that slavery would soon become the single most controversial issue for the new nation to address, especially as the thirteen colonies were joined by Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1702), Tennessee (1796), Ohio (1802), and Louisiana (1812). To what extent would slavery be a factor within the territories of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and especially Missouri? According to Wood, "The Civil War was the climax of a tragedy that was preordained from the time of the Revolution. Only with the elimination of slavery could this nation that Jefferson had called `the world's best hope' for democracy even begin to fulfill its great promise."
Those who wish to examine the next era of U.S. history are urged to check out Walter A. McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877 and Jon Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.
A thorough, somewhat tough read If, like me, you're just getting into reading popular history, you might be used to books with a very readable narrative, like John Adams by David McCullough or even The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote. In comparison to those, I found this work a bit more academic and less readable, but still dense with fascinating information. While any given part I turn to for an example is well-written, the work as a whole lacks the engaging narrative I've been spoiled by in my other pop history reads. Magisterial Another outstanding installment of the Oxford History of the United States. Empire of Liberty is erudite, thoughtful, comprehensive, and the quality of writing is unusually good. Wood does an unusually good job of balancing the basic narrative with thematic discussions of the relevant social history, intellectual history, economic history, and religious history. There is also a very nice balance between descriptions/analyses of the experiences and actions of major figures like Jefferson and Hamilton and the lives of the mass of citizens of the infant American republic.
Wood organizes his narrative and analyses around 3 important themes. One is the American sense of a great experiment in Republicanism and self-government. As Wood points out, not only was the American republican experiment distinctive, but for much of the period discussed, Europe was in a period of reaction against the French Revolution. The second theme is the emergence of a more democratic society dominated by what Wood refers to "middling" people. Wood's narrative is very much the story of the development of a relatively democratic political and economic system dominated by what was broadly a middle class with a very commercial social orientation and evangelical religious preferences. Wood also discusses very well some of the drawbacks of these developments, notably the relative anti-intellectualism, herrenvolk democracy aspects, and unrealistic foreign policy preferences of early American society. Finally, a recurrent theme, and one that follows the writings of the great 19th century historian Henry Adams, is that many of these developments were unintended consequences. As Wood shows nicely, many of the Founders were classical Republicans and viewed the Constitution as a means to restrain popular excess. The political system that emerged, however, was the most democratic in the world. The development of the American party system based on popular mobilization was led by Madison and Jefferson, classical republicans who claimed to despise "faction."
Wood lays out the major political, foreign policy, and social/economic trends beautifully. His treatments of the major political and social figures are concise and insightful. The balance between telling detail and the big picture is excellent throughout. Without being anachronistic, Wood also does an excellent job of identifying features that would have major consequences for the future. The significant and widening differences between the economic, social, and political systems of the North and South are laid out nicely. The problem of the basic contradiction between an increasingly democratic republican nation and the presence of slavery is discussed insightfully. As with all volumes of OHUS, there is a very useful annotated bibliography providing guidance for further reading.
Empire of Liberty is particularly impressive when viewed in the context of the published volumes of OHUS. The sequence covering approximately the first century of US history consists of Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause, Empire of Liberty, Howe's What Hath God Wrought, and McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. These books are all individually superb and collectively the best cumulative historical survey in existence. All these books reflect a basic, perhaps the basic, question of the American historical experience - what does it mean to be a democratic society? The editors of OHUS, initially the late C. Vann Woodward and now David Kennedy (the author of the equally superb OHUS volume on the Great Depression and WWII) deserve great credit for recruiting a series of outstanding scholars to produce these outstanding volumes. |  |
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