Founding Brothers Prologue

Founding Brothers: The Generation
1. Americas success in the Revolution was unprecedented because:

a. At the time, Britains army and navy, taken together, constituted the
strongest military in the world.
b. America had a new, untested form a government.
c. The 13 colonies had never before cooperated with one another.
2. The paradox that caused friction at the start of the new nation:
a. Long-term prospects were super optimistic, almost limitless.
b. The size and scale of the national enterprise (that made America so
promising), also overwhelmed the governing capacities of the time.
3. Why was the Constitutional Convention:
a. Problematic?
i. The convention was extralegal, since its explicit, official
mandate was to only revise the AoC.
ii. It was convened and conducted in secret.
iii. The delegates did not accurately represent the entirety of the
nation.
iv. The ratification process did not require the unanimous consent
dictated by the AoC.
b. A miracle?
i. Created a consolidated federal government with sufficient power
to coerce obedience to national laws.
ii. Remained true to initial republican principles of 1776.
c. I find the Constitutional Convention more problematic because it was
convened in secret which makes it seem untrustworthy and shady.
Also, the entirety of the nation was unfairly represent by a majority of
southerners who were seeking to protect their slavery rights instead of
benefitting the nation.
4. Constitution vs. Frances Thermidorian reaction:
a. Since the Constitution was formed in secret it can be paralleled to the
coup dtat of the Thermidorian reaction.
b. Both were part of their respective nations revolution that involved a
new constitution.
c. Both involved a loose coalition (i.e. the colonies and the
Thermidorians).
5. What were considered to be Americas:
a. Assets?
i. George Washington.
ii. Commitment to republican political institutions rooted in the
prowess and practice of colonial assemblies.
iii. Sanctified as the only paradigm during the successful war for
independence/ institutionalized in the state constitutions.
b. Liabilities?
i. No one had ever established a republican government of
Americas magnitude before.
ii. The dominant intellectual legacy of the Revolution stigmatized
all concentrated political power and depicted any energetic
expression of government authority as an alien force to be
repudiated.
iii. The new states and regions the constituted America had no
common history as a nation and no experience behaving as a
coherent collective.
iv. According to the first census in 1790, black slaves accounted for
nearly 700,000 inhabitants, growing exponentially in a kind of
demographic defiance of all the republican rhetoric.
6. The Jeffersonian approach to government:
a. Jeffersonians depicted the revolution as a liberal movement; a clean
break from both English dominion and historic corruptions of European
aristocracy and monarchy.
i. Jefferson.
b. Core property: individual liberty.
c. Regarded any accommodation of personal freedom to governmental
discipline as dangerous and liable.
d. Attitude towards any energetic expression of centralized political
power could assume paranoid proportions.
e. Federalists valued a strong federal government and limited states
rights.
i. Adams, Hamilton, and Washington.
7. Common themes of Ellis:
a. How slim Americas chances of winning were.
8. I think Americas revolution succeeded due to the extraordinary leaders we
had at the time.
a. Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson were all remarkable and revered men.
9. Ellis is different because he opens the book with a scene taken out of time
and chronological order. He does this to introduce the themes that will be
extended throughout the book.
10.The significance of the titles is:
a. To show that though not legitimately, Americans are all connected.
b. The stories retold in his account of the revolutionary generation are all
linked together.
c. They are all related through the revolutionary generation.

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Founding Brothers: The Generation

1. Americas success in the Revolution was unprecedented because:

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