The emergence of the early American republic as a new nation on the world stage conjured rival visions in the eyes of leading statesmen at home and attentive observers abroad. Thomas Jefferson envisioned the newly independent states as a federation of republics united by common experience, mutual interest, and an adherence to principles of natural rights. His views on popular government and the American experiment in republicanism, and later the expansion of its empire of liberty, offered an influential account of the new nation. While persuasive in crucial respects, his vision of early America did not stand alone as an unrivaled model.
The contributors to Rival Visions examine how Jefferson’s contemporaries—including Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall—articulated their visions for the early American republic. Even beyond America, in this age of successive revolutions and crises, foreign statesmen began to formulate their own accounts of the new nation, its character, and its future prospects. This volume reveals how these vigorous debates and competing rival visions defined the early American republic in the formative epoch after the revolution.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Rival Histories: The Early American Republic’s Quarrel with Time
2. The Philosophical Politics of Jefferson and Adams
3. An American Abroad: Jeffersonian Diplomacy and Early American Nationalism
4. The French Revolution, the Election of 1800, and the Character of the American Nation: A Transatlantic Perspective
5. The Public Interest of Religion in the New Nation
6. Jefferson, Madison, Adams: Conversations on Religious Liberty
7. Slavery in Jefferson’s Worlds: Monticello, America, and Beyond
8. Washington and Jefferson: American Nationhood and the Problem of Slavery
9. Work, Character, and the Moral Sense in the Early American Republic
10. Technology, Progress, and Early American Constitutionalism
11. An Enduring Political Rivalry: Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Dustin Gish, Faculty and Associate Director of the Minor in Politics and Ethics in the Honors College at the University of Houston, is coauthor of Thomas Jefferson and the Science of Republican Government: A Political Biography of ‘Notes on the State of Virginia.’ Andrew Bibby, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, is author of Montesquieu’s Political Economy.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
223,428 Ebooks in this category
