Thesis and Summary:
In this, the 8th volume of Oxford's History of the United States, Gordon Wood weighs in on the Washington through Madison administrations, and gives a broad perspective analysis of the burgeoning American and American culture. Indeed, Wood's thesis can be summed up to say that by 1815 America was a thoroughly transformed nation from the one that initiated the revolution in 1776: a nation that had gone from gentleman leaders to a far more inclusive- albeit brutish- democracy.
Woods begins his journey to American Democracy by explaining the "middling" class of Americans that emerged with the ratification of the Constitution. This new class of Americans did not personify the classical notion of virtue that Federalists found necessary to lead. They were a people possessed of a native congeniality for the sake of prosperity. They were fond of money making (and good at it), they weren't Harvard or Princeton educated, and they voted. It is this middling class that is the protagonist (for lack of better word) of Wood's work. He sees their growth as the Federalists' death and he sees Jefferson as their chief advocate and the man responsible for their ascendance to power. Herein one finds Wood's bias. He simply adores Thomas Jefferson and makes bare faced obeisance to him at every turn of the page it seems while looking to traduce Federalists as much as possible. As I read this substantial work, I couldn't help but to constantly contrast it with Elkins and McKitrick's
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. Both works are monumental in scope, but one is sympathetic to Federalists and the other to Republicans.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 together offer a perplexing and contradictory view of the Washington administration. One the one hand, Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists ignored the middle class as beneath them. On the other, it was Alexander Hamilton's policies that brought tremendous prosperity that led to Federalist popularity in the wake of the Jay and Pickney treaties and the Whiskey Rebellion. Indeed, throughout the work, Wood never discredits the policies of the Federalists; he just merely gives them no credit for those policies.
In chapter 3, The Federalist Program, Wood makes the somewhat dubious claim that Hamilton did not have the foresight to see the future of American manufacturing. I would think that both of Hamilton's foremost biographers (McDonald and Chernow) would strongly disagree, as would Hamilton himself. Further, Wood makes an attempt to characterize Federalist policies as a Walpoleon spoils system without admitting that this was the first federal government instituted in the United States and suffered the exigencies of such: authority, legitimacy and revenue. Should they have appointed people who wanted nothing more than to undermine federal power in favor of state power? Also, for all of Wood's conjecture of a spoils system, no evidence is presented of a corrupt appointment process.
Chapter 4 shows us the emergence of Jefferson and Madison as the opposition to Federalist policy. They fight the assumption of state debts, the chartering of the Bank of the United States (which they let expire in 1810), and Hamilton's stance on foreign policy. As has become a common theme by this point in the book, Wood manages to find a way to justify Jefferson and Madison's actions with Philip Freneau while he has the time to take umbrage with the tone used by Alexander Hamilton (page 154) in totally destroying Jefferson's erroneous fears of his financial system. It really came as no surprise that Wood came down softly on the Republicans in respect to the Genet mission as well.
Wood does a much better job with the Adams administration than his predecessor. Adams fits the Federalist mold that Woods has pigeonholed them all into. He was a monarchist, a self appointed aristocrat and someone who couldn't have foreseen a use for Wood's "middling" class. Wood's makes an excellent case in chapter 6 that the disinterested aristocrat was not possible in America. American land speculation was terribly risky and none sans John Jay could hope to uphold the image of the landed English gentry. He also hits the nail on the head with the "X,Y, Z Affair" and the "Quasi War." He rightly concludes that Federalist gains were offset by their paranoid fears of the "Jacobian" influence. He does not, however, identify the split in the Federalist camp soon enough. Some time before Adams' failed second run at the Presidency the Federalists had already split between he and Hamilton. Hamilton was, in fact, vehemently against the Alien and Sedition Acts and had already brought many Federalists away from Adams.
Having done away with the Federalists, Wood now turns to Jefferson. Certainly no one writing since Dumas Malone has had a better grasp of Jefferson, but Wood's admiration of the man simply leads to what only can be viewed as equivocating on many points. It seems Woods gives Jefferson credit for the entire Revolution on page 287! Wood does correctly point out Republican ideology on page 311 when he quotes Wartman. When Wartman claims that public opinion leads to egalitarian truth, he basically is laying the groundwork for justifying anything. Of course, this is the same ideology that would be used to justify slavery some decades later. It is this that killed the Federalists. They never had a blind devotion to public opinion because they never viewed themselves as a political party. Republicans began as the opposition party to the first administration, they had always acted as a party whether they admitted it or not. When Jefferson had won power, Federalists were already dissipated enough as to never constitute an opposition party. It was not the "middling" class as Wood assumes that killed the Federalists, but the fact that Federalists never saw themselves as a political party.
Woods two chapters on the law (11 and 12) represent the two strongest chapters in the book. Beginning with his proper distinction of colonial judges against their English counterparts, Wood explains the extraordinary power that has always existed in the U.S. judiciary except under the Articles of Confederation. With the adoption of the Constitution and the Federalist administration, Federalist judges began to bring unified law to all people in the U.S. Wood rightly credit John Marshall as bringing judicial review to the U.S. by using an ex post facto explanation in the Marbury v. Madison case. Woods shows how Marshall treated the constitution as law. Fundamental law to be sure, but law nonetheless, and subject to judges' review as all laws are. Wood also correctly points out the significance of the Dartmouth College case. It single handedly did more to protect the "middling" class and the money making endeavors than any legislation passed by a Republican. Once again, it seems, that Federalist policy and decision making is in fact what allows this "middling" class to emerge, and not the high minded idealism of Thomas Jefferson. In fact, I am hard pressed to find one piece of legislation cited by Wood and enacted by Jeffersonian-Republicans that helped this "middling" class emerge that Wood is so sure was dependent upon them.
With the chapters in Republican Diplomacy and the War of 1812 not even a scholar of Wood's stature can prevaricate enough to hide the disaster of the Republican administrations.
1) Allowing the Bank of the United States to expire was a total failure and had to be re chartered
2) Decreasing the size of the Army and Navy in 1810 was not justifiable
3) Non importation and embargo act were abject failures
4) War of 1812 resulted in the burning of the U.S. Capital and status quo ante
In every case Wood attempts to use the idealism of Madison and Jefferson as a buttress against their poor decisions, even going so far as to compare their trade sanctions with modern day ones (page 633), but it runs rather shallow. Expecting the reader to level out the trade sanctions from a nascent economy to those exercised by the megalith that is the modern U.S. economy is a bit much.
In the end, the conclusion Wood reaches- that Thomas Jefferson was almost singly responsible for the emergence of the new American- simply does not follow from the 738 pages of fact he presented. The heroes that come through are George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall.
Style:
Wood's writing is superb and his scholarship is sound. Although I disagree with his conclusions, there is no mistaking the quality of his work. The simple readability of this work is amazing for a tome of this length and depth. To be sure, it is not a simple breeze through over the weekend, but it is not so arduous that you dread having to pick it up each night. Indeed, it is a joy to pick up night after night and read. I took almost 12 pages of notes as I read this book and welcome any comments. I put time and effort into this review, and do recommend this book even though I give it only 3 stars. I hope you find this review helpful even if you do not agree.
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