Independence Day

The Jeffersonian Transformation: Passages From The “History” -  Henry Adams, with the introduction by Garry Wills

Henry Adams wrote a nine-volume history of the presidencies of Jefferson and Madison. Not being up to nine volumes, I read this abridgement that was published by the New York Review of Books in 2001. It contains the first six and last four chapters of the history. The first six chapters have been issued as a stand-alone book a couple times in the last fifty years or so, but generally Adams’ history has been neglected due to its length and inaccurate perceptions by critics.

The first six chapters present a concise social history of the US circa 1800. Adams’ thesis states that the US was regionally divided, intellectually stagnant, religiously bigoted and backward looking.  Adams includes his forebears the Adamses when he blames the Federalists for the sad state of the country they left behind.

When George Washington was saying in 1790, “I walk on untrodden ground,” both federalists and republicans were thinking the same thing. During the 1790s, the Federalists feared social disorder. They countered that sense of fear by legislating and administrating policies that were designed to bolster order and control. Because of the egregious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, two of the most extreme examples along those lines, Henry Adams says, in essence, people felt that it was time for a change.

Given the Federalists seemed to represent overreaching tyrannical power from the center, it is easy to see why Jefferson thought that his rise to the Presidency was "as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form."

This abridgement ends with the last four chapters of the History. Adams demonstrates that by 1817 the Republicans under Jefferson and Madison improved life in the US. Adams ends his book on an optimistic note, certain that the US was to have its place on the world stage.

In the introduction, Garry Wills says a culture loses a masterpiece by forgetting it or ignoring it. Critics ignored this pioneer historical work because they didn’t like Adams’ stance that Americans built an empire from the foundations laid down at the beginning of the 19^th century. Adams’ writing is always lucid, which is not to say his sophisticated arguments are readily understood on the first reading.  Challenging reading for committed students of the topic.