The Republican ideology, created and led by Jefferson, manifested itself in the generation after the Founding Fathers.
Author: Last Best Hope of Earth
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America in 1815: The Native Americans
The Last of the Mohicans. By: Thomas Cole. By 1815, the Native Americans had been pushed mostly out of the New England area and into territories just east of the Mississippi River and the entirety of the territory west of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans were a significant obstacle to expanding American territory.
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Constitution Sunday: Reply to Wilson’s Speech: “Centinel” [Samuel Bryan] II
Reply to Wilson’s Speech: “Centinel” [Samuel Bryan] II
Freeman’s Journal (Philadelphia), October 24, 1787
Following are excerpts from Samuel Bryan’s article, published in response to James Wilson’s speech:
“Friends, countrymen, and fellow-citizens, As long as the liberty of the press (more…)
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The Lesson of the American Revolution
Washington Crossing the Delaware. By: Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. The American Revolution changed political theory and government. At the heart of that change was the empowerment of the people, which continues to present day America.
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A Charter of Power Granted by Liberty
Nathaniel Chipman. Artist unknown. Thomas Paine described the Constitution as “not a thing in name only; but in fact . . . . It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains . . . every thing that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound.” Paine, Rights of Man, Foner, ed., Writings of Paine, I, 278.
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The Pivot of American Government
James Sullivan. By: Gilbert Stuart. In the earliest years of the American Republic, individuals like James Madison, Samuel Williams, Charles Pinckney, and Samuel Langdon concluded that no country had created a better model for representative government than America’s. See Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 596.
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Cap-Stone of the Great American Empire
James Wilson. The political theory that emerged from the Revolution and the debates surrounding the Constitution was not “a matter of deliberation as it was a matter of necessity.” Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 593.
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The Two Scales and the Hand that Holds it
Benjamin Lincoln. By: John Singer Sargent. Benjamin Lincoln wrote a series of articles in the Boston Magazine and Independent Chronicle that would touch on many of the same subjects as John Adams in his Defence of the Constitution. See Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, 576.
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No Special Providence for Americans
John Adams. By: Mather Brown. Despite the optimism surrounding the Revolution, John Adams had taken a different tact.
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Constitution Sunday: Reply to Wilson’s Speech: “A Democratic Federalist”
Reply to Wilson’s Speech: “A Democratic Federalist”
Pennsylvania Herald (Philadelphia), October 17, 1787
Following are excerpts from the article, published in response to James Wilson’s speech: (more…)
Last Best Hope of Earth 