Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood

From the Publisher

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.
As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future oftheir country.
Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.

The New York Times - Jay Winik

…[a] superb new account of America's pivotal first quarter-century…Who better to untangle this extraordinary but frequently overlooked story than a distinguished Pulitzer Prize winner and an author of several classic works about the Revolutionary era? On every page of this book, Wood's subtlety and erudition show. Grand in scope and a landmark achievement of scholarship, Empire of Liberty is a tour de force, the culmination of a lifetime of brilliant thinking and writing.

Publishers Weekly

Anew addition to the Oxford History of the United States, Wood's superb book brings together much of what historians now know about the first quarter-century of the nation's history under the Constitution. Acknowledged as the leading historian of the period, Wood brings authority and easy style to a tough task—wrestling into order a period of unusual anxiety, confusion, crisis and unbridled growth in the nation's affairs. The emergence of democracy and individualism is his overarching theme. No surprise there, for he's the author of a celebrated work (The Radicalism of the American Revolution) on just that topic. In this new work, he concentrates more on events, institutions, politics and diplomacy than in his earlier books yet proves himself a master of these topics, too. He offers no newfangled approaches, no strongly stated positions, no contests with other historians. Instead, we get the distillation of a lifetime's study and reflection about the era between Washington's presidency and the end of the War of 1812. A triumph of the historian's art, Wood's book will not soon be supplanted. No one interested in the era should miss it. 40 b&w illus., maps. (Oct.)

Library Journal

In tackling the turbulent years of America's early republic, Wood (Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus, Brown Univ.; The Radicalism of the American Revolution) brings his considerable talents to a series that has already produced three Pulitzer Prize winners. Wood's outstandingly eloquent and cerebral analysis commences in the aftermath of the contentious ratification of the U.S. Constitution, a time when republican ideals, from classical virtue to "disinterestedness," remained the principal animating force in the political life of the fledgling republic. Wood sees the initial optimism quickly dashed in the fiery confrontation between the Hamiltonian Federalists seeking to establish an energetic national government and the Jeffersonian Republicans and their "Empire of Liberty." Skillfully traversing seminal topics such as slavery, westward expansion, social leveling, diplomacy, evangelicalism, the arts and sciences, and the transformation of the American legal system, Wood's authoritative and compelling narrative presents a picture of early Americans engaged in pursuit of cultural, social, and economic self-discovery. Most distinctively, Wood avoids the mere celebratory retelling of big events such as the Louisiana Purchase, instead conveying the currents and contours of the era as a whole. VERDICT Wood has provided academics and general readers alike with a brilliant, definitive, and thought-provoking historical synthesis; sure to become indispensable to any study of the era.—Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL

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Table of Contents