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

Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, is also a central character in Wood’s trenchant portrayal of the principles that guided America’s earliest foreign policies, leaving precedents that would inform American diplomacy ever after.
    But Empire of Liberty ’s deepest subject is not simply the formal political system that Americans crafted in their first years of nationhood. Perhaps Gordon Wood’s most original contribution in this book is his deeply engaging account of the development of a distinctively American democraticculture, a culture that shaped civil society in its manners and mores and values and behaviors every bit as deeply as it shaped the official organs of American government.
    The men who made the Revolution and wrote the Constitution were for the most part cultured gentlemen, patrician squires who believed in the foundational republican principle of self-government, to be sure, but who also expected the common folk to defer to their “betters” when it came to running the country. The Federalists like Washington, Adams, and Hamilton who presided over the first decade of nationhood were often appalled by the egalitarian excesses unleashed by the Revolution. Ordinary men and women demanded to be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”—titles once reserved for the wealthy and highborn. Employers began to be called “boss,” rather than “master.” Indentured servitude, once common throughout the colonies, came to be regarded as an affront to democratic ideals and soon all but disappeared—though chattel slavery, the poisonous serpent in the American garden, stubbornly persisted, indeed, in these years began its fateful expansion westward.
    The “middling sorts,” a new social class composed of unprivileged but energetically striving merchants, artisans, and entrepreneurs, arose to dominate politics and define the very essence of the national character. They ferociously opposed all “monarchical” pretensions and insisted on nothing less than a society completely open to talent and industry. Their influence was felt in every sector of the nation’s life, not only in politics but in commerce, religion, architecture, and the arts. Their great champion was Thomas Jefferson, the quirky and brilliant Virginia aristocrat who articulated the dearest aspirations of the common people, and whose enigmatic figure animates many of the pages that follow.
    Matters of such moment and complexity pose unique challenges to the historian. Few if any scholars are more able than Gordon Wood to do these subjects justice. A lifetime of research and writing about the early American republic has given him an unmatched mastery of the source documents that are the historian’s raw materials. Drawing on rich archives of letters, diaries, pamphlets, newspapers, and memoirs, Empire of Liberty gives voice to countless individuals who speak on almost every page with all the urgency of their own lives and all the color and flavor of their time—including of course the fabled Founders but also the brawling congressman Matthew Lyon, the dignified jurist John Marshall, the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh, and their nemesis, General William Henry Harrison, among many others.
    The Oxford History of the United States aims to bring the best scholarship to the broadest possible audience. The series is dedicated to making history live for later generations. Empire of Liberty handsomely, artfully fulfills that purpose.
    David M. Kennedy

Abbreviations Used in Citations
    Adams, ed., Works
Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams , 10 vols. (Boston, 1850–1856)
    JA, Diary and Autobiography
Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA, 1961)
    Papers of Adams
Robert J. Taylor et al., eds., The Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, MA, 1977–)
    Annals of Congress
Annals of the Congress of the United States , comp. Joseph Gales (Washington, DC,