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Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
Knopf
May 2015
On Sale: May 12, 2015
320 pages
ISBN: 0385353405
EAN: 9780385353403
Kindle: B00N6PD4MM
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
From Pulitzer Prize–winning American historian Joseph J.
Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies,
having just fought off the imposition of a distant
centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate
themselves anew. We all know the famous opening phrase of Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this Continent a new Nation.” The
truth is different. In 1776, thirteen American colonies
declared themselves independent states that only temporarily
joined forces in order to defeat the British. Once
victorious, they planned to go their separate ways. The
triumph of the American Revolution was neither an
ideological nor a political guarantee that the colonies
would relinquish their independence and accept the creation
of a federal government with power over their autonomy as
states. The Quartet is the story of this second American founding
and of the men most responsible—George Washington, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. These men, with the
help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the
contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic
dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation,
manipulating the political process to force the calling of
the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda
in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state
ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of
Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional
settlement. Ellis has given us a gripping and dramatic portrait of one
of the most crucial and misconstrued periods in American
history: the years between the end of the Revolution and the
formation of the federal government. The Quartet unmasks a
myth, and in its place presents an even more compelling
truth—one that lies at the heart of understanding the
creation of the United States of America.
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