NOT A REVIEW OF "AMERICAN CREATION" BY JOSEPH ELLIS

            Joseph Ellis has made a career of bringing a keen eye of dispassionate probity to the Revolutionary Generation. Wisely discarding the oft-used sobriquet, “Founding Fathers,” Ellis has repeatedly shown the Olympians of America to be extremely talented but fallible human beings whose weaknesses molded the fate of the United States as thoroughly as did their strengths. In his 2007 book American Creation, Ellis continues his winning scholarly streak with the assured hand of a born storyteller.

            As in his excellent Founding Brothers, Ellis employs an episodic approach in chronicling the foundation of the United States, examining, in turn; the debate over declaring independence, Washington’s army during the winter of 1777-78, the ratification of the Constitution, the Treaty of New York, the emergence of political parties, and the Louisiana Purchase. Ellis masterfully illustrates how the individual personalities of the players were often pitted against the political realities of an experimental nation. These men were keenly aware of how precariously the survival of the nation hung by a thread. Sometimes they sided with their principles and lost. Sometimes they embraced those political realities at the expense of their consciences. Like the best historians Ellis keeps the human drama in the forefront. You get to know Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and others as well as the historical record allows. You feel the weight on their shoulders.

            The author comes up short only in his depiction of Thomas Jefferson. As he did in his biography of Jefferson, American Sphinx, Ellis attempts to marry the contradictory parts of Jefferson’s character, particularly in regard to Jefferson’s professed distaste for the institution of slavery and his unwillingness to seize the opportunities to do anything about it. He is just as unsuccessful as he was in the biography, and we are left with a portrait of a man who may have been nothing more than a hypocrite.

            Not withstanding Ellis's inability to reinforce Jefferson’s status as a hero while humanizing him, Ellis succeeds with honors. He is uniquely able to educate readers on the winding road that was the birth of the country. David McCullough has assumed the de facto role of America’s Historian Laureate, but Joseph Ellis’s name deserves to be spoken in the same breath.