Logotipo librería Marcial Pons
Fears of a setting sun

Fears of a setting sun
the disillusionment of America's founders

  • ISBN: 9780691210230
  • Editorial: Princeton University Press
  • Lugar de la edición: Princeton (NJ). Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
  • Encuadernación: Cartoné
  • Medidas: 24 cm
  • Nº Pág.: 288
  • Idiomas: Inglés

Papel: Cartoné
34,84 €
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Resumen

The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created

Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them-including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson-came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment.

As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country's future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.

A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.

Washington
1. The Demon of Party Spirit 17
2. Farewell to All That 31
3. Set Up a Broomstick 45

Hamilton
4. No Man’s Ideas 61
5. Struggling to Add Energy 73
6. The Frail and Worthless Fabric 86

Adams
7. Such Selfishness and Littleness 103
8. His Rotundity 116
9. The Brightest or the Blackest Page 132

Jefferson
10. Weathering the Storm 149
11. The Knell of the Union 162
12. A Consolidation or Dissolution of the States 179

Madison
14. Far from Desponding 205
15. Grounds for Hope 218
Epilogue. A Very Great Secret 225
Interlude. The Other Founders
13. No Cheering Prospect 197

Resumen

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