Founding Brothers

As another multi-million-dollar, slickly stage-managed US election campaign draws to a close, it is well worth reading Ellis' history of the Republic's stumbling birth.

For the American colonists, winning the War against the Redcoats was, in some ways, the easy part of the push for independence. What lay ahead in the 1790s was the difficult task of forging legal and constitutional frameworks in which to enshrine the revolutionary principles of equality and freedom.

This job fell to a group of men who have come to be known as the founding fathers (although Ellis's term 'founding brothers' seems somehow more appropriate). Each of these men held strong opinions, and often violently disagreed with one another (rather extremely, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr resorted to a pistol to settle their differences, resulting in Hamilton's death).

Far from impeding their work, Ellis convincingly argues that these differing opinions and backgrounds actually helped to hold the fledgling nation together: John Adams, with his 'virtually unbeatable' Revolutionary credentials, was from Massachusetts; George Washington was the triumphant General, whose mythical status placed him above criticism; Thomas Jefferson was the patrician slave-owning southerner; wise Benjamin Franklin had experienced the French Revolution at first hand; Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist; and James Madison orchestrated Jefferson's Presidential campaign.

In the course of their struggle, friendships were tested, broken and remade (particularly in the case of Adams and Jefferson); serious compromises were also made, some of which had grave repercussions for the Republic years later (slavery was to become the great undiscussed issue between the men).

Professor Ellis' enlightening book brings a very human perspective to one of American history's most mythologised moments, illuminating the fact that the founding brothers - fully aware of the heavy hand of destiny upon their shoulders - bent to their work accordingly.