American Creation

American Creation

Joseph Ellis is a Professor at Mount Holyoke College. He is a renowned author on the American Revolution and has written many books about the revolutionary period. I believe Joseph Ellis is trying to provide an insight to the "average" American populace on the early years of our nation's founding. Ellis discusses the great odds that George Washington and his ragged ill equipped army faced against the British Royal Military and Navy. His main goal for this book is to really go in depth about the people who really shaped our nation today, and what they had to go through to achieve independence and build a new nation. Ellis is basically trying to provide a very detailed insight on what really happened. The main characters that Ellis speaks about in his book are George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. He refers to them as "Demigods". He calls them demigods because they were the masterminds that shaped the nation that we know today. Nobody could or can be compared to the founding fathers because they planned and built one of the greatest world powers ever seen. Ellis implies that America has a flawless system and no other can compare to America and anything other country is lesser such as China, Russia, and France whose revolution had a "bloody and chaotic fate"(21). The main historical characters that played no role in "American Creation" were women, slaves, and Native Americans. Although women like Abigail Adams provide a great insight to what life was really like during the revolutionary war and what issues were really a key part to the American Revolution.

The failure and tragedy of the founding of America is characterized in two different problems, Slavery and Native Americans. Slavery was a very controversial topic at the time. Thomas Jefferson did not like the idea of slavery even though he himself owned slaves. Jefferson thought that the idea of slavery completely contradicted the idea of a free republic. Jefferson stated that slavery was "incompatible with the republican values on which the American nation was based on"(234). Jefferson rejected the idea of abolition because he feared a civil war. He feared the destruction of the newly formed republic that he and his colleagues had worked so hard to create. Jefferson knew that slavery was completely immoral and contradicted the idea of a free nation. The second failure was to create a fair settlement for the Native American population. The founding fathers that "a moral solution for the Native American problem was politically impossible"(242) Jefferson knew that even if slavery was abolished there would still be a great deal of tension between blacks and whites.

Ellis characterized the American frontier as a chance for a new country to grow and prosper. The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the