1789: George Washington and the Founders Create America

by Thomas B. Allen

Overview

"[Historian Allen] recreates in this meticulous and fast-moving posthumous account the events of the pivotal year 1789 in America. It’s a superb distillation of a complex moment in U.S. history.”— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

1789: George Washington and the Founders Create Americadraws on hundreds of sources to paint a vivid portrait of the new nation, setting out to show the world at large that a new—and very American—form of government was calling itself into being. “No future session of Congress will ever have so arduous and weighty a charge on their hands,” the New York Gazette observed in summer 1789. “No examples to imitate, and no striking historical facts on which to ground their decisions—All is bare creation.”

The Constitution had been written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But 1789 was the year the government it described—albeit only in the broadest of terms—had to be brought into being.

Veteran journalist Thomas B. Allen brings decades of experience and a gifted storyteller’s eye to the long-hidden history of how George Washington and the Founders set the federal government into motion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538197851
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2024
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Thomas B. Allen, esteemed and prolific author of numerous history books, including Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War (2010), Remember Valley Forge (2007), and George Washington, Spymaster (2004), lived for many years in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside the nation's capital. He was a frequent contributor to Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Military History Quarterly, Military History,Naval History, the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings, and other publications.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Eleven States Create a Nation

1 The Great Cause

2 The Specter of a King

3 The Reluctant President

4 Out with the Old

5 A New Government Awakens

6 “Now a King”

7 Etiquette Advice for the President

8 “All Is Bare Creation”

9 The Constitution as Blueprint

10 Counting We the People

11 America’s “Other Persons”

12 A Tub Full of Rights

13 “He Shall Have Power”

14 Stricken Washington, Fearful Nation

15 Washington Gets a Bastille Key

16 Seeing America’s Farms and Factories

17 Many Pirates—And No Navy

18 The Second Session: Hope and Angst

19 On the Frontier, Spies and Plots

20 Toward an American Language

Epilogue: In Rising Glory

Appendices

1 The “Correct”

Constitution of the United States

2 Inside the Dozen: the Bill of Rights

3 A Timeline of the Founding of the United States and the Federal Government

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Bibliographic Sources

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War: Not for the faint of heart or for those who prefer revolutions in ideas. Recruiters of spies as well as the spies themselves faced the gallows, and Allen tells us who kicked the box and how the body swayed. Bayonets in these pages run with blood.

The New York Times Book Review

Praise for The Bonus Army: An American Epic: A feat of research and analysis-a thoughtful, strong argument that these marches were among the most important demonstrations of the 20th century.

Bookmarks Magazine

Tom Allen - author, biographer, and student of the human heart- has given us a rare, through the keyhole of history look at the character and complexities of our Founding Fathers and the political turbulence that threatened to tear our young country apart. 1789 is must reading for those who want to grasp the relevance of today’s political turbulence with that faced by George Washington during the first year of his presidency.

William S. Cohen

1789 by Thomas B. Allen describes how many of the officers who fought in the Revolutionary War became critical components of the fledgling American government after the ratification of the Constitution.... Allen also provides an overview of the key policy decisions made during the First Congress, which began in 1789. This includes passing the bill of rights. establishing a national bank, determining what to do with the war debt. and picking a home for the national government.... Beyond policy debates, 1789 is also a social commentary. Not only did the Founding generation establish the three branches of government, they also created policies, procedures, and traditions that continue to this day. This was also an important time for the American people to create an identity separate and apart from Great Britain. Allen describes the cultural traditions that were uniquely American, particularly as it relates to literary pursuits like magazines and other publications. Daniel Webster also published his first 'dictionary' of the American English language. We highly recommend this book for any student of American history.

Nathan's Papers: Books for CONGRESS

2023-07-18
A history of how the Constitution was put into practice.

Allen (1929-2018) accepts the myth that Americans disliked the weak Articles of Confederation, which guided the Colonies through and after the Revolution. In fact, most Americans, from farmers to city workers, had few objections. Only the educated elite—northern lawyers and businessmen, southern planters—hated dealing with 13 separate currencies, banks, commercial regulations, and legal systems. Assembling in in 1787, they cobbled together the Constitution, a mixture of specific and ambiguous guidelines for a more or less democratic central government. That was the easy part. Assembling a functioning government from these guidelines was exceedingly difficult. However, it’s fun to read about, and readers will enjoy Allen’s lively account of what followed as the first Congress assembled in New York in spring 1789 and welcomed the first president. After inventing a ceremonial inauguration, it spent the following two years inventing the federal government literally from scratch. While George Washington invented the presidency, the House and Senate, notes the author, “completed a dizzying list of tasks, creating the departments of State, Treasury, and War, devising a federal judiciary system…building a financial structure for raising and collecting taxes and tariffs; approving a plan for funding foreign and domestic war debts.” Congress members also established a national bank, patent office, and navy (but no army), conducted a census, passed the Bill of Rights, and allowed Washington to move the capital to “somewhere along the Potomac River in Virginia.” Allen doesn’t delve deeply enough into the issue of slavery, but he provides a solid overview of how early leaders mostly came together to create a new system of government. Fergus Bordewich’s The First Congress is perhaps the best popular account of the foundation of the U.S. government, but this is a worthy competitor.

A fairly inspiring, mostly traditional work of early American history.

Kirkus Reviews