11/01/2022
A historian of early Constitutional history, Gutzman (Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary; James Madison and the Making of America) recounts the history of the presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (two terms each, totaling six consecutive terms). He argues that this is a distinctive American history period. An admirer of Jefferson, he perceives the third president's philosophy to be a constant and fundamental presence in all three administrations during this 24-year era of peaceful foreign relationships, frugality in government, a small military, and limited government as prescribed by the Constitution. The author is especially interested in the important early decisions of the Supreme Court such as Marbury v. Madison, which he argues paved the way for the U.S. centralized national government, not what he believes a literal and very strict reading of the Constitution would dictate. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers of early 18th-century American history, Jefferson, and Constitutional history.—Mark Jones
★ 2022-09-28
A long, insightful look at three Founder presidents.
Before Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, America’s only consecutive trio of two-term presidents were Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, a fact of no significance except to trivia buffs, but that earlier “Virginia dynasty” has proved irresistible to scholars. History professor Gutzman, who has written biographies of both Jefferson and Madison, describes their administrations, which extended from 1801 to 1825, a period during which Jefferson’s Republican Party (radical for the time) drove the Washington-inspired Federalists to extinction, governed a one-party nation for a few years, and then retreated as a more numerous and democratic electorate came to dominate. Despite America’s spectacular expansion during this period, Gutzman (and most modern historians) does not give any of its three administrations high marks. Jefferson peaked during the Revolution with the Declaration of Independence and his 1777 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but his conduct as president won America little respect in the dog-eat-dog world of the Napoleonic Wars. Relying on moral suasion and trade embargos to fend off outrages from Britain and France proved disastrous, and he left office under a cloud. Madison, Jefferson’s closest friend, more scholarly and perhaps more politically astute, labored under the disadvantage of playing second fiddle for more than 20 years. Lacking Jefferson’s charisma and continuing his unwise policies—especially his fierce government frugality—left the U.S. unprepared for the War of 1812. Unlike most historians, Gutzman gives Monroe equal time. Hardly a scholar but an experienced politician, he was president during eight postwar years, dealing unimaginatively but not disastrously with several looming problems, including slavery, banking, and the loose cannon that was Andrew Jackson. Political histories are rarely page-turners, but Gutzman, clearly a scholar who has read everything on his subjects, writes lively prose and displays a refreshingly opinionated eye for a huge cast of characters and their often unfortunate actions.
Outstanding historical writing.
A long, insightful look at three Founder presidents. … Political histories are rarely page-turners, but Gutzman, clearly a scholar who has read everything on his subjects, writes lively prose and displays a refreshingly opinionated eye for a huge cast of characters and their often unfortunate actions. Outstanding historical writing.” — Kirkus (starred review)
“[Kevin Gutzman] has an eye for detail and a firm grasp of his period.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Though a conservative historian, Gutzman tries to thread the various needles of contemporary conscience, never excusing the slave-owning Southerners, but aware of the risks of judging the ideas of the eighteenth century by the standards of the twenty-first.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“Well-informed … Gutzman draws sharp profiles of the era’s leading politicians and military figures” —Publishers Weekly
“…an expansive yet highly detailed account of exactly how this trio of Virginians governed the nation and the legacy of republicanism they left behind…One of the great virtues of Gutzman’s The Jeffersonians is that he generously quotes his subjects, allowing them to speak for themselves. We would do well to listen to them.” –The Federalist
“With The Jeffersonians, Kevin Gutzman has written a rare and welcome kind of book, one that will satisfy academic historians (insofar as academics can be satisfied), whom he engages across several highly salient scholarly questions. … this excellent book will make a worthy addition to any early republic bookshelf and, hopefully, to many an undergraduate syllabus.” —Washington Free Beacon
“The fragmented story of the Early Republic gets pieced together in Kevin Gutzman's action-packed account. By recovering the shared vision of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, The Jeffersonians provides our most cohesive, coherent, and masterful narrative of politics in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.” —Robert M. S. McDonald, United States Military Academy at West Point, author of Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson's Image in His Own Time
“With this book, one of our leading scholars of the talented Virginians who dominated the early American presidency has provided us an engrossing political history of the period, uniting the story of the Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe administrations into a single narrative account. Rich with detail, spiced with wit and shrewd insight, The Jeffersonians will hold interest for the political philosopher and the political junkie alike. But above all, it demonstrates that a persistent theme ran through the political vision of its protagonists: a suspicion of Federal overreach. That theme has lost none of its relevance for us today.” —Wilfred McClay, Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization, Hillsdale College
“The fragmented story of the Early Republic gets pieced together in Kevin Gutzman's action-packed account. By recovering the shared vision of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, The Jeffersonians provides our most cohesive, coherent, and masterful narrative of politics in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.” —Robert M. S. McDonald, United States Military Academy at West Point, author of Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson's Image in His Own Time
"It is rare that political history can be both readable and essential, but Kevin Gutzman has somehow done it. By offering a view from the perspective of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, Gutzman's Jeffersonians invites readers to understand the accomplishments and failures of the most important and most dominant political coalition in American history." —Jeremy D. Bailey, author of Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power and James Madison and Constitutional Imperfection
