AMERICAN CREATION: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf
History
ISBN: 9780307263698

Joseph J. Ellis is a premier writer of American history. The Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, he has won the Pulitzer Prize (FOUNDING BROTHERS) and the National Book Award (AMERICAN SPHINX). The historical landscape he surveys in his latest work is nothing less than the entire crafting of the new American nation, before, during and after the Revolution.

No portion of the book better defines the character of the leadership of the United States in its infancy than that which details "The Treaty" between white Americans and the native peoples then known as Indians. As Ellis sagely comments, whereas Great Britain would go on to further conquest and domination in the world theater, the other losers in the American Revolution, the Indian tribes, would have no "second act."

"The British defeat triggered a tidal wave of western migration on the part of settlers who understood the phrase 'pursuit of happiness' to mean owning their own land." This would require the absolute conquest of the Indians wherever found. It was incumbent on three people to act on behalf of both the Indian tribes and the white settlers: President George Washington, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Knox. They had no intention of removing the Indians, because, as Ellis puts it, "revolutionary fires still burned inside them and they knew, deep down, that Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished." Washington brooded that failure to solve the Indian problem would be a permanent stain on his reputation and bode ill for the new republic. Jefferson, more than any of the others, believed Indians to be equal to whites but for their culture.

Together, this triumvirate attempted to shape a model for future generations by making a firm treaty with the Creek tribe of Mississippi that was led by a racially mixed and diplomatically savvy chief by the name of McGillivray. McGillivray had no reason to trust the whites, as he and his people had seen treaties broken since the incursion of Europeans onto American soil. But after lengthy negotiations, the Treaty of New York was duly signed, and the Creeks sang a song of "perpetual peace." This treaty, like all others, proved unenforceable; Washington decried the "land jobbers" who, in their zeal for territory, constantly broke over into the newly delineated Creek homeland. McGillivray went for help to the Spanish, thus exacerbating the conflict on America's southwest border.

Ellis points out that one failing of the Treaty of New York was that it was a "top-down" operation engineered by Washington, Knox and Jefferson, the sort of fiat that heretofore had been reserved for monarchs. For that reason, if no other, it was unsustainable.

AMERICAN CREATION traces with fine lines the earliest stirrings of democratic thinking that led to the formation of our government. The congressional representatives had to contend with the argument that they, by their aristocratic heritage, were in danger of ignoring the men who wore "leather aprons" --- and Abigail Adams was only too pleased to remind them that they ignored women at their peril. Her gentle admonition "Remember the ladies" was no doubt a constant and considerable irritant. Nor did it help that an anonymous letter was received by John Adams in 1775 asking, "Whot has the negros the africans don to us that shuld tak them from thar own land and mak them sarve us to the da of ther deth?" --- and pointing out that "the gentelman that leads the army" was a slaveholder. It was Abigail who succinctly queried, "If we separate from Great Britain, what code of laws will be established?"

That "code of laws" and its establishment are the essence of this artfully conceived and finely researched book, which strives like no other to present the American founders as human beings engaged together in an exciting workshop of ideas --- ideas with living and lasting consequences. Partly because the founders were unable to deal adequately with certain issues such as slavery and the Indian question, or with the proper balance between federal and states rights, Ellis contends, "The very purpose of government was subtly transformed from an ultimate arbiter to a framework for ongoing argument." This left room for great leaders to follow, new solutions to be sought and found --- and further argument.

    --- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

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