Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers As Revolutionaries (A Cass Canfield book)

Rating:
Summary: Profiles in Courage
Review: At the beginning of the American Revolution, a fortuitous (to use Henry Kissinger's word) conjunction of character and destiny brought the United States a coterie unmatched throughout its history. Of this time that tried men's souls, Morris, Professor of History at Columbia, has selected the extraordinary even - Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison - who passed "the triple tests of their charismatic leadership, staying power, and constructive statesmanship."

In these pithy, well-informed and illuminating profiles - meant, I think, for general knowledge as opposed for scholars (though the book does include endnotes) - Morris focuses on two questions: What made these elite, prosperous and conservative members of the Establishment turn against their king and start a revolution? Having made that irrevocable commitment, what difference did their leadership mean to the conduct and goals of the American Revolution; in what way did their participation invest that epochal conflict with a singular character?

Morris's balancing of a narrative with his thesis makes this book thoroughly enjoyable. Like a proficient historian, Morris is an apt quoter, who uses his subjects' words in such a way as to make them readily recallable in the reader's mind. Of note to me at least, Morris sticks to his subjects; he remains in the colonial era and does not attempt to apply the agrarian philosophies of that time to modern politics.