America's Jubilee : How in 1826 a generation remembered fifty years of independence

Rating:
Summary: Lost in the primary materials
Review: Burstein has an interesting thesis, which he articulates clearly in his Introduction, but which he fails--for me at least--to develope in the succeeding chapters. I fail to see how his long, almost tedious account of Secretary Wirt's absence from his family contributes anything to "uncover the soul of the successor generation." Or how his account of Eliza Foster, or Mrs. Bascom, or Henry Clay's duel with John Randolph contributes much other than what may be intrisically interesting in each. Burstein has used so many obscure primary materials that he gets almost lost in them. And even to a non-historian he doesn't seem to have mastered history outside his materials. On the first page he writes that ". . .America's population had tripled to 12 million . . ." from Independence to the mid-1820's. Maybe it's his arithmetic: 2.5 million to at least 13 million is more like quintuple. And he writes in a note that William Wirt served longer as a cabinet officer than anyone before Harold Ickes. What about Albert Gallatin who served from very early in Jefferson's administration well into Madison's second term? Either Burstein's editor at Knopf was very indulgent, or there must have been many a heated argument.

Rating:
Summary: Lost in the primary materials
Review: In 1826 Americans remembered and celebrated fifty years of independence with parades and speeches. America's Jubilee uses private diaries, letters, newspapers and publications to reveal the personal lives behind the pageantry and celebrations, and the survivors of the War of Independence. Chapters provide the words and experiences of ordinary citizens.

Rating:
Summary: The first 50 years of Independence
Review: Since we have just celebrated the 225th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it seems only appropriate to read an account of how our nation celebrated it's 50th anniversary of the same. This is a well-written book that takes us through that exciting year, and along the way gives us a lot of history about John Quincy Adams and the contested election of 1824. We get mini biographies of many famous people, such as Adams, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and the like, but also people who may have been fairly well-known at that time, but now are not even remotely familiar to us. It was these "unknowns" that impressed me the most, and whom I found fascinating. It's always good to read a historical work that tells me something that I did not know before, and this work delivers that aspect very well. It rounds off my recent reading of the life of John Adams, and tells me how his son fared as President and beyond. This is a book well worth the time to read, and I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Survey of 1820's American View of Revolution.
Review: This is an interesting (mostly) survey of America's reaction to the passing of the Revolutionary generation around the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The author focuses on 10 or so personalities great and small to paint a picture of how America reflected the glory and promise of the Revolution through nostalgia, politics, arts and letters.

We see LaFayette on his triumphant return tour to America as the last living connection to the military high command that won our freedom. This description I found fascinating as the old general visited the sons and daughters of his contemporaries (and a few remaining in their own right such as Adams and Jefferson).

Wiley Henry Clay, destiny's child Andrew Jackson and the unfortunate John Quincy Adams all make their appearance as they dominated the stage during the mid-1820's. America's canal boom is described, particularly as it crisscrossed Ohio, a state transformed as water highways joined New England, the Great Lakes economy and the lower Mississippi within its borders.

The quintessentially American drama of Jefferson and Adams expiring on the same day, the exact date of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration, and their famous correspondence is explored. Here the author is able to capture some of the magic and "smile of providence" that from time to time has seemed to settle on America. The effect of simultaneous death that these two brothers of independence (who were to leave that state of grace as fierce political enemies only to make up and join forces for to the benefit of posterity through their rediscovered admiration late in life) was great on our still young nation. The author recounts well the glow that settled on the nation upon discovering that Adams and Jefferson had been called back to their creator together on the anniversary of their great historical moment.

We also learn of the wife of a Massachusetts minister and the ambitious attorney general -- both authors of the time -- as they contemplate the glory of the revolution through popular writings.

This book is a survey -- disjointed and with a lot of background information not necessarily focused on the Year of Jubilee. Its strong points are the fascinating vignettes like Lafayette's tour, the Jefferson-Adams passing and President J.Q. Adams's troubled administration. Weaker, in my opinion, were digression and dissections of the romantic writing of the two authors. Our author dissected their work in a literary analysis that struck me as overdone and not in keeping with the flow of the rest of the book.

Perhaps this book would have been more accurately described as a snapshot of America as it approached its Jubilee rather than as the story of how America celebrated the event. As a survey it has many interesting chapters and the focus on a time immediately following the "Era of Good Feelings" gives some depth to a period often glossed over in other histories. Not bad, overall.