Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation By Joseph J. Ellis

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After carefully skimming through Joseph J. Ellis’s book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, I decided to read the book out of context. Ellis is a well-known author and I have read his book “American Sphinx - The Character of Thomas Jefferson” for a History Fair project. (Ellis, 1997) However, Ellis used a different approach in the Founding Brothers by organizing the book to first catch the attention of the audience with the duel between Burr and Hamilton. Perhaps Ellis was trying to write his first chapter to clarify his thesis statement which showed evidence that the founding fathers John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington had the ability to settle their disputes on how the government should be run through well thought out compromises and not choosing to use brutal force such as fist fighting and …show more content…
Therefore, after the introduction “The Generation” each chapter in the Founding Brothers is a separate collection of two well researched sides of the personalities and political views and ideals of the founding fathers being analyzed in great detail. The six chapters that follow are “The Duel”, “The Dinner”, The Silence”, “The Farewell”, “The Collaborator”, and “The Friendship” which are each separate pieces of work giving the audience the choice to form their own conclusions. The book presented research based evidence on the framework of building our current American form of government and democracy with issues that were argued such as, the first presidential election, the beginning of political parties, state and defined federal rights, the outline of constitutional powers and the long silence on the issue of