The Democratic Republic, 1801-1815

by Marshall Smelser

Book Overview

As one in a series surveying U.S. history, this volume focuses on the administrations of Jefferson and Madison and the War of 1812.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061314064
• ISBN13: 9780061314063
• Release Date: January 1968
• Publisher: Harpercollins College Div
• Length: 369 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.1" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

A superb volume in a great series (with two caveats)

Let me deal with the caveats up front. The first weakness is mine as a reviewer. The period of American history that Smelser writes about is not really my forte. I have read less than 10 or 12 books that cover that period and all have been fairly specialized. This is the first general history of the period that I have read in quite a while. So there may be even better general introductions to the period available. When The Oxford History of the United States gets around to publishing its volume on this period, it will probably improve on and update Smelser quite a bit. But for now this volume in an earlier series of histories (The New American Nation Series) is darn fine or so it seems to me. The second caveat is about Smelser as a historian. The reviewer below is correct. Smelser published this book back in 1968 and it is a product of the historical approaches of that period. The influence of social historians and radical historians were yet to be felt in the profession. We see little of the working classes, of women, or of ethnicities (except Tecumseh) in Smelser's book. But what Smelser does, he does very well. I would also like to assert that that particular weakness is also a strength. There are good reasons to read histories that belong to an earlier generation of interpretation. For one thing, it will introduce you to secondary sources that are superb yet have been forgotten because their foci are considered to be outdated. How many young historians read Edward S. Corwin on the constitution anymore or Leonard White on American bureaucratic history or Bradford Perkins on diplomatic history? They should. Enough of the autumnal wails of an old crank. On to Smelser. This is a straightforward telling of the Jeffersonian and Madisonian administrations. These administrations were the last from the founding generation that struggled for independence and then to create an effective (yet libertarian) national government. By the time of the Monroe administrations, politics had changed from that of the founders. By that time, we were will on the way to being a democratic (as opposed to a deferential) republic. Smelser covers all the main stories of the period, e.g., the emerging struggle between the Jeffersonians and Chief Justice Marshall, the financing of the national government, the relative power of Congress and the President, the shortsighted dismantling of the Navy and the Army, the struggle to stay neutral between and unmolested by either France or Britain and so forth. I feel that Smelser is particularly good on that latter issues. He reminds us that we were at the time very much a third rate power made even more so by our philosophies on standing armies and navies. Jefferson and Madison tried to steer a course between Britian and Napoleon using unrealistic economic theories and appeals to logic. In fairness to them both, Smelser makes it clear that they did everything they could to avoid a war and when that becaume impossible, Madison chang

Academic yet readable narrative of early America.

This book focuses on the diplomatic history of the United States from 1801-1815. There is very little social history, and "the people" are usually only reffered to in their reaction to larger political and diplomatic events. However, the author's style is readable and catching. Diplomatic history can be very boring, but Smelser has melded academic scholarship with writing that can interest almost anyone.