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Joseph Ellis Founding Brothers Essay

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In his book, Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis summarizes and investigates major post American Revolutionary events where founding father protagonists’s shape the developing nation. Ellis’s analyzation of these events provides an explanation and closure to some of the founding father’s interactions and deeds. In Founding Brothers, Ellis discusses the founding brothers’s goal of isolationism, their purposeful silence on the slave relations, and the competitive political interactions dominating their few acts of compassion and fellowship. Joseph Ellis explores and illuminates on the early American isolationism spearheaded by the founding brothers. Ellis defines the Founding Brothers’s prominent opinion favoring the avoidance of entanglement …show more content…

Begin the book, with the infamous Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton duel to entice readers, Ellis shows the underlining factors of the duel as well as intensity of American politics. Ellis displays Col. Burr’s reasoning for his challenge “And it is perfectly possible that Burr’s smoldering hatred for Hamilton had reached such intensity, that once he had his tormentor standing helplessly in his sights, no rational calculation of his own best interests was operative at all.” Not only did American politicians viciously and tactfully undermine each other, but also encouraged staff members, “ In the meantime, Adams made one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency by keeping most of Washington's cabinet members as his own. They all had more loyalty to Hamilton than to the new president, and would continue to work against Adams's plans.” Following presidents and high level political officials would avoid Adam’s mistake. Even Jefferson and Adam’s friendship was halted by Jefferson’s plots, “While affecting disinterest and detachment, he secretly hiring scandalmongers like James Callender to libel Adams with outrageous charges: Adams was mentally deranged; Adams intended to have himself crowned as an American monarch; Adams planned to appoint John Quincy his successor to the presidency.” Once elected, Jefferson dismissed Callender, who revealed that Jefferson had subsidized his

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