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Two time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn has distilled a lifetime of study into this brilliant illumination of the ideas and world of the Founding Fathers. In five succinct essays he reveals the origins, depth, and global impact of their extraordinary creativity. The opening essay illuminates the central importance of America’s provincialism to the formation of a truly original political system. In the chapters following, he explores the ambiguities and achievements of Jefferson’s career, Benjamin Franklin’s changing image and supple diplomacy, the circumstances and impact of the Federalist Papers, and the continuing influence of American constitutional thought throughout the Atlantic world. To Begin the World Anew enlivens our appreciation of how America came to be and deepens our understanding of the men who created it.… (more)
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Bailyn’s most controversial statements, in my opinion, are in the chapter on Jefferson. He acknowledges Jefferson’s contradictions, but spends much more time on his virtues than his failings. Further, he seems overawed about Jefferson’s encyclopedic interests and prodigious output. I’m sure there would have been others who accomplished as much if they owned over six hundred slaves during their lifetimes; Bailyn seems not to have considered how much one could have gotten done as a white male with a household full of slaves to address every quotidian (and not so quotidian) need.
Slavery aside, morality is a large topic of consideration throughout the essays, mostly in the sense of needing to balance freedom with control, in order to account for the “degree of depravity in mankind” (Madison). And, as Adams pointed out, since equality cannot be mandated, it is important to figure out ways to keep the plutocrats from taking over the body politic.
Bailyn rightly insists that since we still struggle with these issues, the concerns of the Founding Fathers remain our concerns. He charges us to continue “to probe the character of our constitutional establishment.” Good advice, and good reading.