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"An extraordinary book." --Gordon S. Wood, Brown University Having won independence from England, America faced a new question: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not? E Pluribus Unum is a spirited look at how that question came to be answered. That the American people introduced a governmental system adequate to check the very forces unleashed by the Revolution--this, writes Professor McDonald, "was the miracle of the age. . . . The French, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, all the planet's peoples in their turn, would become so unrestrained as to lose contact with sanity. The Americans might have suffered a similar history had they followed the lead of those who, in 1787 and 1788, spoke in the name . . . of popular 'rights.' But there were giants on the earth in those days, and they spoke in the name of the nation. . . ." Forrest McDonald is Professor of History at the University of Alabama.… (more)
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In the 1920s and 30s socialism was all the rage among the "literate" types in US universities as well as Universities world-wide. A writer named Charles Beard made a name for himself in the field of American historiography by claiming that the Founders wrote the
Then came Forrest McDonald..
In 1965, McDonald shattered that anti-American, socialist paradigm. In his two most important books, E Pluribus Unum and Novus Oedo Seclorum, he revealed the philosophical influences as well as the economic ones that guided the minds of the Founders and their contemporaries. And exclusion, elitism and avarice were not some of those principles and philosophies.
McDonald's works are easily read by one not historically versed and clearly laid out. They are a must read if you want an introduction to early American thinkers and their goals and influences.