Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

“No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution.”

From the outset of his book, Ellis introduces the issue of hindsight. Though the American Revolution seems inevitable from a modern perspective, at the time, it has to be fought for, against the odds. 

“In his old age, John Adams recalled his youthful intimations of the providential forces at work: ‘There is nothing…more ancient in my memory […] than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had always travelled westward. And in conversation it was always added, since I was a child, that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America.’”

John Adams, one of the revolution’s leaders, conveys the observation that what we now see as Western civilization has traveled westward, from Greece, to Rome, to France, to Britain, and so on. Following this logic, he assumes that it is now America’s turn to have influence. 

“Though it seems somewhat extreme to declare, as one contemporary political philosopher has phrased it, that ‘the end of history’ is now at hand, it is true that all alternative forms of political organisation appear to be fighting a rearguard action against the liberal institutions and ideas first established in the United States in the late eighteenth century.”

Ellis refers to Francis Fukuyama’s prophecy of the end of history following the collapse of the Cold War. Though Ellis does not wish to make such a decisive statement himself, . he does state that the American form of government has become the predominate one throughout the world, as members of the revolutionary generation, such as Thomas Jefferson, felt it would.