H.W. Brands
Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
A History Camp Discussion with renowned historian H.W. Brands about his book, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics. Brands discusses a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.
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Founding Partisans is an invigorating narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers warred against one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade.
The first party, the Federalists, formed around Alexander Hamilton and his efforts to overthrow the Articles of Confederation. Thomas Jefferson and the opposition organized as the Antifederalists, the precursor to the Republicans. The two factions wrestled as George Washington tried to remain above the fray. John Adams, however, our second president, was an avowed Federalist, an active participant in the battle of wills.
The country’s first years unfolded in a combative spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, as FOUNDING PARTISANS illuminates, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way toward global dominance, against all odds. Brands’ latest is a powerful reminder that flirting with political collapse and fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the republic, one we’ve survived time and time again.
In classic Brands fashion, his latest perfectly exhibits his knack for making history feel contemporary; in this case, the question at the heart of the narrative is about a vision of what America could—and should—be during the tumultuous birth of the nation, with relevance timed to our current state of divisiveness and upcoming presidential election.
[Recorded December 14, 2023]
Dr. H. W. Brands was born in Portland, Oregon. He attended Stanford University and studied history and mathematics. He later earned graduate degrees in mathematics and history, concluding with a doctorate in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He worked as an oral historian at the University of Texas Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt University. In 1987 he joined the history faculty at Texas A&M University, where he taught for seventeen years. In 2005 he returned to the University of Texas, where he holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History.
