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| Thomas Paine | |||
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| John Quincy Adams | The French War Against America |
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Thomas Paine by Harlow Giles Unger |
Hardcover |
And the Clarion Call for American Independence
From New York Times bestselling author and Founding Fathers’ biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography
of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution,
and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men’s
souls.
Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else.
The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security.
An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
However, the world turned against Paine in his later years. While his earlier works, Common Sense and Rights of Man, attacked the political and social status quo here on earth, The Age of Reason attacked the status quo of the hereafter. Former friends shunned him, and the man America had hailed as the muse of the American Revolution died alone and forgotten.
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The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation
The first biography in more than a decade of Benjamin Rush—fiery signer of the Declaration of Independence, prominent physician, ardent politician, zealous social reformer, passionate humanitarian, and dedicated educator.
Rush was the Founding Father of an America that other Founding Fathers forgot—women, Catholics, Jews, indentured workers, prisoners, the working poor, the indigent sick and injured, and slaves.
Ninety percent of the people lived in that other America—with little or no wealth, uneducated, often illiterate, barred from voting, and without rights to life, liberty, or pursuit ofhappiness, either before or after the Declaration of Independence and separation from Britain.
Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, Rush alone heard the cries of that other America.
After risking death founding the Army Medical Corps during the Revolutionary War, he renewed his pledge to sacrifice his life, fortune, and sacred honor, and set out to heal the nation’s wounds and eliminate injustice, becoming the father of modern American medical care and, a century before Freud, establishing the foundation of psychiatry and psychiatric care.
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First Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger |
Hardcover |
Richard Henry Lee and
The Call for American Independence
Before Washington, before Jefferson, before Franklin or John Adams, there was Lee–Richard Henry Lee, the First Founding Father.
Richard Henry Lee was the first to call for independence, and the first to call for union. He was "father of our country" as much as George Washington, securing the necessary political and diplomatic victories in the Revolutionary War.
Lee played a critical role in holding the colonial government together, declaring the nation's independence, and ensuring victory for the Continental Army by securing the first shipments of French arms to American troops. Next to Washington, Lee was arguably the most important American leader in the war against the British.
Drawing on original manuscripts–many overlooked or ignored by contemporary historians–Unger paints a powerful portrait of a towering figure in the American Revolution
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Henry Clay by Harlow Giles Unger |
Hardcover |
America's Greatest Statesman
Abraham Lincoln called Henry Clay “the man for whom I fought
all my humble life.” This new biography reveals why Clay was “America’s greatest statesman.”
In a critical and little-known chapter of early American history, author Harlow Giles Unger tells how a fearless young Kentucky lawyer threw open the doors of Congress during the nation’s formative years and prevented dissolution of the infant American republic.
The only freshman congressman ever elected Speaker of the House, Henry Clay’s arsenal of powerful rhetorical weapons subdued feuding members of the House of Representatives and established the Speaker as the most powerful elected official after the President.
During fifty years in public service—as congressman, senator, secretary of state, and four-time presidential candidate—Clay constantly battled to save the Union, summoning uncanny negotiating skills to force bitter foes from North and South to compromise on slavery and forego secession. His famous “Missouri Compromise” and four other compromises thwarted civil war “by a power and influence,” Lincoln said, “which belonged to no other statesman of his age and times.”
Explosive, revealing, and richly illustrated, Henry Clay is the story of one of the most courageous—and powerful—political leaders in American history.
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John Marshall by Harlow Giles Unger |
Published by Da Capo Press |
The Chief Justice Who Saved the Nation
A hero in America’s war against British tyranny, John Marshall
and his heroics as Chief Justice turned the Supreme Court into
a bulwark against presidential and congressional tyranny and
saved American democracy.
In this startling biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals how Virginia-born John Marshall emerged from the Revolutionary War’s bloodiest battlefields to become one of the nation’s most important Founding Fathers.
As America’s greatest Chief Justice, Marshall served his country as an officer, Congressman, diplomat, and Secretary of State before President John Adams named him the nation’s fourth Chief Justice.
The longest-serving Chief Justice in American history, Marshall transformed the Supreme Court from an irrelevant appeals court into a powerful branch of government—and provoked the ire of thousands of Americans who, like millions today, accused him and the court of issuing decisions that were tantamount to new laws and Constitutional amendments.And the Court’s critics were right! Marshall admitted as much.
With nine decisions that shocked the nation, John Marshall and his court assumed powers to strike down laws it deemed unconstitutional. In doing so, Marshall’s court acted without Constitutional authority, but its decisions saved American liberty by protecting individual rights and the rights of private business against tyranny by federal, state, and local government.
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Mr. President by Harlow Giles Unger |
Published by Da Capo Press |
George Washington and The Making
Of the Nation's Highest Office
The shocking personal and political upheavals that turned
George Washington from “His Majesty the President” to plain
“Mr. President”—and back again
In a startling new look at the birth of American government, award-winning author Harlow Unger shows how George Washington transformed the American presidency from a ceremonial post into the most powerful office on earth, or what historians often call the “imperial presidency.”
With Congress paralyzed by political divisions, the nation faced attack from enemies without and within: Indian raiders on the frontiers, British and French navies on the high seas, secession-minded governors, and angry street mobs that “threatened to drag the President from his house” to the gallows.
Knowing he was setting precedents for generations of his successors, Washington took the law into his own hands, throwing constitutional restraints to the winds when he deemed it necessary to preserve the Union. Drawing on rare documents and letters, Unger shows how the first President combined political cunning and sheer genius to seize ever widening powers, impose law and order, and protect individual liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
In the end, Washington raised seven pillars of power that expanded presidential powers to send troops to war, spend public monies, make foreign policy agreements, and issue executive orders that carry the force of law—all without constitutional sanctions, the consent of Congress or the American people.
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John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger |
Published by Da Capo Press |
Raised for greatness by his parents John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams surpassed their expectations to become one of America’s greatest and most courageous leaders
In this action-filled biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals John Quincy Adams as one of the towering figures during the nation’s formative years. Ranked first in John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage, John Quincy Adams served America as minis
ter to six countries, a fearless secretary of state, a fighting senator and congressman —and sixth president of the United States.
The only son of a Founding Father to become President, he negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of the Amistad.
A sweeping panorama of American history, John Quincy Adams follows the exciting life—and loves—of an American patriot who lived more than eighty years and was able to serve under George Washington and with Abraham Lincoln. John Quincy Adams witnessed Bunker Hill, helped write the Monroe Doctrine and saw to the founding of the Smithsonian Institution.
Braving
the outcries of other House members for his expulsion, he
issued the first call to end slavery in an address that his fellow
congressman Abraham Lincoln would borrow in writing the Emancipation
Proclamation.
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Lion of Liberty by Harlow Giles Unger |
| Published by Da Capo Presss |
Lion of Liberty
Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation
“If you want to know what the Founders meant while deliberating the creation of the Confederation and the Constitution, and if you wish to understand why they made the decisions they did, read Lion of Liberty.” —New York Journal of Books
In this action-packed history, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger unfolds the epic story of Patrick Henry, who roused Americans to fight government tyranny—both British and American. Remembered largely for his cry for “liberty or death,” Henry was actually the first (and most colorful) of America’s Founding Fathers—first to call Americans to arms against Britain, first to demand a bill of rights, and first to fight the growth of big government after the Revolution.
And as Unger makes clear in this gripping biography, Henry’s words continue to echo across America, inspiring millions to fight big government intrusion in their daily lives.
“[An] engrossing and articulate biography…vivid, accessible and thought-provoking.”— Richmond Times-Dispatch
“A marvelous biography.” —San Francisco Book Review
“Excellent…Fantastically engaging…the perfect introduction to the founder whose rhetoric started a revolution.” —NPR.org
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The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger |
| published by Da Capo Press |
The Last Founding Father
James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness
A fierce fighter in the Revolutionary War, Monroe suffered a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, survived the cruelest winter at Valley Forge, and fought heroically at the Battle of Monmouth.
Decorated by Washington for his courage and leadership, Monroe went on to serve America as its first full-time politician—a member of Congress, minister to France and Britain, governor of Virginia, secretary of state, secretary of war, and, finally, fifth president of the United States.
With his courageous first lady at his side, Monroe took command of a nation nearly bankrupt, its people divided, its borders under attack, and its capital in ashes after the British invasion in the War of 1812. Monroe rebuilt national defenses, expanded the military, ripped Florida from Spanish control, and extended national boundaries to the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean.
Monroe climaxed his presidency—and startled the world—by proclaiming the landmark Monroe Doctrine, which closed the Americas to foreign incursions and colonization. Secure from foreign attack, Americans streamed westward to claim a share of America, adding six states to the Union and producing the largest economic expansion and redistribution of wealth in U.S. history.
The only president other than George Washington to win reelection by unanimous vote, Monroe led the nation and its people to greatness and created an “Era of Good Feelings” never seen before or since in American history.
Unger’s The Last Founding Father is both a superb read and stellar scholarship—action-filled history in the grand tradition.
• Read an Excerpt from The Last Founding Father »
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Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger |
| published by John Wiley & Sons |
In this gripping biography, acclaimed author Harlow Giles Unger paints an intimate and detailed portrait of the heroic young French soldier who, at nineteen, renounced a life of luxury in Paris and Versailles to fight and bleed for liberty—at Brandywine, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. A major general in the Continental army, he quickly earned the love of his troops, his fellow commanders, and his commander in chief, George Washington, who called him his “adopted son.” To the troops, he was “the soldier’s friend”; to Americans all, he was “our Marquis.”
In a tale filled with adventure, romance, and political intrigue, Unger follows Lafayette from the battlefields of North America to the palace of Versailles, where the marquis won the most stunning diplomatic victory in world history—convincing the French court to send the huge military and naval force needed to win American independence. He then returned to America to lead the remarkable guerrilla campaign in Virginia that climaxed with British surrender at Yorktown—and earned him the title “Conqueror of Cornwallis.”
Lafayette’s triumph turned to tragedy, however, when he tried to introduce American democracy in his native land. His quest for a constitutional monarchy unwittingly set off the savage French Revolution and plunged Europe into more than a decade of slaughter and war. Declared an enemy of the state, Lafayette fled France only to be imprisoned for five years in an Austrian dungeon, while his wife, Adrienne, and her family festered in prison, awaiting the cruel blade of the guillotine.
Based on years of research in France as well as in the United States, Unger’s biography reveals how American ambassador James Monroe won Adrienne Lafayette’s freedom and helped Lafayette’s only son, George-Washington Lafayette, escape France to the safety of his godfather’s home in Mount Vernon, even as the guillotine claimed his great-grandmother, grandmother, and aunt.
Lafayette is also a compelling romance, as Lafayette and his beloved, Adrienne de Noailles, feast at their sumptuous wedding banquet, dance at Marie Antoinette’s lavish palace balls, and embrace in anguish in the ghastly Austrian dungeon that Adrienne and her daughters shared with Lafayette for two brutal years.
Inspiring and educational, Lafayette is the dramatic life story of one of the great leaders in American and European history, swept up in the cataclysmic events that spawned the longest-lasting democracy in the New World and prolonged despotism for two centuries in the Old.
Selected as Best Book of 2002 by both the American Revolution Round Table of New York and the Fraunces Tavern Museum
Acclaim for Harlow Unger's Lafayette...
... “Enlightening! The picture of Lafayette’s life is a window
to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history.”
—Michel Aubert
La Fayette
... “I found Mr. Unger’s book exceptionally
well done. It’s
an admirable account of the marquis’s two revolutions—one
might even say his two lives—the French and the American. It also
captures the private Lafayette and his remarkable wife, Adrienne, in often
moving detail.”
—Thomas Fleming, author, Liberty! The
American Revolution
... “Harlow Unger’s Lafayette is a remarkable
and dramatic account of a life as fully lived as it is possible to imagine,
that of Gilbert de Motier, marquis de Lafayette. To American readers Unger’s
biography will provide a stark reminder of just how near run a thing was
our War of Independence and the degree to which our forefathers’ victory
hinged on the help of our French allies, marshalled for George Washington
by his ‘adopted’ son, Lafayette. But even more absorbing and
much less well known to the general reader will be Unger’s account
of Lafayette’s idealistic but naive efforts to plant the fruits
of the American democracy he so admired in the unreceptive soil of his
homeland. His inspired oratory produced not the constitutional democracy
he sought but the bloody Jacobin excesses of the French Revolution.”
— Larry
Collins, coauthor, Is Paris Burning? and O Jerusalem!
... “A lively and entertaining portrait of one of the most important
supporting actors in the two revolutions that transformed the modern world.”
—Susan
Dunn, author, Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light
... “Harlow Unger has cornered the market on muses to emerge as
America’s most readable historian. His new biography of the marquis
de Lafayette combines a thoroughgoing account of the age of revolution,
a probing psychological study of a complex man, and a literary style that
goes down like cream. A worthy successor to his splendid biography of
Noah Webster.”
—Florence King, Contributing Editor, National
Review
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Noah Webster by Harlow Giles Unger |
| published by John Wiley & Sons |
Noah Webster
The Life and Times of an American
Patriot
More than a lexicographer, Webster was a teacher, philosopher, author, essayist, orator, political leader, public official, and crusading editor. Webster’s life thrust him into every major event of the early history of our nation, from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812. He touched the lives of the most renowned Americans and the most obscure.
He earned the love and friendship of many, the hatred of some, but the respect of all. Noah Webster helped create far more than an American dictionary; he helped create an American nation.
In the first major biography of Noah Webster in over sixty years, author Harlow Unger creates an intriguing portrait of the United States as an energetic and confident young country, even when independence was fragile and the future unclear. Harlow Unger brilliantly restores Webster’s monumental legacy as a teacher, legislator, philosopher, lawyer, editor, and one of history’s most profoundly influential lexicographers. Breathtaking adventure—from the American Revolution to the War of 1812—and masterful scholarship converge in this riveting chronicle of a singularly American intellect.
Until Webster, no great nation on earth could boast of the linguistic unity that Webster created in the United States. More than a lexicographer, Webster was a teacher, philosopher, author, essayist, orator, political leader, public official, and crusading editor, Webster’s life thrust him into every major event of the early history of our nation, from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812. He touched the lives of the most renowned Americans—and the most obscure, He earned the love and friendship of many, the hatred of some, but the respect of all. Noah Webster helped create far more than an American dictionary; he helped create an American nation.
He might appropriately be called the “founding father” that American history forgot. Renowned during his lifetime as a principal architect of cultural and political life in the fledgling United States, Noah Webster has since disappeared into the pages of his own dictionary—ironically eclipsed by his own colossal creation. Until now. This groundbreaking biography brilliantly restores Webster’s monumental legacy as a teacher, legislator, philosopher, lawyer, crusading editor, and one of history’s most profoundly influential lexicographers.
A descendant of one of New England’s first families, Noah Webster was born in 1758 into a Connecticut landscape on the brink of revolution and strife. A serious-minded boy with bright red hair, he inherited from his father a deep-seated pride of family and love of country. When the Boston Massacre of 1770 roused the soldiers of the Hartford commonweal to arms, Webster was twelve years old and already carrying a musket and marching in the local militia. As a young man, his burgeoning patriotism was further fueled by the writings of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Paine, These philosophers heavily influenced the first portion of Webster’s career as a powerfully vocal warrior against political and social disunion and the forces of anarchy. As a schoolteacher and tireless lecturer, he sought to eradicate illiteracy in lower social classes and endorsed unprecedented programs to provide equal opportunities for women. Webster, in short, became America’s first social reformer. He was not yet forty.
Webster is known chiefly for his equally remarkable second career as the original standard-bearer of American English, however. His speller sold countless copies over the years, his dictionary achieved nothing short of a complete transformation of the way Americans wrote the language, and his elementary school curriculum was for decades the foundation of American education.
Enjoying complete access to Webster’s papers, letters, essays, and diaries, Unger explores with unique clarity and depth the role his subject played as a close ally of George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay and as a key player in the heated battle to ratify the Constitution.
"Noah Webster was a truly remarkable man, shrewd,
passionate, learned and energetic, God-fearing and patriotic. Mr. Unger
has done a fine job reintroducing him to a new generation of Americans."
— Washington Times
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America's Second Revolution: by Harlow Giles Unger |
| published byJohn Wiley & Sons |
America's Second Revolution:
How George Washington Defeated
Patrick Henry and Saved the Nation
This enlightening work recounts the ferocious but little known struggle between America's Founding Fathers over how to govern themselves and their countrymen. America warred with itself, as each state joined the seesaw "ratification revolution" that all but ripped the nation apart.
Mobs ran riot in the streets of Philadelphia, New York, and Providence. The wealthy elite supported a new constitution and a strong central government, while a majority of ordinary people opposed both. For most Americans the Constitution seemed a disaster, promising to create a new American government with the same powers of taxation as the former British government and with a president with powers to succeed himself indefinitely and become a monarch. Populist leaders such as New York Governor George Clinton and Virginia's Patrick Henry geared for violent conflict between the states to preserve local, home rule.
As he had in ‘75, Henry cried out against a central authority that could stifle state sovereignty and local self-rule: “Liberty will be lost,” he thundered,“ and tyranny will result.” George Washington countered, calling Henry an enemy of liberty.
Ratification by nine states was required for the Constitution to take effect, and by mid-March, 1788, eight had ratified. But the two largest and wealthiest states -- New York and Virginia -- stood firmly against union, and without them, the new nation would be as fragile as the parchment on which the Constitution had been written. With the fate of the country in the balance, the Federalists could only hope for a miracle to save the nation from civil war. America's Second Revolution is the story of that miracle, the events that led up to it, and the men who made it possible.
Just as the first revolution had brought Americans together, the second revolution threatened to rip the nation apart, as Washington’s Federalists battled Henry’s Anti-federalists. Rich and powerful, they displayed humor, sarcasm, fire, brilliance, ignorance, hypocrisy, warmth, anger, bigotry, and hatred. Their struggle pitted friend against friend, brother against brother, father against son. Each embodied some good, some evil, some banality, but, in the end, each helped create a new government, a new nation, and ultimately, a new civilization.
The Declaration of Independence liberated one continent from domination by another, but the Constitution revolutionized the world by entrusting the citizenry with rights never before in history granted to ordinary men.
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The French War Against America by Harlow Giles Unger |
| published by John Wiley & Sons |
The
French War Against America:
How a Trusted Ally Betrayed Washington
and the
Founding Fathers
“A very readable and provocative tale of early Franco-American
relations that will please some and infuriate others.”
—John Buchanan, author of The Road to Valley Forge: How Washington
Built the Army That Won the Revolution
“Harlow Unger has written an amazing tour de force
revealing France’s two-faced role in the American Revolution and
the early Republic. The book also has enormous relevance for contemporary
politics. Don’t miss it.”
—Thomas Fleming, author of Liberty! The American Revolution
By the end of 1798, France—”our oldest ally”—had captured or sunk more than eight hundred American ships, and President John Adams called George Washington out of retirement to command the defense of the nation’s shores against imminent French invasion. The French war against America had reached its climax. After thirty-five years of feigning friendship for America, France at last revealed her teal motive for supporting the American Revolution—and it had nothing to do with liberty.
In The French War Against America, award-winning author and historian Harlow Giles Unger shatters the myth of France as our oldest ally and reveals her as our oldest enemy. Citing hundreds of secret and nor- so-secret personal and official documents and letters from French, American, and British sources, Unger lays bare a chapter of American history ignored by many historians: the long and treacherous French plot to recapture North America.
Contrary to popular belief, the French Army came to fight in America’s Revolutionary War not to save America but to conquer her. By infiltrating the Continental Army high command, French officers hoped to replace Washington and establish a French military dictatorship. By war’s end, French agents had infiltrated every area of American life, developing close relationships with top American officials, working their way to the highest levels of the American military, and bribing cabinet members to obtain secret documents—all to try to turn the young nation into a French vassal state. From the beginning of the war, however, a small group of courageous Founding Fathers had remained suspicious of French motives. This action-packed history follows them—Washington, Adams, John Jay, and others—as they outwit every overt and covert French plot to destroy the United States.
A decade after the American Revolution, French government agents tried to overthrow President Washington by provoking widespread street rioting, while French warships occupied the harbors of major cities. Again, the Founding Fathers outwitted the French. Furious at their nation’s humiliation, the French Navy began sinking American ships to crush American foreign trade. John Adams ordered construction of an American Navy that destroyed the French fleet. Undeterred, the French continued to plot to reconquer North America into the next century. Napoleon I prepared to send 20,000 troops to invade Louisiana in 1802, and his nephew Napoleon III sent 40,000 troops to conquer Mexico in 1863, with orders to march northward into the United States.
To this day, “our oldest ally” often seems still at war with America—metaphorically and diplomatically, if not militarily. The French War Against America provides new perspectives on the origins of that war and explains why it may never end. An important addition to Franco-American history, it adds new insights into current diplomatic relationships. It is also an exciting, action-filled drama of remarkable human courage.