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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $48.50

Format:
Hardback
880 pp.
40 b/w halftones, 6.3" x 9.3"

ISBN-13:
9780195039146

Publication date:
October 2009

Imprint: OUP US


Empire of Liberty

A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

Gordon S. Wood

Series : Oxford History of the United States

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.

As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country.

Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.

Editor's Introduction
Introduction: Rip Van Winkle's America
1. Experiment in Republicanism
2. The Monarchical Republic
3. The Federalist Program
4. The Emergence of the Jeffersonian Republican Party
5. The French Revolution in America
6. John Adams and the Few and the Many
7. The Crisis of 1798-1799
8. The Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800
9. Republican Society
10. The Jeffersonian West
11. Law and an Independent Judiciary
12. Chief Justice John Marshall and the Origins of Judicial Review
13. Republican Reforms
14. Slavery and Freedom
15. The Rising Glory of America
16. Republican Religion
17. Republican Diplomacy
18. The War of 1812
19. A World within Themselves
Bibliographic Essay

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Gordon S. Wood is Alvo O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.

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Special Features

  • A magnificent new volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States, written by the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Gordon S. Wood.
  • A bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning author with a major media platform.
  • Integrates politics and law with culture, economy, and society for this period.