The History Book Club discussion

This is a great resource - Biographies of the Founding Fathers - The Signers of the Articles of Confederation

http://colonialhall.com/bioaoc.php

Baron on Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock

William M. Fowler

No Synopsis available.

Terrific all of the adds

Bentley wrote: "Terrific all of the adds"

Welcome.

Gentleman Revolutionary : Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution

by Richard Brookhiser (no photo)

Synopsis:

Since 1996, Richard Brookhiser has devoted himself to recovering the Founding for modern Americans. The creators of our democracy had both the temptations and the shortcomings of all men, combined with the talents and idealism of the truly great. Among them, no Founding Father demonstrates the combination of temptations and talents quite so vividly as the least known of the greats, Gouverneur Morris.
His story is one that should be known by every American -- after all, he drafted the Constitution, and his hand lies behind many of its most important phrases. Yet he has been lost in the shadows of the Founders who became presidents and faces on our currency. As Brookhiser shows in this sparkling narrative, Morris's story is not only crucial to the Founding, it is also one of the most entertaining and instructive of all. Gouverneur Morris, more than Washington, Jefferson, or even Franklin, is the Founding Father whose story can most readily touch our hearts, and whose character is most sorely needed today.

He was a witty, peg-legged ladies' man. He was an eyewitness to two revolutions (American and French) who joked with George Washington, shared a mistress with Talleyrand, and lost friends to the guillotine. In his spare time he gave New York City its street grid and New York State the Erie Canal. His keen mind and his light, sure touch helped make our Constitution the most enduring fundamental set of laws in the world. In his private life, he suited himself; pleased the ladies until, at age fifty-seven, he settled down with one lady (and pleased her); and lived the life of a gentleman, for whom grace and humanity were as important as birth. He kept his good humor through war, mobs, arson, death, and two accidents that burned the flesh from one of his arms and cut off one of his legs below the knee.
Above all, he had the gift of a sunny disposition that allowed him to keep his head in any troubles. We have much to learn from him, and much pleasure to take in his company.

Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution

by Mark Puls (no photo)

Synopsis:

Samuel Adams is perhaps the most unheralded and overshadowed of the founding fathers, yet without him there would have been no American Revolution. A genius at devising civil protests and political maneuvers that became a trademark of American politics, Adams astutely forced Britain into coercive military measures that ultimately led to the irreversible split in the empire. His remarkable political career addresses all the major issues concerning America's decision to become a nation -- from the notion of taxation without representation to the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all acknowledged that they built our nation on Samuel Adams' foundations. Now, in this riveting biography, his story is finally told and his crucial place in American history is fully recognized.

Samuel Adams: A Life

by Ira Stoll (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this stirring biography, Samuel Adams joins the first tier of founding fathers, a rank he has long deserved. With eloquence equal to that of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, and with a passionate love of God, Adams helped ignite the flame of liberty and made sure it glowed even during the Revolution's darkest hours. He was, as Jefferson later observed, "truly the man of the Revolution." In a role that many Americans have not fully appreciated until now, Adams played a pivotal role in the events leading up to the bloody confrontation with the British. Believing that God had willed a free American nation, he was among the first patriot leaders to call for independence from England. He was ever the man of action: He saw the opportunity to stir things up after the Boston Massacre and helped plan and instigate the Boston Tea Party, though he did not actually participate in it. A fiery newspaper editor, he railed ceaselessly against "taxation without representation."

In a relentless blizzard of articles and speeches, Adams, a man of New England, argued the urgency of revolution. When the top British general in America, Thomas Gage, offered a general amnesty in June 1775 to all revolutionaries who would lay down their arms, he excepted only two men, John Hancock and Samuel Adams: These two were destined for the gallows. It was this pair, author Ira Stoll argues, whom the British were pursuing in their fateful march on Lexington and Concord.

In the tradition of David McCullough's John Adams, Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers, and Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin, Ira Stoll's Samuel Adams vividly re-creates a world of ideas and action, reminding us that none of these men of courage knew what we know today: that they would prevail and make history anew.

The idea that especially inspired Adams was religious in nature: He believed that God had intervened on behalf of the United States and would do so as long asits citizens maintained civic virtue. "We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection," Adams insisted. A central thesis of this biography is that religion in large part motivated the founding of America.

A gifted young historian and newspaperman, Ira Stoll has written a gripping story about the man who was the revolution's moral conscience. Sure to be discussed widely, this book reminds us who Samuel Adams was, why he has been slighted by history, and why he must be remembered.

Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic

by Mark David Hall (no photo)

Synopsis:

One of leading figures of his day, Roger Sherman was a member of the five-man committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and an influential delegate at the Constitutional Convention. As a Representative and Senator in the new republic, he had a hand in determining the proper scope of the national government's power as well as drafting the Bill of Rights. In Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, Mark David Hall explores Sherman's political theory and shows how it informed his many contributions to America's founding.

A close examination of Sherman's religious beliefs provides insight into how those beliefs informed his political actions. Hall shows that Sherman, like many founders, was influenced by Calvinist political thought, a tradition that played a role in the founding generation's opposition to Great Britain, and led them to develop political institutions designed to prevent corruption, promote virtue, and protect rights. Contrary to oft-repeated assertions that the founders advocated a strictly secular policy, Hall argues persuasively that most founders believed Christianity should play an important role in the new American republic.

The King of the Alley: William Duer : Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator 1768-1799

by Robert Francis Jones (no photo)

Synopsis:

This is the first full-scale study of the career of late-eighteenth century entrepreneur William Duer. A member of the New York State Convention and the Continental Congress, and Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury when the Federal government was organized, Duer had a role in all the significant changes that occurred during the revolutionary period. In addition, Duer was a stock speculator, a land promoter, an army contractor, and merchant. While he was Secretary to the Board of Treasury, Duer floated the Scioto Land Comapny, one of the biggest speculations ever attempted in the United States.

Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life

by William Howard Adams (no photo)

Synopsis:

This title is a biography of one of the most colourful and least well-known of the founding fathers. A plain-spoken, racy patrician who distrusted democracy but opposed slavery and championed freedom for all minorities, an important player in the American Revolution, later an astute critic of the French Revolution, Gouverneur Morris remains an enigma among the founding generation. This biography tells his robust story, including his celebrated love affairs during his long stay in Europe. Morris's public record is astonishing. One of the leading figures of the Constitutional Convention, he put the Constitution in its final version, including its opening Preamble. As Washington's first minister to Paris, he became America's most effective representative in France. A successful, international entrepreneur, he understood the dynamics of commerce in the modern world. Frankly cosmopolitan, he embraced city life as a creative centre of civilization and had a central role in the building of the Erie Canal and in laying out the urban grid plan of Manhattan. William Howard Adams describes Morris's many contributions, talents, sophistication, and wit, as well as his romantic liaisons, free habits, and free speech. He brings to life a fascinating man of great stature, a founding father who receives his due at last.

An Incautious Man: The Life of Gouveneur Morris

by Melanie Randolph Miller (no photo)

Synopsis:

In An Incautious Man, historian Melanie Miller provides a succinct but sophisticated recounting of the life of one of our lesser-known but most engaging Founding Fathers: Gouverneur Morris. One of George Washington’s “surrogate sons,” Morris played a profound role in ensuring the success of the American Revolution and the creation of the Constitution. Miller provides readers a look behind the closed doors of the Constitutional Convention, where Morris’s crystalline but passionate eloquence gave the debate a vitality that remains both enthralling and keenly meaningful for those of us whose lives have been decisively shaped by the results of that deliberation.

In 1792, Morris replaced Thomas Jefferson as the American minister to France. His experience there during the Terror is unparalleled in diplomatic history. As Miller tells it, Morris’s time in France is a story of conspiracy to help the king escape, of friends imprisoned and murdered, of seized ships and complex problems that had no precedent in the young nation’s history. Upon his return to the U.S., Morris served a brief stint in the Senate before going on to secure the building of the Erie Canal and to direct the design of the Manhattan network of streets we know today.

John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic

by Jeffry H. Morrison (no photo)

Synopsis:

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon—a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America’s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic.

Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon’s constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics.

Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution

by Charles Rappleye (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this biography, the acclaimed author of Sons of Providence, winner of the 2007 George Washington Book Prize, recovers an immensely important part of the founding drama of the country in the story of Robert Morris, the man who financed Washington’s armies and the American Revolution. Morris started life in the colonies as an apprentice in a counting house. By the time of the Revolution he was a rich man, a commercial and social leader in Philadelphia. He organized a clandestine trading network to arm the American rebels, joined the Second Continental Congress, and financed George Washington’s two crucial victories—Valley Forge and the culminating battle at Yorktown that defeated Cornwallis and ended the war.

The leader of a faction that included Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Washington, Morris ran the executive branches of the revolutionary government for years. He was a man of prodigious energy and adroit management skills and was the most successful businessman on the continent. He laid the foundation for public credit and free capital markets that helped make America a global economic leader. But he incurred powerful enemies who considered his wealth and influence a danger to public "virtue" in a democratic society.

After public service, he gambled on land speculations that went bad, and landed in debtors prison, where George Washington, his loyal friend, visited him.

This once wealthy and powerful man ended his life in modest circumstances, but Rappleye restores his place as a patriot and an immensely important founding father.

The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson

by William Murchison (no photo)

Synopsis:

It has been more than a half century since a biography of John Dickinson appeared. Author William Murchison rectifies this mistake, bringing to life one of the most influential figures of the entire Founding period, a principled man whose gifts as writer, speaker, and philosopher only Jefferson came near to matching. In the ­process, Murchison destroys the caricature of ­Dickinson that has emerged from such popular treatments as HBO’s John Adams miniseries and the Broadway musical 1776.

Dickinson is remembered mostly for his reluctance to sign the ­Declaration of Independence. But that reluctance, Murchison shows, had nothing to do with a lack of patriotism. In fact, Dickinson immediately took up arms to serve the colonial cause—something only one signer of the ­Declaration did. He stood on principle to oppose declaring independence at that moment, even when he knew that doing so would deal the “finishing blow” to his once-great reputation.

Dubbed the “Penman of the Revolution,” Dickinson was not just a scribe but also a shaper of mighty events. From the 1760s through the late 1780s he was present at, and played a significant role in, every major assemblage where the Founders charted America’s path—a claim few others could make. Author of the landmark essays Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, delegate to the Continental Congress, key ­figure behind the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, chief executive of both Pennsylvania and Delaware: Dickinson was, as one esteemed ­historian aptly put it, “the most underrated of all the Founders.”

This lively biography gives a great Founder his long-overdue measure of honor. It also broadens our understanding of the Founding period, challenging many modern assumptions about the events of 1776 and 1787.

William Henry Drayton: South Carolina Revolutionary Patriot

by Keith Krawczynski (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this exhaustive biography, Keith Krawczynski details the political and social career of William Henry Drayton (1742--1779), an ambitious, wealthy lowcountry planter and zealous patriot leader who was at the center of Revolutionary activity in South Carolina from 1774 until his death five years later. Considered the most effective Whig polemicist in the lower South, Drayton served on all his state's important Revolutionary governing bodies, commanded a frigate of war, was elected chief justice in 1776, coauthored South Carolina's 1778 constitution, and represented the state in the Constitutional Congress from 1778 until his demise. Although Drayton was a leading radical and the central figure of the American Revolution in South Carolina, historians have largely ignored his contributions. With William Henry Drayton, Krawczynski removes this fascinating man from the shadows of history.

Drayton was an improbable rebel. After receiving his formal education in England, the South Carolina--born Drayton returned to his birthplace as a planter and continued to espouse Royalist ideals. During a later visit to Britain, he was hailed as a champion of British sovereignty. Yet, disgruntled with the king's increasing infringement on American liberties, Drayton embraced the rebel cause with the zealotry of a recent convert and eventually did more to resist British rule than any other resident of the Palmetto State.

By rescuing this real South Carolina patriot from the ash heap of history, William Henry Drayton proves essential to a complete understanding of the American Revolution in that state.

Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and Republican Statesman

(no image) Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and Republican Statesman by George Athan Billias (no photo)

This looks to be a great book:

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

by Joseph J. Ellis

Synopsis:

The prizewinning author of Founding Brothers and American Sphinx now gives us the unexpected story--brilliantly told--of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.

The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal government with power over their individual autonomy. The Quartet is the story of this second American founding and of the men responsible--some familiar, such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, and some less so, such as Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris. It was these men who shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force a calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary

by Kent J. McGaughy (no photo)

Synopsis:

Richard Henry Lee played a pivotal role during the American Revolution, yet he remains one of the most misunderstood revolutionaries. His contemporaries, as well as modern historians, deemed him a political opportunist or dismissed him as an enigma. In bridging the gap between Lee's private interests and public career, J. Kent McGaughy seeks to overturn many of the misconceptions about Lee and shows that, throughout his life, he remained dedicated to his family and public service. By separating fact from fiction and unraveling the history of Lee's life and the times in which he lived, J. Kent McGaughy brings to light not only the truth about Lee, but also the hidden history of the American Revolution.

American Legends: The Life of John Hancock

by Charles River Editors (no photo)

Synopsis:

Most Americans are familiar with John Hancock solely because of his famous signature, and his name has become a slang phrase for signing a document. But his conspicuous signature on the Declaration of Independence has overshadowed the various and important contributions Hancock made in colonial Boston before the Revolution, the Continental Congress during the Revolution, and Massachusetts state politics after the Revolution.

Hancock's story is also unique because of his position as one of the richest men in the colonies, a byproduct of inheriting a shipping business from his father. That put him in a position of prominence in the merchant world right as the British began imposing taxes on the colonies after the Seven Years War, infuriating British and colonial shippers alike. The growing hostility led Hancock to join patriot circles, and he became a protégé of Samuel Adams.

Hancock soon became a prominent figure in the tension between colonial Boston and the British, especially when his sloop Liberty was seized and Hancock was accused of smuggling. There are still questions surrounding the extent to which Hancock smuggled goods, but there is no doubt that he was one of the most important Sons of Liberty by the time the Revolution started. Hancock and Adams were believed to be targets of the British raid toward Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, thus setting in motion the events that triggered Paul Revere's Midnight Ride and culminated with the shots heard round the world.

American Legends: The Life of John Hancock chronicles the amazing life and career of John Hancock before, during, and after the Revolution, from his time as a merchant to Massachusetts' first governor. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events in his life, you will learn about John Hancock like you never have before, in no time at all.