About this item
Highlights
- Seven Virginians, the culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, reveals the integral role played by seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall.Most accounts of the founding generation focus only on the activities of the "big three"--Washington, Jefferson, and Madison--but Boles incorporates the key contributions of these other four important figures to the political and legal structures that govern the United States to this day.
- About the Author: John B. Boles is the William P. Hobby Emeritus Professor of History at Rice University, former editor (1983-2013) of the Journal of Southern History, a former president of the Southern Historical Association, and author of Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty.
- 408 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Historical
Description
About the Book
"The culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, Seven Virginians is a narrative history and synthesis of the major scholarship on the period between 1750 and 1830 that examines the place of seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall. With refreshing candor regarding the problems of the Revolutionary generation, the author charts Virginia's central role in the nation's early years and the beginnings of the commonwealth's political decline in the early nineteenth century"--Book Synopsis
Seven Virginians, the culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, reveals the integral role played by seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall.
Most accounts of the founding generation focus only on the activities of the "big three"--Washington, Jefferson, and Madison--but Boles incorporates the key contributions of these other four important figures to the political and legal structures that govern the United States to this day. At the same time, Boles is clear-eyed about the Revolutionary generation's problems and their fading from the scene, inaugurating the beginnings of Virginia's political decline in the early nineteenth century. In so doing, Boles provides the crucial Virginian piece to the ongoing reevaluation of the United States' founding moment.
Review Quotes
A highly readable account of the "long revolutionary era" between the 1740s and 1830s-- "The Journal of Southern History"
Boles has eloquently synthesized a massive amount of material into a narrative history which, despite the overall familiarity of much of the material, is peppered with lucid explanations of complicated events and issues and some surprising insights and tidbits.
--Cynthia A. Kierner, George Mason University, Author of Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and TimesFocusing on the Virginians he knows so well, John Boles offers a fresh perspective on a familiar narrative. Seven Virginians is a fitting capstone to a fine historian's distinguished career.
--Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American NationhoodJohn Boles pours a lifetime of scholarly insight and clarity into this stellar history of seven Virginians who helped create the liberal revolutionary American experiment. In a necessary corrective of recent efforts to paint the American Revolution as a reactive or conservative movement, Boles places these founding fathers in their eighteenth-century context and properly shows that they helped establish ideals that we still aspire to achieve. A timely and important book.
--Douglas Bradburn, President and CEO of, George Washington's Mount Vernon, author of The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804About the Author
John B. Boles is the William P. Hobby Emeritus Professor of History at Rice University, former editor (1983-2013) of the Journal of Southern History, a former president of the Southern Historical Association, and author of Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty.