"The Creation of America, Through Revolution to Empire" by Francis Jennings, Cambridge Press, $54.95, 327 pages.
Those of us who are students of history eventually develop a certain prejudice. I use that word, not in the pejorative, but rather as the agrarian rhetorician, Richard M. Weaver, applied it: "Life without prejudice … would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle. For prejudices … are often built-in principles … They are the extract which the mind has made of experience.” For students of history experience is gained by reading, study, and a little comparative analysis. For that reason, I would suggest that Francis Jennings' latest effort, “The Creation of America, Through Revolution to Empire” be read following a short review of the works of Forrest MacDonald, Robert Middlekauff, Bernard Bailyn, or preferably, M.E. Bradford.
That's not to say, don't read the book. Jennings is a perspicacious writer who presents his thesis logically and is unequivocal in his conclusions. He found, for example, that the sons of William Penn were pernicious cheats, forgers, and villains and he bestowed the sobriquet of “prince of liars” on the august New England historian, Francis Parkman. Regardless of one's opinion of Jennings' perspectives, he doesn't mince his words.
In “The Creation of America” Jennings begins where all good historians should when writing about the War for Independence, with a short review of English history and the period of colonial establishment. Here Jennings informs his readers that the English colonies “were agencies of conquest.” And that is said in the pejorative, the theme being that the English were nasty, brutish, and vile and bent on destroying the utopian civilization of the Eastern Woodland Aboriginal Indians. That there is the seed of truth in Jennings' comments is obvious to the seasoned student, however, where he falls short is in not conveying the entire text of history.
For the sake of objectivity he might have mentioned that the “Amerindians” had been engaged in internecine wars since time out of mind. The Iroquois hated the Huran, Shawnee, Susquehannocks, etc. and everybody hated the Iroquois. And, I'm not even bringing up the problems between the Lenape (Delaware) and the Flatheads or a myriad of
other intertribal hostilities. The English colonists happened to “discover” a land that was already soaked in the blood of “Amerindians” busily determining “the right of conquest” among themselves.
That's not to say the English (and French) didn't exacerbate the situation. Not only did they bring diseases for which the nations had no natural immunity thus causing the deaths of many thousands of Indians, they also brought steel knives, scissors, needles, cloth, flintlocks, powder, ball, and West Indies rum, and thus changed, forever, the Indian culture.
The second theme Jennings concentrates on is African chattel slavery. A nasty business to be sure and only recently is there some fine work being done by scholars that is bringing to the public's attention the accurate history of this “peculiar” institution. Again, as with the Indian question Jennings could have chosen to be objective. As an
example he might have mentioned that it was African tribes who, after defeating their neighbors in war, sold them to English, Jewish, Portuguese, and New England slavers waiting patiently on the coast to transport their human cargo to England, the West Indies, and America.
Unfortunately for the reader Jennings did not chose to cull the rather significant contribution of Eugene D. Genovese in his highly acclaimed research on slavery in America.
However, where Jennings does shine is in his review of the English political leadership from the period of the French and Indian War through the American War for Independence. He is erudite and definitive in his analysis of such interesting and significant figures as Lord Thomas Newcastle, King George III, William August (The Duke of Cumberland), John Campbell, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, and a phalanx of underlings and toadies that habitually gravitate to the bureaucracy. His chapters on the Stamp Act, Townsend Revenue Act and Lord Frederick North's Tea Act are well presented, accurate and snappily written.
Jennings' forte is the revelation. He uncovers some foul deed, perpetrated by one of the founders, that reveals the man's character flaws. As an example George Washington was a “land embezzler,” he didn't “feel” any compassion for the Christian Delaware massacred in the Ohio Country because he suggested in a letter that no soldier “was to allow
himself to be taken alive,” he lived in a stone farmhouse at Valley Forge rather than “sharing” the misery of his soldier's hovels, and it was the French who really won the decisive victory at Yorktown.
John Adams comes in for particularly heavy criticism for being arrogant and conceited, deviously plotting against the Quakers, and, as president, instituting the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jennings writes that the Massachusetts founder as a “hollow man.” I would refer Jennings to the chapter on John Adams in Russel Kirk's seminal work, “The
Conservative Mind,” for an equitable rendering of Adam's intellectual and political accomplishments. Even the doyen of American liberalism, Thomas Jefferson, comes under criticism for his “meanderings” and “arcane reasoning” regarding his position of the “rights for Indians,” found in Jefferson's “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” I would, respectfully, suggest that Jennings read the entire book.
Jennings enters into the war for American independence with his usual zeal though determined to reveal to the unwashed and unlettered that the real purpose of the founders was to establish an empire and not a republic. He is so ardent in his effort that the words federalism and states' rights do not appear in the index, thus, as in previous points
of consideration, objectivity, where it would have been singularly applicable, is studiously avoided.
I read Jennings because he is a fine historian and writer. But, sometimes, his conclusions are clouded by his personal political beliefs which appear centered on the current “politically correct” themes that infect academia. When that happens I vehemently disagree with him.
But there is one prescient point that Jennings makes on the final page of his book that is well worth considering: “ … but sooner or late the offspring of Europe must encounter the multitudinous offspring of Asia, and those vastly numerous Asians will not tolerate presumptions of white superiority.”
