Representative Americans – serie

This updated volume of Representative Americans highlights three generations of colonial Americans—men and women who founded, shaped, and coined traditions of this country. This is a glimpse into a time of empire and frontier, religion, and science. The breadth of this experience is represented in the book's three sections. "Pathmarkers of the Empire" are represented in the first section. Captain John Smith and Nathaniel Bacon, though living half a century apart, were frontier soldiers shaping relations between Native and European cultures. William Bradford and William Penn came to America, also half a century apart, hoping to found a community of the righteous. In the book's second section, "Swords of Empire," the imperial, triangular contest among Britian, France, and Spain for supremacy in the New World is explored. "In the vanguard of the empire were the fortune hunters," Risjord writes. Among these "Caesars of the Forest" were Pierre Esprit Radisson and his merchant brother-in-law Medard Chouart who traversed the wilds of Canada in search of the elusive Northwest Passage. The book's final section, "Bridges of Empire," presents, among others, Cotton Mather and James Logan, who stood poised between an older order of religious humility and a newer one of political will which would later blossom into national identity.

Each generation of Americans has a special flavor, a character of its own. Sometimes a memorable decade, such as the 'Gay Nineties' or the 'Roaring Twenties,' imprinted the generation that lived and outlived it. Yet no simple rubric comes easily to mind when one thinks of the Revolutionary generation. Their accomplishments were too grand, their interests too varied, to be encompassed in a single phrase. Risjord divides this book into three sections, each exploring one of the era's dominant themes. The first section, 'Nation Builders' follows the careers of military men such as George Washington and Francis Marion and examines life on the homefront through the eyes of Abigail Adams. The section headed 'Character Builders' examines the lives of people who sought to mold an American national character, men such as Charles Willson Peale, Benjamin Rush, and Noah Webster. The last section explores the paradox that the Revolutionary generation also gave birth to an empire in which self-governing people ruled—sometimes tyrannically—over others. The founders of the American republic were preoccupied with the fundamentals of society and government. This book reflects this concern and also explores the lives of individuals who contributed to science and the arts.