1831: Year of Eclipse by Louis P. MasurMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Start with a solar eclipse, add Nat Turner's slave Rebellion, Charles Finney's revivals, de Tocqueville's travels, the Trail of Tears, nullification debates with John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and the octogenarian John Madison, Audobon's birds, a cholera epidemic, a pinch of Transcendentalism, then shake violently and you have the most important year in ante-bellum America.
Masur brings in Frances Trollop, Beaumont, Tocqueville, the British Hamilton, and a host of others to show us as a nation living numerous contradictions, such as liberty and slavery, law and Indian removal, the rise of the Democratic Party led by King Andrew I, and the celebration of nature and industrial revolution. Tocqueville shows us to be a nation of conquerers who thrive on instability and are driven by the profit motive. Individualism, rugged and revivalistic, was running rampant and would eventually redefine democracy as the pursuit of personal preference.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment