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    Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation
    Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation
    Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation
    Audiobook4 hours

    Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation

    Written by Paul Aron

    Narrated by Richard Ferrone

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put aside their own agendas to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress, to George Washington's battle against his slave Harry Washington, these less-discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation. Additionally, this gripping narrative delves deeper into the famous feuds, such as the fatal duel of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and the many rivalries of Thomas Jefferson (which were as often personal as political.) America's great forbearers fought with each other as bitterly as our politicians do today. Founding Feuds reveals the true natures of the Founding Fathers and how their infighting shaped our nation as much as their cooperation, in fact sometimes even for the better.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 7, 2016
    ISBN9781501919633
    Author

    Paul Aron

    Paul Aron is the Director of Publications for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The author of the popular UNSOLVED MYSTERIES series, he was previously a reporter for the Virginia Gazette, executive editor at Simon and Schuster and editor at Doubleday.

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    • 3/5
      One comes away from "Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts That Forged a Nation," almost with the belief that our typically-sainted Founding Fathers were really nothing more than a bunch of cantankerous, ambitious self-aggrandizers who were easy to take offense and ever-ready to aim their acid tongues at their opponents, not caring even if their vitriol spilled over into character assassination.

      Of course, if anyone has read David Mccullough's celebrated biography of John Adams or Ron Chernow's equally honored biography of Alexander Hamilton, he would know that both of them could be difficult men. But Thomas Paine? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson???

      Indeed, of all portrayed in the book, Jefferson probably comes off looking the worst, if for no other reason that in the popular mind the author of the Declaration of Independence is thought to have himself been the living embodiment of all the ideals contained therein--fairness, equality, the elevation of the common man. No, it turns out, Jefferson was no saint. He was just a man--a man very good at passive-aggression, and sometimes not even very passive.

      By the length and detail of the footnotes, "Founding Feuds" is a well-researched book. Its drawback is that it focuses on such a number of conflicts that arose among the leaders of our early republic that the author cannot give much more of snapshot of any one of them. Certainly, he cannot fill in all the complexities of relationship that finally led Aaron Burr to duel Alexander Hamilton, as Chernow does in his biography; nor can he detail the immense complexities of the Adam-Jefferson "first friends, then enemies, then reconciled friends again" relationship.

      But Paul Aron states up-front that he has an agenda in presenting this book. If those of us today are discouraged by the extreme negativity and personal attacks exhibited in contemporary discourse, we should be aware that nothing new is happening here. The broadsides that were published by one antagonist against another in America's beginnings as a nation were as nasty as any we see today--it's just that two hundred years ago, communications were poor and few saw what was written in the papers of the times. What effect might there have been if Hamilton had had Facebook, or if Jefferson could tweet?

      And the fact of the matter is that, as much as our political forefathers could show the heat of their anger and brandish a cutting word, their cantankerousness and their ambition is not what simply defined them. They fought as hard as they did for their viewpoints as they contested with their contemporaries because, in the end, they cared for their country and what it might become. Jefferson, for instance, championed rule by the people, while Adams saw the need to maintain order. America lives between the tensions of its competing ideals, and the fact that each ideal had its champions--as loudly as they sometimes disagreed--made the country stronger because of it.