Inventing a Nation

Washington, Adams, Jefferson

Gore Vidal

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780300127928
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

This New York Times bestseller offers "an unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all" ( New York Review of Books ). In Inventing a Nation, National Book Award winner GoreVidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal's splendid prose, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate. The author of Burr and Lincoln, one of the master stylists of American literature and most acute observers of American life, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of these formidable men

Index

Acheson, Dean, 47

Adams, Abigail Smith, 36, 70, 101, 107, 108, 131, 159; background of, 35; censoriousness of, 62–63; on Washington, 70; on Britain, 104; on Hamilton, 132–33; on Talleyrand, 150; illness of, 158

Adams, Henry, 175

Adams, John, 27, 45, 91, 113, 146–47; on Hamilton, 17, 133, 169; on Washington, 19; aristocracy mistrusted by, 29–30; on roots of Revolution, 34; marriage of, 35–36; Washington backed by, 38; on southerners, 49–50; on monarchy, 50, 51; on property, 52–53; on French Revolution, 56, 57, 107; Franklin contrasted with, 61; in Europe, 62–63, 67, 97; Franklin on, 64; Jefferson on, 64, 93; election as vice president of, 65, 66, 67–70; election as president of, 66–67, 125; as vice president, 71, 73, 74–75, 129–30; on British constitution, 92; on Genet, 100; on Jefferson, 101–2; threat of war and, 103, 104–5; Jay treaty and, 108–9, 115; Hamilton’s rivalry with, 114, 124, 133; inauguration as president of, 134–35, 137; weak start of, 138–39; war with France and, 141, 148–51, 156–57, 158–59; Alien and Sedition Acts approved by, 153–55, 162, 164–65; on the English, 160; French overtures to, 167–68; troubles with cabinet of, 168–71; midnight appointments of, 178–79, 180, 181; death of, 189

Adams, John (the elder), 35

Adams, John Quincy, 60, 73, 102

Adams, Samuel, 130

Adet, Pierre Auguste, 125, 130

Alabama, 56

Alaska, 56, 60

Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (Knott), 24

Alexander the Great, 136

Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), 152–55, 156, 160–66

American Indi...