Awards

• Winner of New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize 2022

Overview

In this beautifully written history of America's formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense. Taylor's elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota. Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.

Full Product Details

9781324005797

Table of Contents

Reviews

A tour de force rich in fascinating and diverse characters, strong Native nations, contested borders, historical ironies, and paths almost taken.--Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost Alan Taylor has--once again--given us a new understanding of a critical era in the history of the United States.--Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom Alan Taylor's unparalleled storytelling abilities are on full display in this brilliant narrative history revealing the essential fragility of the early American republic.--Amy S. Greenberg, author of Lady First Enthralling...Taylor brings to the table a lifetime of history learning and a rare ability to focus our attention on the things from the past that really matter.--Andres Resendez, author of The Other Slavery American Republics sweeps away rosy accounts of the rise of the United States. It is a searing history that exposes how white supremacy disfigured U.S. politics, underwrote westward expansion, and remade the lives of North America's diverse peoples. Incisive and powerful, it leaves a lasting impression.--Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic American Republics is a masterpiece. Taylor's stories, revealing collisions between principles on the one hand and greed, violence, racism, and transnational entanglement on the other, resonate eerily across time. This book's coherence, wisdom, and eloquence leave me inspired. But its unflinching narrative leaves me rattled to the core.--Elizabeth Fenn, author of Encounters at the Heart of the World

A tour de force rich in fascinating and diverse characters, strong Native nations, contested borders, historical ironies, and paths almost taken.--Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost Alan Taylor has--once again--given us a new understanding of a critical era in the history of the United States.--Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom Alan Taylor's unparalleled storytelling abilities are on full display in this brilliant narrative history revealing the essential fragility of the early American republic.--Amy S. Greenberg, author of Lady First Enthralling...Taylor brings to the table a lifetime of history learning and a rare ability to focus our attention on the things from the past that really matter.--Andres Resendez, author of The Other Slavery American Republics sweeps away rosy accounts of the rise of the United States. It is a searing history that exposes how white supremacy disfigured U.S. politics, underwrote westward expansion, and remade the lives of North America's diverse peoples. Incisive and powerful, it leaves a lasting impression.--Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic American Republics is a masterpiece. Taylor's stories, revealing collisions between principles on the one hand and greed, violence, racism, and transnational entanglement on the other, resonate eerily across time. This book's coherence, wisdom, and eloquence leave me inspired. But its unflinching narrative leaves me rattled to the core.--Elizabeth Fenn, author of Encounters at the Heart of the World American Republics sweeps away rosy accounts of the rise of the United States. It is a searing history that exposes how white supremacy disfigured U.S. politics, underwrote westward expansion, and remade the lives of North America's diverse peoples. Incisive and powerful, it leaves a lasting impression.--Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic American Republics is a masterpiece. Taylor's stories, revealing collisions between principles on the one hand and greed, violence, racism, and transnational entanglement on the other, resonate eerily across time. This book's coherence, wisdom, and eloquence leave me inspired. But its unflinching narrative leaves me rattled to the core.--Elizabeth Fenn, author of Encounters at the Heart of the World

Author Information

Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History, is the author of American Revolutions and, most recently, American Civil Wars. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus of History at University of Virginia, he lives in Davis, California.

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