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The Disillusionment of America's Founders
by Dennis C. Rasmussen
The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created.
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them―including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson―came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment.
As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country's future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings.
A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.
"[I]lluminating...This standout history provides useful context for understanding the roots of contemporary political turmoils and may comfort those who fear that American democracy is in dire peril." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A]n authoritative and convincing argument in disarmingly artful prose...A relevant history suggesting that the U.S. may be stronger than many of its citizens believe." - Kirkus Reviews
"Though written primarily for history lovers, this thought-provoking book may strike a chord with others as well." - Library Journal
"In this painfully timely volume, Dennis Rasmussen demonstrates that many of America's founders understood the potential fragility of their unprecedented creation. He rescues the founders, and the Enlightenment of which they were exemplars, from the caricature that they were unreasonably serene about the ability of reason to tame reality." - George F. Will, author of The Conservative Sensibility
"In a series of compelling, deftly wrought portraits, Dennis Rasmussen shows how the Founding Fathers came to fear for the future of America's bold experiment in republican self-government. Polarized parties, foreign interference, and seemingly intractable conflicts of interest and ideology threatened to destroy the union they struggled to create. Their anxieties put our own more modest divisions in reassuring perspective." - Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire
"In this brilliant book, Dennis Rasmussen brings to vivid life the profound fears of some of America's leading founders about the future of their nation. Their urgent concern was whether the destruction of the nascent republic was on the horizon; given the current political instability in America, it is also ours. Fears of a Setting Sun is well worth reading for its historical analysis and for the lessons we might draw for the future of our great experiment in republican government." - Colleen A. Sheehan, author of The Mind of James Madison
This information about Fears of a Setting Sun was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton). He lives in Cazenovia, New York.
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