The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding
Such good faith that nobody could accuse Mr. Ellis of taking a partisan approach ... The deepest contradictions in American history—where sincerely heroic efforts fail while hypocritical compromises are necessary for the least-bad outcomes to play out—are the ironic lessons of the nation’s story. And that is why history remains much too complex to divide into narrative or political sides. It is, however, possible to divide the subject into partisans of good and bad writing. So if you are going to take a side, join Mr. Ellis’s.
[Ellis] seems to approach the work as an attorney — defense counsel in a capital trial who raises every mitigating circumstance he can think of to keep his clients out of the electric chair ... Ellis stacks the deck in subtle but consequential ways ... Bizarrely evasive ... Instances of special pleading and selective treatment point to a larger problem with the book: Seeing the perpetuation of slavery and the acceleration of Indian removal as 'failures' ignores how, for those committed to bondage and conquest, the Revolution was, in practice, a triumph.
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Writing with great clarity and a deep understanding of the issues and the human beings involved ... Wise ... Can help us better understand what we are celebrating—and at whose expense.
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