"Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship."--The Wall Street Journal How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy. Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country's first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and--in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics--they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In a bold recasting of the Adamses' historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It's also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents' somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America's political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.

This book examines the debate over the connection between religion and public life in society during the fifty years following the American Revolution. Sassi challenges the conventional wisdom, finding an essential continuity to the period's public Christianity, whereas most previous studies have seen this period as one in which the nation's cultural paradigm shifted from republicanism to liberal individualism. Focusing on the Congregational clergy of New England, he demonstrates that throughout this period there were Americans concerned with their corporate destiny, retaining a commitment to constructing a righteous community and assessing the cosmic meaning of the American experiment.

Between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1781 and Andrew Jackson's retirement from the presidency in 1837, a generation of Americans acted out a great debate over the nature of the national character and the future political, economic, and religious course of the country. Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831) and many others saw the debate as a battle over the soul of America. Alarmed and disturbed by the brashness of Jacksonian democracy, they feared that the still-young ideal of a stable, cohesive, deeply principled republic was under attack by the forces of individualism, liberal capitalism, expansionism, and a zealous blend of virtue and religiosity. A missionary, reformer, and activist, Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831) was a central figure of neo-Calvinism in the early American republic. An intellectual and spiritual heir to the founding fathers and a forebear of American Victorianism, Evarts is best remembered today as the stalwart opponent of Andrew Jackson's Indian policies--specifically the removal of Cherokees from the Southeast. John A. Andrew's study of Evarts is the most comprehensive ever written. Based predominantly on readings of Evart's personal and family papers, religious periodicals, records of missionary and benevolent organizations, and government documents related to Indian affairs, it is also a portrait of the society that shaped-and was shaped by-Evart's beliefs and principles. Evarts failed to tame the powerful forces of change at work in the early republic, Evarts did manage to shape broad responses to many of them. Perhaps the truest measure of his influence is that his dream of a government based on Christian principles became a rallying cry for another generation and another cause: abolitionism.