Excerpt from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1903, Vol. 27 Mr. Rich Henry Lee: It was said on the same side of the question that we were not yet confederated, therefore no law of the union infringed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first to draw attention to Americans’ propensity to form voluntary associations—and to join them with a fervor and frequency unmatched anywhere in the world. For nearly two centuries, we have sought to understand how and why early nineteenth-century Americans were, in Tocqueville’s words, “forever forming associations.” In The Making of Tocqueville’s America, Kevin Butterfield argues that to understand this, we need to first ask: what did membership really mean to the growing number of affiliated Americans? Butterfield explains that the first generations of American citizens found in the concept of membership—in churches, fraternities, reform societies, labor unions, and private business corporations—a mechanism to balance the tension between collective action and personal autonomy, something they accomplished by emphasizing law and procedural fairness. As this post-Revolutionary procedural culture developed, so too did the legal substructure of American civil society. Tocqueville, then, was wrong to see associations as the training ground for democracy, where people learned to honor one another’s voices and perspectives. Rather, they were the training ground for something no less valuable to the success of the American democratic experiment: increasingly formal and legalistic relations among people.

The influence of Greek and Roman authors on our American forefathers finally becomes clear in this fascinating book—the first comprehensive study of the founders’ classical reading.

Offering an interpretation of the Revolutionary period that places women at the center, Joan R. Gundersen provides a synthesis of the scholarship on women's experiences during the era as well as a nuanced understanding that moves beyond a view of the war

The critically acclaimed biography Meriwether Lewis, coauthored by Thomas C. Danisi, was praised for its meticulous research and for shedding new light on the adventurous life and controversial death of the great explorer who became famous through the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Now, the author, with some help from contributors, extends his groundbreaking studies of Meriwether Lewis with this compilation of historical essays that offers new findings based on recently discovered docu­ments, tackling such intriguing subjects as: -The court-martial of Meriwether Lewis: Danisi’s discovery of the astonishing never-before published transcript of the entire court-martial proceedings affords him the distinction of being the first historian to mine the document for the many insights it offers into the then-untested twenty-one-year-old officer, who eloquently defended himself and won his case. -Documentation straight from the medical ledgers of Dr. Antoine Saugrain, the physician who treated Governor Lewis, which helps to confirm that Lewis suffered from malaria prior to his celebrated trek to the Pacific Ocean with the Corps of Discovery and continuing through his service as governor of the Louisiana Ter­ritory. Was Lewis’s death, as reported, the result of suicide, or was he merely a victim of this episodic and incurable disease? -Documentation that proves the true nature of the much-discussed Gilbert Russell State­ment given at the court-martial of General James Wilkinson. Some historians have argued that Wilkinson orchestrated Lewis’s murder, but Danisi’s research sets the record straight. -The role of Major James Neelly in Lewis’s last days. This subject has gained much prominence through the History Channel, according to which Neelly supposedly lied to President Thomas Jefferson about his presence at Meriwether Lewis’s burial, but Danisi has evidence to the contrary. The author presents an abundance of additional material to fill in previous historical gaps regarding the mysteries and controversies surrounding Lewis’s life and death. In doing so, he paints a vivid picture of the brilliant rise of an ambitious young man by virtue of courage, talent, and political connections, and the tragic fall of a conscientious public servant under the weight of chronic illness, bureaucratic pettiness, and the political intrigue that was ram­pant throughout America’s Wild West. This superb contribution to Meriwether Lewis research is a must-read for students and scholars of American history and anyone with an interest in one of our nation’s most important explorers and public servants.