Recommended Reading

The economic developments of this period are the subject of several valuable studies. The most provocative is Thomas C. Cochran, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialization of America (1981). Also see Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607–1861 (1965); Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (1961); and Winifred B. Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1850 (1992). The problems of adjusting to new industrial technologies is addressed in Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977), and Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar, Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790–1860 (1986). On the optimism of the period, see Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (2000).

A thoughtful study of working-class culture is Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (1979). Charles W. Jansen’s account of American society along with other contemporary documents can be found in Gordon S. Wood, ed., The Rising Glory of America, 1760–1820 (1971).

A good introduction to the history of the western settlements is Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783–1815 (1970). Also see John M. Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (1992); Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Midwest and the Nation (1990); Anthony F. C. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1970); William McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839 (1984); Bil Gilbert, God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War (1989); and Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (2000).

The challenges confronting Jefferson as president are discussed in Richard E. Ellis’s masterful The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (1971); Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press (1985); and Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (1977). Also see Thomas Fleming, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America (1999).

The Louisiana Purchase is the subject of Alexander DeConde, The Affair of Louisiana (1976). On the Lewis and Clark Expedition, see James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (1984), and Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello (1981).

Two Republicans who gave Jefferson so much trouble are discussed in Robert E. Shalhope, John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican (1980), and Robert Dawidoff, The Education of John Randolph (1979). For Burr’s strange career, see Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr, vols. 1 and 2 (1979, 1982). Thoughtful explorations of the relation of slavery to politics are Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 (1971), and John C. Miller, Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (1991).

The country’s foreign policy is analyzed in Peter S. Onuf, ed., America and the World: Diplomacy, Politics, and War (1991). For Madison’s presidency, see Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (1971), and Garrett Ward Sheldon, The Political Philosophy of James Madison (2000). A good account of the War of 1812 can be found in J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic (1983).

The problems facing a divided Federalist party are the subject of David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (1965); Linda Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (1970); and James M. Banner, Jr., To the Hartford Convention (1970).