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Excerpts from Cyclopedia of Victoria relating to Mr Joseph Ellis who was a plumber and glazier and who had a business in Capel and Peel Streets. He lived in Southgate Villa, Manningham Street, Parkville.
Joseph Ellis follows Washington from his military career to his presidency, illuminating the difficulties the first executive faced as he worked to keep the emerging country united in the face of adversarial factions. He details aspects of Washington's private life - his marriage and subsequent entrance into the upper echelons of Virginia's plantation society, his large debts, his attitude towards slavery, his relationship with his profligate stepson - that shaped the public figure. Throughout, Ellis reveals to us Washington in the context of 18th-century America, allowing us to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments and the character of his heart and mind as they might have been perceived in his own time. Brilliantly conceived, His Excellency is a revelatory biography, likely to be one of the seminal American history books of the decade.
George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the "American Revolution" former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists' consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783, recovering a war more brutal than any in American history save the Civil War and discovering a strange breed of "prudent" revolutionaries, whose prudence proved wise yet tragic when it came to slavery, the original sin that still haunts our land. Written with flair and drama, The Cause brings together a cast of familiar and forgotten characters who, taken together, challenge the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people and a nation.
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Discusses how the greatest American statesmen of the 1790s--Adams, Burr, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Passionate Sage is [Ellis s] best book. Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review "
Ellis focuses on six discrete moments exemplifying crucial issues facing the new nation: Burr and Hamilton's duel, and what may really have happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery--and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adam's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.