The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820

Front Cover
JHU Press, 1989 - History - 378 pages

Winner of the Book Prize for New Authors from the National Historical Society

The War of 1812 played a critical role in the emergence of an American "culture of capitalism." In The Republic Reborn Steven Watts offers a brilliant new interpretation of the war and the foundation of liberal America. He explores the sweeping changes that took place in America between 1790 and 1820—the growth of an entrepreneurial economy of competition, the devlopment of a liberal political structure and ideology, and the rise of a bourgeois culture of self-interest and self-control. "Serving as a vehicle for change and offering an outlet for the anxieties of a changing socity," Watts writes, the War of 1812 "ultimately intensified and sanctioned the imperatives of a developing world-view."

From inside the book

Contents

The Birth of the Liberal Republic 17901820
1
Besotted by Prosperity Corrupted by Avarice Abject from Luxury
78
III
109
I Will Be a Living Worker in the World
123
Sacrificing Their Gold to Gamblers Their Health to Harlots
141
IV
161
Two Objects the Nearest to my Heart My Country and My Father
196
V
217
The Liberal Impulse to
263
VI
275
The Vindication of Gods Republic
283
The Triumph of SelfMade
289
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1989)

Steven Watts is a professor of American intellectual and cultural history at the University of Missouri. He has contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, and the New Republic. He is the author of Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream and The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.