A Leap in the Dark: the Struggle to Create the American Republic.

A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. By John Ferling. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii, 558. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-19-517600-6: cloth. $30.00, ISBN 0-19515924-1.)

John Ferling's latest book examines the American founding from the onset of the Seven Years' War to the election of 1800. Written in a lively narrative style with a handsome dust jacket, it is clearly aimed at the highly sought-after "crossover" market of academic trade publication. If the prominent display at my local Barnes and Noble is any indication, Ferling has more than fulfilled the commercial part of this mission. As with many hybrid efforts, assessing his scholarly contribution is more difficult. Although grounded in scholarship on the revolutionary era. the book's primary audience does not seem to be academic, nor does the text aspire, at least overtly, to change how professional historians think about the creation of the American Republic. Yet along with some conspicuous omissions, Ferling makes several contentious assertions, all of which merit careful consideration.

In the preface, Ferling lays out two main objectives. The first is to demonstrate the centrality of "the establishment of the American Union" throughout the revolutionary era (p. xi). The second is to show the contingency with which the founders pursued this goal, from Benjamin Franklin's unsuccessful attempt to create a colonial union at Albany in 1754, through the sectional conflicts that undid the Articles of Confederation during the mid-1780s, to the momentous Compromise of 1790, by which the Virginia delegation permitted Alexander Hamilton's treasury to assume the states' war debt in return for situating the new capital on the banks of the Potomac. In developing these themes, Ferling is an unabashed proponent of the view, conventionally associated with Progressive historiography, that "political behavior usually owes more to economic considerations" than to political ideology or abstract ideas (p. xii). Although he tells his story almost entirely from the standpoint of the great men who dominated colonial and, later, national politics, Ferling sees their personal friendships and animosities as manifestations of wider divisions between a commercially oriented, nationalist constituency based largely in the North and an expansionist, agrarian opposition whose natural leaders were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

The great strength of Ferling's book is his use of narrative. Although the argument occasionally gets lost amid the numerous well-turned stories and anecdotes, Ferling's chronological approach allows him to highlight issues often passed over in the thematic analysis that prevails in most scholarly accounts. A good example is his discussion of the crises that preceded the Constitutional Convention. As is well known, the event that finally persuaded fence-sitters like George Washington to support amending the Articles of Confederation was Daniel Shays's agrarian revolt in western Massachusetts. Given his Progressive sympathies, Ferling naturally includes this familiar story in his account. But he also shows that the sense of urgency in early 1787 had its roots in the much-neglected realm of foreign policy and John Jay's abortive attempt to open Spanish ports in exchange for renouncing the United States' rights of navigation on the Mississippi for twenty years. Although northern merchants supported the initiative, small farmers and land speculators in the West and South regarded it as it as a gross betrayal, one reminiscent "of London's unwillingness to open the trans-Appalachian West" during the 1760s. As Ferling concludes, the first tolling of the union's "death knell" was in response to "a failed diplomatic initiative with Spain" (p. 265).

If Ferling draws the reader's attention to issues that historians have often neglected, his account contains some surprising omissions of its own. Foremost among these is the absence of sustained discussion of the role of women, blacks, and Indians. As Ferling states in the preface, his primary concern is "with problems of leadership, and especially with those who led, oi" who sought to lead, during the era of the American Revolution" (p. xii). Yet even within these narrow parameters, one expects some mention of figures like Mohawk sachem and British officer Joseph Brandt, Antifederalist pamphleteer and historian Mercy Otis Warren, and Phyllis Wheatley, the African American poet who achieved a degree of prominence in both Britain and America. Also missing is Sally Hemings, whose dual role as Jefferson's slave and companion became an issue in the election of 1800 and whose story has become a common feature of popular histories like this one. At several points, Ferling does mention slavery and the incipient abolitionist movement, but his book's overwhelming focus on the founding fathers ultimately limits its reach.

A Leap in the Dark is certainly a readable, accessible book, one that has much to offer both scholarly and lay readers. In particular, Ferling is to be commended for demonstrating that narrative history is not just a good story but also an effective method for conveying information and insights that more thematic analyses often leave out. These alone are significant accomplishments.

University of New Hampshire 

ELIGA H. GOULD