Rosemarie Zagarri

Gender and the New Liberal Synthesis

NOT SO LONG AGO, REPUBLICANISM REIGNED AS THE PREVAILING PARADIGM FOR interpreting the vast sweep of American history from the Revolution through the New Deal. Wherever they looked, historians discovered a political tradition that emphasized concepts such as civic virtue and the threat of corruption to the body politic. Commitment to the common good offered a bracing alternative to the single-minded pursuit of individual self-interest. Whether republicanism was a discourse or an ideology, a continuous tradition or an intermittent rhetoric remained subject to discussion and debate. Nonetheless, there seemed to be little doubt that republicanism represented a competing mode of political thought that challenged the monopoly of liberalism on the American past.

The Empire Comes Home: Thomas Law’s Mixed-Race Family in the Early American Republic

Thomas Law was a high-ranking administrator with the British East India Company. In 1791, he left India, bringing with him his three illegitimate sons, born of his native concubine, or bibi. After a brief stay in London, he sought a more congenial environment in which to raise his mixed-raise children, In 1794, he, along with his sons, moved to the young United States where he became a key figure in early Washington, DC society. This essay examines the fate of Law’s mixed race sons. Although their high social class tended to mitigate racial prejudice, racial animosity surfaced at key moments in their lives. Like British India, the early American republic was experiencing a hardening of racial boundaries during the early decades of the nineteenth century.

An American Character@@@George Washington: The Man behind the Myths@@@The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic

To most Americans, George Washington is a remote figure encased in myth, more a monument than a man. This new books brings him vividly to life once again - a man who was born a loyal subject of the British crown and became the leader of a radical revolution, a victorious military leader who relinquished the trappings of power to return to farming, a reluctant statesman who forged the institutions of a popular government that have endured for two centuries. The text is enhanced by numerous illustrations that reproduce an array of original documents, contemporary portraits, artifacts, and personal memorabilia of Washington and his family. This book is the catalogue for an exhibition that opens at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles in October 1998 and moves on to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City in September 1999.