America: what could have been ...

I've always been a voracious reader of American history, so I thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. Certainly the founding of our nation and the people who shaped it held no great mystery for me. Or so I thought. Well I was wrong. American creation, by Joseph Ellis takes a novel approach to the unfolding of our republic and the remarkable prescience of its leaders. He offers a compelling critique of the strengths and shortcomings of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Adams which leaves the reader in awe - but dismayed. He writes that our legacy of slavery and the displacement of Native Americans were not inevitable outcomes. The founders knew slavery was an abomination and seriously considered ways to mitigate or even eliminate it entirely. President Washington and then Secretary of War Henry Knox envisioned the creation of a series of Indian homelands whose political and geographic integrity would be guaranteed by federal law. Ultimately these protectorates would have been assimilated as new states. Ellis writes about our history not only as it was - but what it might have been.