Audiobook10 hours
In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation
Written by Francois Furstenberg
Narrated by Michael Prichard
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
A revelatory study of how Americans were bound together as a young nation by the words, the image, and the myth of George Washington and how slavery shaped American nationalism in ways that define and haunt us still.
How did people in our country-North and South, East and West-come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first fifty years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic? In the Name of the Father immerses us in the rich, riotous world of what Francois Furstenberg calls civic texts, the patriotic words and images circulating through every corner of the country in newspapers and almanacs, books and primers, paintings and even the most homely of domestic ornaments. We see how the leaders of the founding generation became "the founding fathers," how their words, especially George Washington's, became America's sacred scripture. And we see how the civic education they promoted is impossible to understand outside the context of America's increasing religiosity.
In the Name of the Father is filled with vivid stories of American print culture, including a wonderful consideration of the first great American hack biographer cum bookseller, Parson Weems, author of the first blockbuster Washington biography. But Francois Furstenberg's achievement is not limited to showing what all these civic texts were and how they infused Americans with a national spirit: how they created what Abraham Lincoln so famously called "the mystic chords of memory." He goes further to show how the process of defining the good citizen in America was complicated and compromised by the problem of slavery. Ultimately, we see how reconciling slavery and republican nationalism would have fateful consequences that haunt us still, in attitudes toward the socially powerless that persist in America to this day.
How did people in our country-North and South, East and West-come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first fifty years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic? In the Name of the Father immerses us in the rich, riotous world of what Francois Furstenberg calls civic texts, the patriotic words and images circulating through every corner of the country in newspapers and almanacs, books and primers, paintings and even the most homely of domestic ornaments. We see how the leaders of the founding generation became "the founding fathers," how their words, especially George Washington's, became America's sacred scripture. And we see how the civic education they promoted is impossible to understand outside the context of America's increasing religiosity.
In the Name of the Father is filled with vivid stories of American print culture, including a wonderful consideration of the first great American hack biographer cum bookseller, Parson Weems, author of the first blockbuster Washington biography. But Francois Furstenberg's achievement is not limited to showing what all these civic texts were and how they infused Americans with a national spirit: how they created what Abraham Lincoln so famously called "the mystic chords of memory." He goes further to show how the process of defining the good citizen in America was complicated and compromised by the problem of slavery. Ultimately, we see how reconciling slavery and republican nationalism would have fateful consequences that haunt us still, in attitudes toward the socially powerless that persist in America to this day.
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Reviews for In the Name of the Father
Rating: 3.05 out of 5 stars
3/5
10 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This history aimed to unpack the legacy of George Washington, with a particular focus on how early Americans conceptualized his attitudes towards slavery. Washington himself, of course, was largely mute on the topic, and only taking action on his deathbed to free his slaves (under such conditions that most were not emancipated for some time). The Americans of the early United States, however, eagerly venerated Washington and enshrined his life and character in children's schoolbooks, statutes, and artwork. They needed to find a way to reconcile the ideals Washington supposedly embodied with the fact that he owned slaves and multiple conceptualizations were created to grapple with this contradiction. This book is academic in many ways, but it's helpful for understanding how early Americans were thinking about their form of government, the existence of slavery and the moral problems it posed to the nation, and how the figure of Washington fit into the national narrative. While certainly not the definitive book on the subject, this book offers perspective and insight into a difficult area of American history.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Somewhat hi brow, repetitious, scary and boring for me. Hi brow - because the writer got too intellectual for most of the book; intellectual in his choice of language and syntax such that I found it hard to stay focused on most of what he had to say. Repetitious - in that I found myself able to go away from the book while it was still being read and come back a few minutes later to find it appeared not to have moved along at all. Scary - in that I found myself disgusted with the early Americans who had been quoted and with their "me-me, I-I" systems of logic that excluded anything that was not about them as individuals or that might impinge on their own pursuits of happiness. Boring - because of the repetitiousness I think I noted and for the large number of words used before coming to any sort of conclusion. The book wasn't for me. I prefer to think better of Americans than they were portrayed here. Of course, I could be wrong and he could be right. Shudder the thought.