America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800

Being released in time to mark the 200th anniversary of the election of 1800 won't be much of a selling point for this disappointing volume. It relates what Weisberger describes as one of the most mud slinging and divisive elections in American history: Jefferson versus Adams, two old friends pitted against each other for the highest office in the land. However, that dramatic claim is not borne out by Weisberger's account, most of which is devoted to the 13 years leading up to the election. The thread of Weisberger's narrative is the emergence of divisive factionalism--from which the framers of the Constitution believed, mistakenly, they had adequately protected the new nation. But in his attempt to follow this thread through the early years of American history, Weisberger, a columnist for American Heritage, tells readers little they didn't learn from their high school history textbooks. He begins with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, rehashing familiar details of the debates (big states threatened the small states, and the North tangled with the South over slavery). Offering a snapshot of America at 1790, Weisberger reveals little more than that the nation was ""already an empire""--that is, it was geographically huge, and home to an increasingly diverse mix of religious groups, from French Huguenots to Jews to Moravians to Congregationalists and Episcopalians. Weisberger relates Aaron Burr's launching of a ""well-oiled"" political machine in New York and suggests that sectional discord reared its ugly head as early as the 1790s, yet never does his story really come alive. (Oct.)