After the Revolution

Through portraits of four figuresCharles Willson Peale Hugh Henry Brackenridge William Dunlap and Noah WebsterJoseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America both its high expectations and its frustrations.An entrepreneur a writer who wanted to depict an ideal society a dramatist who tried to reconcile high aesthetic standards and populism and a Connecticut Yankee who ran into the contradictions of conservatism and liberalismeach of the four men depicted in this book had a vision of what kind of society post-Revolutionary America should be. Through portraits of these bellwether figures the prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the currents that were shaping the new country.