Celebrating the Founders

Hamilton's study of the Tucker family is much more successful when he creatively explores the dynamics of various family relationships and analyzes the changing function and meaning of the family over time. The Tuckers, both men and women, left a large body of papers, including letters, poems, and other documents, that allows Hamilton do this. The Tucker women consistently emerge as three-dimensional characters who were integral all facets of the family's life. Hamilton explores marital and parent-child relationships show how outside pressures affected individuals, immediate families, and broader kinship ties. Finally, Hamilton wants to explain the South's evolution through the Jeffersonian (p. 6), and in so doing he engages the questions of why and how the North and South had become such different places by the I82os and what those differences meant for the nation as a whole. Although he does not directly discuss southern distinctiveness or the origins of the Civil War, his work offers some useful insights into both of those debates. In particular, his provocative conclusions about the consequences of the War of 1812 should foster debate and further investigation. Overall, Hamilton's work is a well-researched and wellwritten look at one family's experiences in this important transition period in Virginia's history. Although surely falling short of their aspirations during this period, the Tuckers' particular circumstances make them both problematic as a case study and useful for advancing new questions about family and the character and evolution of preand postRevolutionary Virginia

Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · History · Race, History, and American Society