There is a widely held belief that the racism, xenophobia and violence of this election cycle is an aberration and that reasoned debate has been the default mode of American presidential politics since the republic was founded. In his review of Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions: A Continental History 1750 – 1804 (London Review of Books) Eric Foner points out that this belief, like many others about our country’s origins, is dead wrong.

Long before there were Trumpians and Clintonians there were Federalists and Jeffersonian-Republicans. The American Revolution was, after all, a revolution. There were British Loyalists ready to die for the Crown and  separatists focused on independence willing to do the same. There were slavers and abolitionists, isolationists and royalists, those who wanted a strong central government and those who saw tyranny in that prospect, and, once the formation was complete violent disagreements continued. Remember Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr? read more