"Phillip Hamilton has written a concise, gripping study that depicts how the American Revolution affected an elite southern family, largely for the worse." -- Journal of Southern History "This excellent study is both eminently readable and educational, and it is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of leadership and of family life in Virginia following the American Revolution." -- Virginia Libraries
"Much more than a family history, this volume adds to our knowledge of the social, economic, and political landscapes of the Old Dominion from the late colonial era through the antebellum period. This book is recommended for those interested in the history of Virginia, the early republic, the South, and family history." -- North Carolina Historical Review
In 1814, John Randolph of Roanoke brooded over his family's decline since the American Revolution. The once-sumptuous world of the Virginia gentry was vanishing, its kinship ties crumbling along with its mansions. Looking back in an effort to grasp the changes around him, Randolph fixated on his stepfather and one-time guardian, the jurist St. George Tucker. Although Tucker had fought during the Revolution, he grasped the significant changes the war had brought to the Old Dominion. Thus he sold his plantations and urged his children to pursue careers in learned professions. Tucker's stepson John Randolph bitterly disagreed, precipitating a painful break between the two men.
Drawing upon an extraordinary archive of manuscript materials, Phillip Hamilton illustrates how two generations of a colorful and influential family adapted to social upheaval. He finds that the Tuckers eventually rejected wider family connections and turned instead to nuclear kin. They also abandoned the liberal principles and enlightened rationalism of the Revolution for a romanticism girded by deep social conservatism. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family reveals the complex process by which the world of Washington and Jefferson evolved into the antebellum society of Edmund Ruffin and Thomas Dew.
Phillip Hamilton is Associate Professor of History at Christopher Newport University.
Jeffersonian America
