Seven Virginians, the culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, reveals the integral role played by seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall. Most accounts of the founding generation focus only on the activities of the "big three"-Washington, Jefferson, and Madison-but Boles incorporates the key contributions of these other four important figures to the political and legal structures that govern the United States to this day. At the same time, Boles is clear-eyed about the Revolutionary generation's problems and their fading from the scene, inaugurating the beginnings of Virginia's political decline in the early nineteenth century. In so doing, Boles provides the crucial Virginian piece to the ongoing reevaluation of the United States' founding moment.
John B. Boles is the William P. Hobby Emeritus Professor of History at Rice University, former editor (1983-2013) of the Journal of Southern History, a former president of the Southern Historical Association, and author of Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty.
Introduction 1. The First Rumblings 2. The Fateful Step 3. Winning Independence 4. Unresolved Problems 5. Creating a New Government 6. The Virginia Ratification Debate 7. Launching the New Nation 8. Political Fissures 9. Political Crisis 10. A Political Turning Point 11. Jefferson, Madison, and John Bull 12. Mr. Madison's War 13. A Maturing Nation 14. Institution Builders 15. Legacy Deferred: The End of a Dynasty
"Boles has eloquently synthesized a massive amount of material into a narrative history which, despite the overall familiarity of much of the material, is peppered with lucid explanations of complicated events and issues and some surprising insights and tidbits." - Cynthia A. Kierner, George Mason University, author of Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times "John Boles pours a lifetime of scholarly insight and clarity into this stellar history of seven Virginians who helped create the liberal revolutionary American experiment. In a necessary corrective of recent efforts to paint the American Revolution as a reactive or conservative movement, Boles places these founding fathers in their eighteenth-century context and properly shows that they helped establish ideals that we still aspire to achieve. A timely and important book." - Douglas Bradburn, President and CEO of, George Washington's Mount Vernon, author of The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804 "Focusing on the Virginians he knows so well, John Boles offers a fresh perspective on a familiar narrative. Seven Virginians is a fitting capstone to a fine historian's distinguished career." - Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
