A Tempestuous Sea of Liberty - by Thomas N Ingersoll (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The final work by late historian Thomas N. Ingersoll on the political crisis posed by the presidential election of 1800--the reverberations of which are still felt today.

Written by the late Thomas Ingersoll before his death in December 2021, this book examines the fourteen-month struggle to control the identity and future of the United States following George Washington's death in December 1799. In this period, Americans engaged in a fierce debate over every aspect of political life, but especially over the meaning of egalitarianism and equality in the nascent nation.

Ingersoll's work focuses in particular on the divisions between two emergent national political parties: the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. Both were "democratic," strictly speaking, but they were still nervous about what "democracy" actually meant. Each party was also deeply divided along a spectrum from most moderate to most extreme. After a fraught election campaign shaped by disagreements over fundamental issues of class, gender, race, and religion, the populist Democratic-Republicans sent the moderately progressive Thomas Jefferson to the White House and won control of the House of Representatives.

This victory ended twelve long years of Federalist domination and began one of the greatest political dramas in American history. Rather than accepting their electoral defeat, the Federalists sought to subvert the will of the people and sow chaos and anarchy in the courts and in Congress, nearly tearing the country apart in the process. The Revolution of 1800 did nothing to stem the tide of a growing sectionalism that threatened to unmoor the nation but rather moved the country one step closer to all-out civil war.

A Tempestuous Sea of Liberty is a magisterial history of this pivotal period in American history, written by a senior historian in full command of the material.

Review Quotes

"A robust work of synthesis, impressively documented, presenting novel ways of understanding one of the most dramatic and nerve-wracking elections in all of US history. Ingersoll systematically demonstrates that a broad-based desire to overcome social inequities in political life goes back to the nation's founding."--Andrew Burstein, coauthor of The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality

"A Tempestuous Sea of Liberty offers a unique perspective of the events of the election of 1800-1801 by exploring its implications for the general populace, including westerners, religious revivalists, women, the enslaved, indigenous peoples, and the laboring poor. It highlights the importance of class struggle, the lack of consensus, and issues of race. Vigorously and clearly written, it is a timely reminder of another more dangerous period of political polarization when power passed for the first time from one party to another and when the system of government was still relatively new."--Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, coauthor of Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America's Early Independence

"The late Thomas N. Ingersoll wrote with colorful vigor and independence of mind, refreshingly willing to offer revisionist interpretations based on enormous research in primary sources. While his voluminous notes indicate his awareness of practically all relevant prior scholarship, this is less a synthesis of that scholarship than an exciting work of personal analysis. Few will accept all the author's conclusions, but everyone will benefit from engaging with his keen interpretative narrative. It's an exciting read."--John B. Boles, author of Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty