Rival Visions: How Jefferson and His Contemporaries Defined the Early American Republic ed. by Dustin Gish and Andrew Bibby (review)

The contributors to Rival Visions: How Jefferson and His Contemporaries Defined the Early American Republicagree on two primary assertions: the early republic can best be understood by using Thomas Jefferson's ideas as a "benchmark" against which to measure change; and modern debates over American identity have been "overtaken" both by a "disturbing ideological conformity" and by "dogmatic partisanship" (p. 2). This collection of essays seeks to inject historical context into contemporary partisan divides by focusing attention on the rivalries that have shaped America from the beginning. As John Ragosta puts it in his chapter on Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams, "conversations in the Early Republic were oftentimes more informative than monologues" (p. 178). Rival Visionsputs differing perspectives from the early republic into conversation with one another, emphasizing "conflict more than consensus" and encompassing such varied themes as constitutional debates, technological developments, and philosophical divergences (p. 3).

The political theorists, biographers, historians, and constitutional scholars who have contributed to this volume were originally inspired by a 2013 conference on Jefferson and his contemporaries held at Christopher Newport University. Editors Dustin Gish and Andrew Bibby have divided the eleven essays into three sections: "Envisioning the New Nation," "National Tensions in the Early Republic," and "Constitutional Controversies." This division is less chronological than thematic, and readers will find variety within each section. For example, in Part 1, Eran Shalev explores the different historical antecedents that the Founders drew on in order to validate their republican experiment; Darren Staloff argues that Jefferson and Adams's fundamental difference lay in their disagreement over human perfectibility; and Gish and Armin Mattes each position the Founders' experiences with—and divergent reactions to—the French Revolution as a key element to our understanding of the early American nation.

In Part 2, complementary essays by Christa Dierksheide and Peter S. Onuf contain insightful discussions of Jefferson and slavery, examining Jefferson's attempts to ameliorate the institution and contrasting Jefferson's optimistic faith in enlightenment with George Washington's quiet pragmatism. Essays by Daniel Dreisbach and Ragosta are more openly in debate, offering competing interpretations of Jefferson's support for religion in the public sphere. Dreisbach argues that most of the founding generation believed that religion was necessary for virtue, and virtue for a republic, concluding that even the unorthodox Jefferson's policies and practices "had the effect of raising religion's profile and extending its influence into the public sphere" (p. 153). Ragosta, in contrast, focuses on three separate "conversations" in Jefferson's life in order to claim that the separation of church and state was, in fact, Jefferson's primary aim—and, by the early nineteenth century, one of his greatest accomplishments (p. 164). Dreisbach and Ragosta are both persuasive, and their conversation offers a useful overview of current debates surrounding religion in the early republic.

Part 3 includes Jean Yarbrough's essay on Jefferson's moral sense philosophy and its connection to an agrarian lifestyle; Daniel Klinghard's analysis of Jefferson's views on technology, progress, and politics; and Charles Hobson's fascinating comparison of Jefferson and one of his most prominent rivals, John Marshall. Hobson convincingly argues that personal animosity and decades of misunderstandings and offenses between these two Virginians prevented them from ever reconciling and finding that their rival visions of America actually had several areas of overlap. This essay is a fitting end to a book that begins by lamenting Americans' current ideological divisions: Hobson provides a timely warning against allowing personal animosity to cloud reasoned political debate.

Rival Visionswill be of interest to all scholars of Jeffersonian America.