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1816: America Rising. By C. Edward Skeen. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003. Pp. xvi, 299. Cloth, $35.00.)
As the title might suggest, in 1816: America Rising C. Edward Skeen argues that the year 1816 represents a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. With the country at peace and rejecting the opprobrium of party labels, Skeen finds interest, politics, and serendipity uniting to transform the landscape of American political and national life. Using a broad array of primary sources, from newspapers to personal correspondence, Skeen recaptures a country flush m a moment of possibility and describes a snapshot of a political world on the verge of trans(brmation. While the year 1816 is best known among American historians for a remarkable weather phenomenon-"the year of no summer"-Skeen argues that the weather was the least astonishing aspect of a "pivotal year of transition" (xi) in United States history.
The heart of the book is political; Skeen sees the crucial importance of 1810 reflected in the politics of the Fourteenth Congress, a Congress that most other historians have ignored. In four chapters, Skeen ably narrates the impressive record of this Congress, which was filled with important legislation and memorable characters, including "two future presidents, two vice-presidents, five secretaries of state, a secretary of the treasury, three secretaries of war, two postmaster generals, a secretary of the navy, and an attorney general" (38). This Congress exhibited a number of curiosities: it often arrayed a pro-Bank nationalist, John Calhoun, against an anti-Bank sectionalist, Daniel Webster; it possessed a member who had been at the Constitutional Convention (Rufus King) and at least one member who would serve in the Congress of the Confederate States of America (John Tyler); and it included Republicans behaving like Federalists and Federalists cooperating with the Executive Branch. From the initial controversy over the trade provisions...