Completely reset text;
archival quality paper and
binding; introduction; CIP
data; new index.
6x9, approx. 355 pages
Hardcover.
ISBN-13:
978-1-934182-01-7
$65.00
By William E. Dodd
Alethes Press is very pleased to publish anew this classic
biography of one of the most important, but unjustly
forgotten, figures in American history—Nathaniel Macon.
This book, the only modern biography of this important
statesman (first issued in 1903), captures all the periods
of Macon’s life, which master historian William E. Dodd,
with a nuanced appreciation of his subject, deftly
illuminates and sets within the tumultuous history of the
early national period.
The Old Republicans have received scant attention in
American scholarship, and one of the least deserving of
this neglect is the enormously important North Carolinian
“pure republican” Nathaniel Macon (1758-1837), one of
the first speakers of the House and an exemplary figure
in that “other” American tradition in politics, the
Jeffersonian.
Educated at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey),
Macon served in the Revolutionary War and later in the
House of Representatives from the second through the
twelve succeeding Congresses (1791-1815). He was
speaker of the House of Representatives in the seventh
through the ninth Congresses (1801-1807). And from
1815-1828 Macon served in the Senate. Throughout it all,
he asserted with astonishing consistency—thereby
earning universal respect from members of all parties—
the norms of pure republicanism (states’ rights, free
trade, and opposition to nationally funded projects,
particularly banking and internal improvements). He died
in 1837 in North Carolina.