Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829. By James E. Lewis Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. xiv, 304 pp. Cloth, $49.95, isbn 0-8078-2429-1. Paper, $18.95, isbn 0-8078-4736-4.)

This study by James E. Lewis Jr., a history of the early republic, contains a rather extensive analysis of James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun (and occasional references to Thomas Jefferson), along with other leaders, all of whom Lewis calls policymakers. The author characterizes the entire group as "unionists" but credits them with various approaches to accomplish their overwhelming mission, preservation of the union. Early on, unionists were concerned that the "united" states would divide into two or more parts. In fact, the Federalists, on the one hand, with their ties to Britain, financial control of the country, and desire for a more centralized government, and westerners and southerners, on the other, who sought a smaller and less limiting government and had an insatiable appetite for land, may have had one thing in common—a wish to split the country at the Appalachian Mountains. . . .

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