Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and the Foreign Policy of the Early Republic

Kenneth R. Stevens, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and the Foreign Policy of the Early Republic, Diplomatic History, Volume 19, Issue 4, September 1995, Pages 705–711, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1995.tb00672.x

Extract

In a thought-provoking essay in Diplomatic History in 1993, William Earl Weeks observed that the “study of early American foreign relations has been in the doldrums for a generation.” 1 There is some reason to disagree with the accuracy of that assertion, 2 but to the extent that it is true, Doron S. Ben-Atar's and William Earl Weeks's books make significant contributions to the field. The two authors deal with different subjects–Ben-Atar with the place of commerce in Jefferson's political economy and Weeks with the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819–but both consider how their protagonists' personalities, beliefs, and values influenced their policies and actions. After reviewing the evidence, both authors conclude that their subjects felt the burden of living up to the republican idealism of the Revolution, but that neither was equal to the task, notwithstanding Jefferson's credentials as an architect of independence and Adams's heritage as the son of a founding father.