1789: George Washington and the Founders Create America draws on hundreds of sources to paint a vivid portrait of the new nation, setting out to show the world at large that a new-and very American-form of government was calling itself into being. "No future session of Congress will ever have so arduous and weighty a charge on their hands," the New York Gazette observed in summer 1789. "No examples to imitate, and no striking historical facts on which to ground their decisions-All is bare creation."

The Constitution had been written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But 1789 was the year the government it described-albeit only in the broadest of terms-had to be brought into being.

Veteran journalist Thomas B. Allen brings decades of experience and a gifted storyteller's eye to the long-hidden history of how George Washington and the Founders set the federal government into motion.

Prologue: Eleven States Create a Nation

1 The Great Cause

2 The Specter of a King

3 The Reluctant President

4 Out with the Old

5 A New Government Awakens

6 "Now a King"

7 Etiquette Advice for the President

8 "All Is Bare Creation"

9 The Constitution as Blueprint

10 Counting We the People

11 America's "Other Persons"

12 A Tub Full of Rights

13 "He Shall Have Power"

14 Stricken Washington, Fearful Nation

15 Washington Gets a Bastille Key

16 Seeing America's Farms and Factories

17 Many Pirates-And No Navy

18 The Second Session: Hope and Angst

19 On the Frontier, Spies and Plots

20 Toward an American Language

Epilogue: In Rising Glory

Appendices

1 The "Correct"

Constitution of the United States

2 Inside the Dozen: the Bill of Rights

3 A Timeline of the Founding of the United States and the Federal Government

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Bibliographic Sources

Index

About the Author