Founding Visions

Lance Banning was one of the most distinguished historians of his generation. His first book, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology, was a groundbreaking study of the ideas and principles that influenced political conflict in the early American Republic. His revisionist masterpiece, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, received the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Banning was assembling this collection of his best and most representative writings on the Founding era when his untimely death stalled the project just short of its completion. Now, thanks to the efforts of editor Todd Estes, this illuminating resource is finally available. Founding Visions showcases the work of a historian who shaped the intellectual debates of his time. Featuring a foreword by Gordon S. Wood, the volume presents Banning's most seminal and insightful essays to a new generation of students, scholars, and general readers.

Foreword by Gordon S. Wood
The Problem of Power: Parties, Aristocracy, and Democracy in Revolutionary Thought
Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic
The Republican Interpretation: Retrospect and Prospect
Some Second Thoughts on Virtue and the Course of Revolutionary Thinking
Quid Transit? Paradigms and Process in the Transformation of Republican Ideas
The Constitutional Convention
The Federalist Papers
1787 and 1776: Patrick Henry, James Madison, the Constitution, and the Revolution
James Madison and the Nationalists, 1780–1783
The Hamiltonian Madison: A Reconsideration
The Practicable Sphere of a Republic: James Madison, the Constitutional Convention, and the Emergence of Revolutionary Federalism
Political Economy and the Creation of the Federal Republic
The Jeffersonians: First Principles