Joseph J. Ellis

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Joseph J. Ellis, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in History for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (Knopf 2000), is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College whose work focuses on the lives and times of the founders of the United States of America.

Articles by Joseph Ellis

George Washington Invents the Presidency, Winter 2020 | Vol. 64, No. 1
The young nation was lucky to have the only candidate on earth who could do the job. Read >>
What Does the Second Amendment Really Mean?, September/October 2019 | Vol. 64, No. 4
To know what the Framers intended, we need to understand the late-18th century historical context. Read >>
Compromise 1: Philadelphia Story, Summer 2010 | Vol. 60, No. 2
Without major compromises by all involved and the agreement to avoid the contentious issue of slavery, the framers would never have written and ratified the Constitution Read >>
Madison’s Radical Agenda, Winter 2010 | Vol. 59, No. 4
A diminutive, persuasive Virginian hijacked the Constitutional Convention and forced the moderates to accept a national government with vastly expanded powers Read >>
Inventing The Presidency, October 2004 | Vol. 55, No. 5
As America goes into its fifty-fifth presidential election, we should remember that there might have been only one—if we hadn’t had the only candidate on earth who could do the job Read >>
Be Confident—and Careful, November/December 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 8
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Intimate Enemies, September 2000 | Vol. 51, No. 5
When John Adams was elected President, and Thomas Jefferson Vice President, each came to see the other as a traitor. Out of their enmity grew our modern political system. Read >>
Friends At Twilight, May/June 1993 | Vol. 44, No. 3
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson stood together in America’s perilous dawn, but politics soon drove them apart. Then in their last years the two old enemies began a remarkable correspondence that is both testimony to the power of friendship and an eloquent summary of the dialogue that went on within the Revolutionary generation—and that continues within our own. Read >>

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