Seven Virginians: The Men Who Shaped Our Republic by John B. Boles (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Seven Virginians: The Men Who Shaped Our Republic by John B. Boles
• Jeffrey J. Malanson

Seven Virginians: The Men Who Shaped Our Republic. By John B. Boles. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2023. Pp. xii, 392. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8139-4909-3.)

John B. Boles’s Seven Virginians: The Men Who Shaped Our Republic provides a highly readable account of the “long revolutionary era” between the 1740s and 1830s as lived by George Mason, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Marshall, and James Monroe (p. 2). According to Boles, these “seven men were born in the northeast quadrant of the colony of Virginia” and played “a vastly disproportionate role in the founding of this nation” (p. 1). The book’s first thirteen chapters tell the story of the country’s founding in a largely chronological narrative from the French and Indian War through the late 1820s. A fourteenth chapter on “Institution Builders” examines Marshall’s tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Jefferson’s role in founding the University of Virginia. A final chapter considers the legacies of Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, and Monroe regarding slavery and their influence on the effort to write a new constitution for the state of Virginia in 1829.

Boles moves briskly through more than eighty years of history while trying to tell coherent stories about each Virginian, but he tries to do too much, and the book’s primary contribution is ultimately unclear. The narrative thrust of Seven Virginians is the chronology of America’s founding, often with Washington, Jefferson, or Madison at the center. Little space is left for the contributions of Mason, Henry, Monroe, and Marshall, who are not central to Boles’s conception of the founding. Devoting more space to their achievements and service would have helped readers to better understand who these four were as politicians and Virginians—especially so for Monroe, who is briefly described as an Antifederalist Francophile in the 1780s and 1790s and as a mildly pro-British nationalist in the 1810s, with little context provided to explain the transition. Monroe and Marshall are at least highlighted in chapters near the end of the book, but Henry and especially Mason receive short shrift. The same can be said of the putative unifying theme of the book—that these seven were all Virginians. Virginia, and the ways the state and its politics shaped who these leaders were, is not a prominent enough character in the book to make it feel as if we learned anything new about the founding or these leaders from this approach.

Boles admits that “a book about seven white slaveholders will appear inappropriate or even repugnant to some readers in 2023,” but he justifies his topic by arguing that “it is important to see these men in all their complexities—good and bad—if we are to face our history honestly and with completeness” (p. 2). The problem is that Boles largely relegates any extended discussion of their legacies with slavery until the last chapter, separating this consideration from the primary narrative. More intentional engagement with questions like how their personal lives and financial fortunes were tied to slavery, how Virginia’s politics influenced their individual thinking, and how they conceptualized colonization in the 1800s could have helped readers better understand the intellectual and moral gymnastics these Virginians used to rationalize the liberty they proclaimed and the society they created. [End Page 606]

The premise of Seven Virginians ultimately could not fully be delivered on. Consideration of the influence of Virginia on who these seven founders were as leaders, and on the full arc of their careers both in and out of national politics, largely gives way to the weight of the founding narrative. This is unfortunate because a study of these seven Virginians that prioritized a deeper look at state identity and the evolution of their political and national thinking as the United States was formed and matured would have made for a truly fascinating study.

Jeffrey J. Malanson Williams College Copyright © 2024 The Southern Historical Association ...