Originally published on September 4, 2024 (Episode 374)
Introduction
In Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 tale The Man Without a Country, protagonist Philip Nolan is portrayed as a young man raised in a western Eden infested with “Spanish plots” and “Orleans plots.” It is little surprise, then, that in the story Nolan turned against a United States he barely knew.
In his new book Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America (OUP, 2024), Tyson Reeder shows that Hale’s Unionist, anti-Confederate fiction had roots in the reality of the early American Republic. For over forty years, James Madison stood near the center of American politics, shaping both the Constitutional system and the party system he once decried. Tyson Reeder argues that both of these innovations were in part directed to counter act the influence of foreign powers like working to bend the young republic toward their interests.
About the Guest
Tyson Reeder is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He was formerly an editor of the Papers of James Madison at the University of Virginia.
For Further Investigation
Tyson Reeder, Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America (OUP, 2024)
—, Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Related Episodes
Tecumseh: A Great American Strategist
Other Resources
Edward Everett Hale, The Man Without a Country (1863)
Listen & Discuss
What counts as “foreign meddling” in a fragile republic? Would Madison have recognized today’s debates about outside interference? Share your thoughts in the comments—and pass this episode along to someone who loves stories of America’s precarious beginnings.
