Founding Brothers

1. What was your favorite chapter and why? My favorite chapter was the chapter about the duel. The duel was my favorite chapter because the duel seemed never ending and exciting. The chapter began with background information about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr family lives. After the background information is passed, the chapter goes into great detail about the duel. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were not friends. Hamilton helped Thomas Jefferson defeat Burr in the Presidential election. later on when Burr was Vice President, he ran for governor in New York. Hamilton had such a great influence on his home state that Burr lost the election to be governor. Burr had challenged Hamilton to a duel because of some offensive comments from Hamilton. Ultimately, Burr had severely wounded Hamilton, who died days later. According to the chapter, two shots were heard, Hamilton died but Burr claims he never shot at Hamilton. So because Burr denies shooting at Hamilton, it makes you think what really happened? This chapter was my favorite because it actually forced me to think about what really happened with the two shots heard.

2. Why did Ellis choose the title Founding Brothers? I think Ellis chose “Founding Brothers” as the title because the men who are known to have helped make America a better country regardless if they ruined our economy or whatever were the founders and brothers in the sense that they all had some part in the creation of where America is today. The men in this book didn’t exactly always know what they were doing when they started building America up to be the country it is today. The word “Brothers” is more easily to be connected with. Also the fact that they all had some sort of relationship with each other, whether it was an argument, they fought like brothers. He also could have named the book “Founding Brothers” because they all came from the same time period so there weren’t seeing one another as fathers but brothers. They are seen as fathers today because looking back through history they were the first people to make a major impact on our country such as gaining our independence and many other things. 3. Why do you think Ellis chose the specific events he wrote about? I think Ellis chose the specific events that he wrote about because they were major events in history. It was like background information on information that was already known but younger generations could easily understand from his book. The events were also good information points for the name he chose. Since the events were written in story form, it made learning the important historical facts more interesting and easy to grasp. It is much easier to follow and grasp the information with a story rather than historians word for word recall of the events. When you are reading this book, you can imagine yourself actually there when Ellis is describing all the events that go on. I also think Ellis chose the specific events he wrote about because they were what he felt was important enough for the general public to know.