Fisher Ames, statesman and author of political tracts, achieved minor literary celebrity because of a series of political essays written between 1787 and his death. The Jeremiah of conservative American politics during the twenty years following 1787, Ames was an articulate spokesman for the most conservative faction of Federalist politicians. He displayed classically inspired oratorical and writing skills in essays memorable as well for their political content.

Fisher Ames was the third of five children born to Deborah Fisher Ames and Nathaniel Ames, astronomer, innkeeper, and physician. His ancestors included William Ames, a Shropshire yeoman who immigrated to Plymouth Colony in 1626, and Captain David Fisher, who personally arrested Governor Edmund Andros during the Glorious Revolution of 1689. According to family tradition, Fisher showed early scholarly promise, and his widowed mother, who ran the family tavern, sacrificed much to enroll him, at the age of twelve, in the Harvard College class of...