Details major events which shaped an organized resistance movement against the British and brought about the American Revolution. Maintaining that the outbreak of revolution in 1775 was not the result of secret planning by radicals but rather the end product of years of painful evolution, Pauline Maier brilliantly traces the American colonists' road to independence from 1765 to 1776 and examines the role of popular violence as political allegiances corroded and once-loyal subjects were gradually transformed into revolutionaries. Mrs. Maier presents a view of the American leaders different from that which prevailed a generation ago, when historians saw them as lawless demagogues who, already set upon independence at the outset of the conflict with England, manipulated the public toward their goal through propaganda and mob violence. She shows that none of the men in the forefront of American opposition to British policies favored independence when the colonies blocked England's efforts to impose a Stamp Tax upon them in 1765. Their love of British institutions was undermined gradually and for reasons beyond their opposition to legislation affecting American interest. Developments in England itself, in Ireland, Corsica, and the West Indies also fed American disillusionment with imperial rule, until leading colonists came to believe that just government required casting loose from Britain and monarchy. Indeed, Mrs. Maier demonstrates that participants saw the American Revolution as part of an international struggle between freedom and despotism. Like independence, violence was a last resort. Arguing that colonial leaders, like many present-day "revolutionaries," quickly learned that popular violence was counterproductive, Mrs. Maier makes it clear that they organized resistance in part to contain disorder. Building association to discipline opposition, they gradually made self-rule founded upon carefully designed "social compacts" a reality. Out of the struggle with Britain emerged not merely separation, but the beginnings of American republican government.
"Succeeding admirably in condensing the best quotes from around twenty thousand letters, this book will awaken some readers to the wit and wisdom of Jefferson, and enable others to rediscover it.
The distress of the Boston garrison was treated as a temporary difficulty which would end as soon as an adequate ... S. enior alarm North British sounded America. officials over King illicit generally George's arms heeded own and ...
An engaging biography of Benjamin Franklin, published on the tricentennial of his birth, offers a marvelous portrait of this towering colonial figure, who, with only two years of formal education, managed to lead one of the most ...
The bloody raid reinforced the hatred and distain that his former countrymen held for Benedict Arnold, but it did little lasting damage. The town of New London was rebuilt, and American privateers soon resumed their operations against ...
Winter Quarters: George Washington and the Continental Army at Valley Forge
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... Serge Corvington, and Jerome Stoker of the American History Division, Maude D. Cole, Francis Mattson, ... Virginia Historical Society: Howson W. Cole; Archivo General de Indias, Seville: Rosario EDITORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxxvii Parra ...
On the day that Lee and Clinton arrived, Thomas Lynch called on William Smith. This fifty-one-year-old grandson of an Irish immigrant was one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. Yet his Irish ancestry had prompted him to take the ...
Wakin, Daniel J. “Pastor's Call to Arms in 1776 Has Echoes in 2003.” New York Reportin New York Times, March 16, 2003. Warren, ———. “Uniform of the Revolutionary Army.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Vol.
John C. Miller, Sam Adams (Stanford, Calif.; Stanford University Press, 1936), pp. 343–44. Details on this historiography can be found in Maier, Old Revolutionaries, op.cit., pp. 3-50. Irvin, op.cit., pp. 103-4. Miller, Sam Adams ...