Download or read book American States of Nature written by Mark Somos and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American States of Nature transforms our understanding of the American Revolution and the early makings of the Constitution. The journey to an independent United States generated important arguments about the existing condition of Americans, in which rival interpretations of the term "state of nature" played a crucial role. "State of nature" typically implied a pre-political condition and was often invoked in support of individual rights to property and self-defense and the right to exit or to form a political state. It could connote either a paradise, a baseline condition of virtue and health, or a hell on earth. This mutable phrase was well-known in Europe and its empires. In the British colonies, "state of nature" appeared thousands of times in juridical, theological, medical, political, economic, and other texts from 1630 to 1810. But by the 1760s, a distinctively American state-of-nature discourse started to emerge. It combined existing meanings and sidelined others in moments of intense contestation, such as the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 and the First Continental Congress of 1774. In laws, resolutions, petitions, sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, letters, and diaries, the American states of nature came to justify independence at least as much as colonial formulations of liberty, property, and individual rights did. In this groundbreaking book, Mark Somos focuses on the formative decade and a half just before the American Revolution. Somos' investigation begins with a 1761 speech by James Otis that John Adams described as "a dissertation on the state of nature," and celebrated as the real start of the Revolution. Drawing on an enormous range of both public and personal writings, many rarely or never before discussed, the book follows the development of America's state-of-nature discourse to 1775. The founding generation transformed this flexible concept into a powerful theme that shapes their legacy to this day. No constitutional history of the Revolution can be written without it.
Download or read book Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies written by Daniel Dulany and published by . This book was released on 1765 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pamphlets of the American Revolution 1750 1776 1750 1765 written by Bernard Bailyn and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first volume of a four-volume set that will reprint in their entirety the texts of 72 pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American controversy that were published in America in the years 1750-1776. They have been selected from the corpus of the pamphlet literature on the basis of their importance in the growth of American political and social ideas, their role in the debate with England over constitutional rights, and their literary merit. All of the best known pamphlets of the period, such as James Otis' Rights of the British Colonies (1764), John Dickinson's Farmers Letters (1768), and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) are to be included. In addition there are lesser known ones particularly important in the development of American constitutional thought: Stephen Johnson's Some Important Observations (1766), John Joachim Zublys An Humble Enquiry (1769), Ebenezer Baldwins An Appendix Stating the Heavy Grievances (1774), and Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (1776). There are also pamphlets illustrative of the sheer vituperation of the Revolutionary polemics, and others selected for their more elevated literary merit. Both sides of the Anglo-American dispute and all genres of expression -- poetry, dramatic dialogues, sermons, treatises, documentary collections, political "position papers" -- that appeared in this form are included. Each pamphlet is introduced by an essay written by the editor containing a biographical sketch of the author of the document, an analysis of the circumstances that led to the writing of it, and an interpretation of its contents. The texts are edited for the convenience of the modern reader according to a scheme that preserves scrupulously the integrity of every word written but that frees the text from the encumbrances of 18th-century printing practices. All references to writings, people, and events that are not obvious to the informed modern reader are identified in the editorial apparatus and where necessary explained in detailed notes. This first volume of the set contains the texts of 14 pamphlets through the year 1765. It presents, in addition, a book-length General Introduction by Mr. Bailyn on the ideology of the American Revolution. In the seven chapters of this essay the ideological origins and development of the Revolutionary movement are analyzed in the light of the study of the pamphlet literature that went into the preparation of these volumes. Mr. Bailyn explains that close analysis of this literature allows one to penetrate deeply into the colonists understanding of the events of their time; to grasp more clearly than is otherwise possible the sources of their ideas and their motives in rebelling; and, above all, to see the subtle, fundamental transformation of 18th-century constitutional thought that took place during these years of controversy and that became basic doctrine in America thereafter. Mr. Bailyn stresses particularly the importance in the development of American thought of the writings of a group of early 18th-century English radicals and opposition politicians who transmitted to the colonists most directly the 17th-century tradition of anti-authoritarianism born in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In the context of this 17th- and early 18th-century tradition one sees the political importance in the Revolutionary movement of concepts the 20th century has generally dismissed as mere propaganda and rhetoric: 'slavery,' 'conspiracy,' 'corruption.' It was the meaning these concepts imparted to the events of the time, Mr. Bailyn suggests, as well as the famous Lockean notions of natural rights and social and governmental compacts, that accounts for the origins and the basic characteristics of the American Revolution."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Collected Political Writings of James Otis written by Richard Adam Samuelson and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Writing New England written by Andrew Delbanco and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organized thematically, this anthology provides a collective self-portrait of the New England mind. With an introductory essay on the origins of New England, a detailed chronology, and explanatory headnotes for each selection, the book is a welcoming introduction to a great American literary tradition and a treasury of vivid writing that defines what it has meant, over nearly four centuries, to be a New Englander.
Download or read book Common Sense written by Thomas Paine and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Political Thought written by Keith E. Whittington and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Political Thought: Readings and Materials presents a diverse collection of writings, speeches, judicial opinions, and other political documents, offering an introduction to the controversies and disputes that have mobilized Americans since the first settlements in North America. Ranging from the Colonial era to the present day-and featuring both traditional readings and lesser-known documents-this reader takes a historical approach that helps students see how political, economic, and social conditions led to the development of specific political ideas. Each chapter includes a substantial introduction and each reading is enriched by headnotes and discussion questions. Visit the Companion Website at http: //global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199338863/ for additional readings and materials.
Download or read book An Inquiry Into the Rights of the British Colonies written by Richard Bland and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Words That Made Us written by Akhil Reed Amar and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the American Constitution's formative decades from a preeminent legal scholar When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.
Download or read book History of the Colony of New Haven Before and After the Union with Connecticut written by Edward Rodolphus Lambert and published by . This book was released on 1838 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tracts of the American Revolution 1763 1776 written by Merrill Jensen and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together seventeen of the most important pamphlets produced by the American colonies as they opposed British measures and policies after 1763, and as they disputed the issue of independence with one another between 1774 and 1776. The most famous pamphleteers--James Otis, John Dickinson, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine--are here; so too are lesser-known ones. Students of American history and political thought will find in these tracts rich evidence of the colonists' grievances against Britain, their methods of persuasion, and the development of political thought that led to the Declaration of Independence. A student-oriented introduction presents a capsule history of the events of the period and an analysis of the context of each tract.
Download or read book Colonies to Nation 1763 1789 written by Jack P. Greene and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1975 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing conviction in London that measures had to be undertaken at the end of the French and Indian war to shore up British authority in the colonies was revealed by the stream of proposals for imperial reform that poured from the pens of Crown officials and other interested observers during the early 1760s.
Download or read book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery written by Lysander Spooner and published by . This book was released on 1845 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Influence of John Locke s Political Philosophy on the Formation of a Revolutionary Spirit in America written by Laila N. and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, course: American Literature: The American Revolution, language: English, abstract: The attempt of this paper is to examine how Locke’s political philosophy influenced the thoughts and actions of the opponents of the British Crown during the American Revolution. In the American colonies the origin of political power structures and government were thought to be in contractual arrangements. Therefore, the idea of John Locke that it’s the people’s decision to enter into a society by a social contract was estimated by many colonists to be also the concept of government their ancestors had chosen to settle down in the New World. Even some historians saw the “intellectual roots of resistance in the “country” [...] as part and parcel of the Lockean Enlightenment”. So, one can conclude that Locke did have a great influence. Furthermore, the adaptation of Locke’s ideas in the revolutionary documents showed that his philosophy served as justification for the colonists and with that the independence was justified, too.
Download or read book A Summary View of the Rights of British America written by Thomas Jefferson and published by . This book was released on 1774 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rights of Man written by Thomas Paine and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty written by Richard Price and published by . This book was released on 1776 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
