Download or read book Whose American Revolution was It written by Alfred F. Young and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The meaning of the American Revolution has always been a much-contested question, and asking it is particularly important today: the standard, easily digested narrative puts the Founding Fathers at the head of a unified movement, failing to acknowledge the deep divisions in Revolutionary-era society and the many different historical interpretations that have followed. Whose American Revolution Was It? speaks both to the ways diverse groups of Americans who lived through the Revolution might have answered that question and to the different ways historians through the decades have interpreted the Revolution for our own time. As the only volume to offer an accessible and sweeping discussion of the period’s historiography and its historians, Whose American Revolution Was It? is an essential reference for anyone studying early American history. The first section, by Alfred F. Young, begins in 1925 with historian J. Franklin Jameson and takes the reader through the successive schools of interpretation up to the 1990s. The second section, by Gregory H. Nobles, focuses primarily on the ways present-day historians have expanded our understanding of the broader social history of the Revolution, bringing onto the stage farmers and artisans, who made up the majority of white men, as well as African Americans, Native Americans, and women of all social classes.
Download or read book Independence Lost written by Kathleen DuVal and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rising-star historian offers a significant new global perspective on the Revolutionary War with the story of the conflict as seen through the eyes of the outsiders of colonial society Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award • Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey History Prize • Finalist for the George Washington Book Prize Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in Independence Lost, she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast. While citizens of the thirteen rebelling colonies came to blows with the British Empire over tariffs and parliamentary representation, the situation on the rest of the continent was even more fraught. In the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast, as both sides competed for allegiances with the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations who inhabited the region. Meanwhile, African American slaves had little control over their own lives, but some individuals found opportunities to expand their freedoms during the war. Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom the Founders espoused: Independence had a personal as well as national meaning, and the choices made by people living outside the colonies were of critical importance to the war’s outcome. DuVal introduces us to the Mobile slave Petit Jean, who organized militias to fight the British at sea; the Chickasaw diplomat Payamataha, who worked to keep his people out of war; New Orleans merchant Oliver Pollock and his wife, Margaret O’Brien Pollock, who risked their own wealth to organize funds and garner Spanish support for the American Revolution; the half-Scottish-Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, who fought to protect indigenous interests from European imperial encroachment; the Cajun refugee Amand Broussard, who spent a lifetime in conflict with the British; and Scottish loyalists James and Isabella Bruce, whose work on behalf of the British Empire placed them in grave danger. Their lives illuminate the fateful events that took place along the Gulf of Mexico and, in the process, changed the history of North America itself. Adding new depth and moral complexity, Kathleen DuVal reinvigorates the story of the American Revolution. Independence Lost is a bold work that fully establishes the reputation of a historian who is already regarded as one of her generation’s best. Praise for Independence Lost “[An] astonishing story . . . Independence Lost will knock your socks off. To read [this book] is to see that the task of recovering the entire American Revolution has barely begun.”—The New York Times Book Review “A richly documented and compelling account.”—The Wall Street Journal “A remarkable, necessary—and entirely new—book about the American Revolution.”—The Daily Beast “A completely new take on the American Revolution, rife with pathos, double-dealing, and intrigue.”—Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World
Download or read book American Revolution written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Revolution looks at one of the most significant eras in American history through the eyes of its least famous, least studied citizens. It is an eye-opening collection of essays demonstrating how the wrenching transformation from English colonies to an emerging nation affected Americans from all walks of life. American Revolution features the work of 14 accomplished social historians, whose findings are adding new dimensions to our understanding of the Revolutionary era. But some of the most fascinating contributions to this volume come from the people themselves--the anecdotes, letters, diaries, journalism, and other documents that convey the experiences of the full spectrum of American society in the mid- to late-18th century (including women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, soldiers, children, laborers, Quakers, sailors, and farmers).
Download or read book The American Revolution written by James Kirby Martin and published by Krieger Publishing Company. This book was released on 1977 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the degree to which everyday Americans representing specific social groups participated in and benefited from the American Revolution.
Download or read book The American Revolution written by James Kirby Martin and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Revolution written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2002-03-05 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft.
Download or read book American Revolution written by Andrew Frank and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond traditional texts, this revealing volume explores the world of the average citizens who played an integral part in the Revolutionary era of American history. American Revolution looks at one of the most significant eras in American history through the eyes of its least famous, least studied citizens. It is an eye-opening collection of essays demonstrating how the wrenching transformation from English colonies to an emerging nation affected Americans from all walks of life. American Revolution features the work of 14 accomplished social historians, whose findings are adding new dimensions to our understanding of the Revolutionary era. But some of the most fascinating contributions to this volume come from the people themselves—the anecdotes, letters, diaries, journalism, and other documents that convey the experiences of the full spectrum of American society in the mid- to late-18th century (including women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, soldiers, children, laborers, Quakers, sailors, and farmers).
Download or read book Representation in the American Revolution written by Gordon S. Wood and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's most celebrated historians, the Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon S. Wood, comes an early work whose relevance is undiminished. Originally published in 1969, now revised and with a new preface, Representation in the American Revolution examines the ways in which a government is created and how, in the face of great difficulties as well as great possibilities, its citizens are represented. Written immediately after the completion of Wood's Bancroft Award-winning The Creation of the American Republic, this book elaborates on issues also explored in that landmark work. The subject is one that lies at the heart of any discussion of democracy. Establishing a proper method of representation was a goal and measure of the American Revolution, or as Thomas Jefferson said in 1776, "the whole object of the present controversy." A fine example of political and constitutional history, this timeless little book will serve as an excellent introduction to issues of representation for students in the fields of political science, as well as history and law.
Download or read book Liberty Is Sweet written by Woody Holton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet is a “spirited account” (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.
Download or read book Revolutionary Founders written by Alfred F. Young and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twenty-two original essays, leading historians reveal the radical impulses at the founding of the American Republic. Here is a fresh new reading of the American Revolution that gives voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers whose revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the Founding Fathers. While the Founding Fathers advocated a break from Britain and espoused ideals of republican government, none proposed significant changes to the fabric of colonial society. As privileged and propertied white males, they did not seek a revolution in the modern sense; instead, they tried to maintain the underlying social structure and political system that enabled men of wealth to rule. They firmly opposed social equality and feared popular democracy as a form of “levelling.” Yet during this “revolutionary” period some people did believe that “liberty” meant “liberty for all” and that “equality” should be applied to political, economic, and religious spheres. Here are the stories of individuals and groups who exemplified the radical ideals of the American Revolution more in keeping with our own values today. This volume helps us to understand the social conflicts unleashed by the struggle for independence, the Revolution’s achievements, and the unfinished agenda it left for future generations to confront.
Download or read book How The Nation Was Won written by H. Graham Lowry and published by Executive Intelligence Review. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about how men move mountains. The description is not simply metaphorical, concerning America's astonishing feat of forging a superpower out of a continental wilderness. It also applies to an extraordinary political fight, waged for nearly a century before the outbreak of the American Revolution: the battle to break beyond the long barrier of the eastern Appalachian Mountain chain, in order to colonize and develop the vast territories to the west. The vision of developing a continental republic in the New World guided America's colonists as far back as John Winthrop's founding of Massachusetts in 1630. With benefit from the experiences of Captain John Smith, whose similar hopes for such a project in Virginia had failed, Winthrop organized the Massachusetts Bay expedition as a first-stage, space colony might be organized today. He recruited all the skilled persons he could muster, in engineering, toolmaking, construction, and agriculture, to the limits of early seventeenth century technology. His small ships also brought hundreds of dedicated colonists and their families, to undertake a nation-building mission that 'official' opinion of the time considered impossible. Under self-governing powers of independence, the Massachusetts colony established an indepth, republican citizenry and considerable economic power, during its first half-century of existence. Its influence was spread in varying degrees throughout New England, and even into the Mid-Atlantic colonies. As colonial potentials increased for development beyond the mountain barriers, the obstacles became less the mountains themselves, and more the combined political and military opposition of forces in both Britain and France. The story of how those obstacles were overcome is the subject of this work. A small group of colonial leaders in America, working both openly and behind the scenes, began implementing a strategy in 1710 for an American 'breakout' beyond the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains. What they accomplished was indispensable to American independence. What they inspired was the mission of nation-building, for which Americans would fight a war to ensure its being fulfilled. In the long struggle between the founding of Massachusetts and "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord Bridge, that sense of moral purpose was repeatedly tested, yet sustained. The bold and hazardous goal of positioning the colonies to develop the West was attained during the French and Indian War, whose veterans provided much of the leadership for the American Revolution. It may seem presumptuous to describe this account as "America's Untold Story." To the author's knowledge, however, the record of the continuous effort to build a continental republic, from the Puritan founders to the Founding Fathers, has never before been presented, as a coherent, ongoing strategic battle. Yet the evidence is there, that the leading figures who brought America to the point it could successfully assert its independence, had worked to establish the necessary preconditions all along. The evidence is similarly abundant, that a great many Americans —long before the Revolution—thoroughly detested British rule, on precisely the issue of Britain's refusal to permit any real development of the continent. In the colonists' minds, Britain's oppression was underscored by its open collusion with France to destroy colonial attempts to develop the interior. Westward colonization efforts, from New England to the Carolinas, were instant targets for Indian massacres, typically directed by French Jesuit 'missionaries' operating from Canada or, on the southern flank, from French outposts in Louisiana. American efforts to remove such threats—through appeals to the monarchy for assistance, or by military measures of their own—were repeatedly betrayed by Britain's ruling circles. These political facts of life were known to generations of Americans before the Revolution.
Download or read book Founding Mothers written by Cokie Roberts and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cokie Roberts's number one New York Times bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, examined the nature of women's roles throughout history and led USA Today to praise her as a "custodian of time-honored values." Her second bestseller, From This Day Forward, written with her husband, Steve Roberts, described American marriages throughout history, including the romance of John and Abigail Adams. Now Roberts returns with Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families -- and their country -- proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it. While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice, and made it possible for the men to do what they did. The behind-the-scenes influence of these women -- and their sometimes very public activities -- was intelligent and pervasive. Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington -- proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived. Social history at its best, Founding Mothers unveils the drive, determination, creative insight, and passion of the other patriots, the women who raised our nation. Roberts proves beyond a doubt that like every generation of American women that has followed, the founding mothers used the unique gifts of their gender -- courage, pluck, sadness, joy, energy, grace, sensitivity, and humor -- to do what women do best, put one foot in front of the other in remarkable circumstances and carry on.
Download or read book America s Revolutionary Mind written by C. Bradley Thompson and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
Download or read book The debate on the American Revolution written by Gwenda Morgan and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in-depth study of the way in which historians have dealt with the coming of the American Revolution and the formation of the US Constitution. The approach is thematic, examining how historians in different periods interpreted these events and their causes and, more contentiously, their meaning. Making accessible to modern readers the work of often-neglected early historians, this book examines how the emergence of history as a professional discipline led to new and competing versions of the history of the Revolution. It spans the entire period from the first generation of writers, whose ideas about history were shaped by the Enlightenment, to those of the twenty-first century who drew on the rich legacy provided by black studies, gender and women’s studies, cultural studies and ethnohistory. This book will be an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of the American Revolution.
Download or read book American Revolutions A Continental History 1750 1804 written by Alan Taylor and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Excellent . . . deserves high praise. Mr. Taylor conveys this sprawling continental history with economy, clarity, and vividness.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the nation its democratic framework. Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history. The American Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s colonies, fueled by local conditions and resistant to control. Emerging from the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, the revolution pivoted on western expansion as well as seaboard resistance to British taxes. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. The war exploded in set battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and spread through continuing frontier violence. The discord smoldering within the fragile new nation called forth a movement to concentrate power through a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But it was Jefferson’s expansive “empire of liberty” that carried the revolution forward, propelling white settlement and slavery west, preparing the ground for a new conflagration.
Download or read book Origins of the American Revolution written by John Chester Miller and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Origins of the American Revolution' attempts to explain why the American colonists rose in rebellion against a government whose authority, less than fifteen years before the Declaration of Independence, they had helped to extend over a large part of the North American continent.
Download or read book The American Revolution written by Harry M. Ward and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1995 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The era of the American Revolution was a defining moment in history. It bore witness to the transformation of colonists into citizens of a new nation and the setting of goals for a free people by which to guide posterity. Original materials for writing the history of the Revolution are abundant, and during the past half-century historians have expanded the prospects for study of the Revolutionary War era. Although much remains to be accomplished, new studies have added greatly to our knowledge of the establishment of Independence and the birth of the Republic, and new perspectives have been initiated. The American Revolution: Nationhood Achieved, 1763-1788 draws on the multifaceted contributions of recent historiography, as well as older sources and primary sources, in presenting a measured overview of the Revolutionary experience. It embraces not just the war or ideology or political development but also the people behind the scenes whose lives were affected by the war. Professor Ward provides a fresh view of the experience during this period, giving the reader an understanding of the events and the decisions that gave meaning to American character and nationhood.
