First published in 1782, this response to Raynal's The Revolution of America (also reissued in this series) by Thomas Paine (1737-1809) has been eclipsed by Paine's other work and largely overlooked. Written a year after Raynal's account of the American Revolution appeared in English, Paine's 'corrections' run to nearly eighty pages. His main critique of Raynal is that his argument stresses political theory rather than actions in the real world, an approach that lacks practicality. Paine argues against Raynal's assertion that the American War of Independence erupted over a tax dispute, and downplays France's involvement in the movement for independence. However, while attacking Raynal's influential work, he does so diplomatically, believing that the Abbe was writing from too great a distance to assess accurately the causes and principles of the conflict. This book has been hailed by scholars as the first of Paine's publications to demonstrate his internationalist views.

American privateers played a significant role during the American War of Independence and the Anglo-American war of 1812, as the American regular navy was very small. Reinforcement by privateers sailing under the government's jurisdiction carrying Letters of Marque was essential, and in fact both sides made use of privateers, capturing each other's merchant ships as prizes. Many successful sailors began their careers as privateers before taking up commissions in the regular navy. The stories of some of these men are individually explored in this 1899 book by Edgar Stanton Maclay, who two years later was at the centre of a controversy arising from remarks in his History of the United States Navy. Maclay here includes accounts from sailors of all ranks about their experiences during the conflicts and as prisoners of war. The actions of some notorious British privateers are also documented in this fascinating work of maritime history.

Appointed Major General by the Continental Congress in 1775, George Washington, the future President of the United States of America, was one of the most significant and influential witnesses to the American Revolutionary War (1775 1783). Published in England in 1795, twelve years after the end of the conflict, this two-volume collection of the letters he wrote to Congress during the war provides unique insights into both the military strategies employed and the evolving values that underpinned them. Taking up the narrative in January 1777, Volume 2 demonstrates a gradual shift in emphasis away from an army in battle, hampered by the weather and the terrain, towards the political negotiations and nation-forging that followed. Ever humble in his tone, Washington displays the diplomacy and vision that was to characterize his presidency.

This documentary study of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton focuses on their differing views of society and government in the formative years of the new American nation. Interweaving more than 40 documents into 7 chronological chapters, the text follows the lives and careers of the two men from their youth, through the Revolutionary War, to the death of Hamilton in 1804. In each chapter, generous excerpts from their public papers and private letters reveal the two men's often divergent views on government and the Constitution, economic and foreign policy, and the military, and illustrate the roles they played in the emergence of political parties. Reading Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, the Report on Public Credit, the Kentucky Resolutions, and a host of other documents, students can explore firsthand the two men's philosophies and the impact these had on the emerging nation. Also included are 10 illustrations, a Jefferson/Hamilton chronology, a bibliography, and an index.

With a survey of the thirty Supreme Court cases that, in the opinion of U.S. Supreme Court justices and leading civics educators and legal historians, are the most important for American citizens to understand, The Pursuit of Justice is the perfect companion for those wishing to learn more about American civics and government. The cases range across three centuries of American history, including such landmarks as Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the principle of judicial review; Scott v. Sandford (1857), which inflamed the slavery argument in the United States and led to the Civil War; Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which memorialized the concept of separate but equal; and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which overturned Plessy. Dealing with issues of particular concern to students, such as voting, school prayer, search and seizure, and affirmative action, and broad democratic concepts such as separation of powers, federalism, and separation of church and state, the book covers all the major cases specified in the national and state civics and American history standards.
For each case, there is an introductory essay providing historical background and legal commentary as well as excerpts from the decision(s); related documents such as briefs or evidence, with headnotes and/or marginal commentary, some possibly in facsimile; and features or sidebars on principal players in the decisions, whether attorneys, plaintiffs, defendants, or justices. An introductory essay defines the criteria for selecting the cases and setting them in the context of American history and government, and a concluding essay suggests the role that the Court will play in the future.

The American Revolution is universally seen as a colossal defeat of the powerful British Empire by colonial rebels. Yet the British emerged from the conflict in better shape than the newly independent United States. After the revolution became a global conflict with the entry of France, Spain and later the Netherlands on the American side, Britain's desire to maintain prestige in Europe through dominance of her many colonies-particularly the West Indies and India-was the driving force behind British strategy. Military victories late in the war, along with retention of the rest of the empire, allowed Britain to remain a significant power. This history explores the view that Great Britain did not really "lose" the Revolutionary War.

The role of African-Americans, most free but some enslaved, in the regiments of the Continental Army is not well-known, neither is the fact that relatively large numbers served in southern regiments and that the greatest number served alongside their white comrades in integrated units. The book begins by discussing for comparison inclusion and treatment of black Americans by the various Crown forces (particularly British and Loyalist commanders and military units). The next section discusses broadly black soldiers in the Continental Army, before delving into each state. Each state's section first looks at the Continental regiments in that state's contingent throughout the war, and then adds interesting black soldiers pension narratives or portions thereof. The premise is to leave the reader with some insights into the common soldiers' wartime experiences. The book ends with a look into what African-American veterans experienced post-war in their communities and home states. There have been no other book-length works that deal with the wartime experiences of black Continental soldiers in detail; additionally, the use of pension narratives of black soldiers to gain personal data and 'hear' them tell their own stories is relatively new, and compelling.

In colonial America, the system of "warning out" was distinctive to New England, a way for a community to regulate those to whom it would extend welfare. Robert Love's Warnings animates this nearly forgotten aspect of colonial life, richly detailing the moral and legal basis of the practice and the religious and humanistic vision of those who enforced it. Historians Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger follow one otherwise obscure town clerk, Robert Love, as he walked through Boston's streets to tell sojourners, "in His Majesty's Name," that they were warned to depart the town in fourteen days. This declaration meant not that newcomers literally had to leave, but that they could not claim legal settlement or rely on town poor relief. Warned youths and adults could reside, work, marry, or buy a house in the city. If they became needy, their relief was paid for by the province treasurer. Warning thus functioned as a registration system, encouraging the flow of labor and protecting town coffers. Between 1765 and 1774, Robert Love warned four thousand itinerants, including youthful migrant workers, demobilized British soldiers, recently exiled Acadians, and women following the redcoats who occupied Boston in 1768. Appointed warner at age sixty-eight owing to his unusual capacity for remembering faces, Love kept meticulous records of the sojourners he spoke to, including where they lodged and whether they were lame, ragged, drunk, impudent, homeless, or begging. Through these documents, Dayton and Salinger reconstruct the biographies of travelers, exploring why so many people were on the move throughout the British Atlantic and why they came to Boston. With a fresh interpretation of the role that warning played in Boston's civic structure and street life, Robert Love's Warnings reveals the complex legal, social, and political landscape of New England in the decade before the Revolution.

This important new book charts the economic and social rise and fall of a small, but intriguing part of the American South: Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina low country. Spanning 250 years, Coclanis's study analyzes the interaction of both external and internal forces on the city and countryside, examining the effects of various factors--the environment, the market, economic and political ideology, and social institutions--on the region's economy from its colonial beginnings to its collapse in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

New England theologian Jonathan Edwards came to prominence at the culmination of a dramatic paradigm shift in millennialism that had begun in the sixteenth century, declaring that a thousand-year earthly kingdom would arrive in the future. For Edwards, the land of Israel would be the ideal location of the millennial kingdom, and the people of Israel, after their restoration, would play critical and decisive roles in the millennium's commencement. Edwards's millennial vision was also cosmic, however, and included both Europe and China. Unlike his Protestant predecessors and his Puritan contemporaries, Edwards's millennialism de-centralized England and New England. Contrary to what many have argued, Edwards neither originated nor advocated the notion of the American redeemer nation. In America's Theologian Beyond America, Victor Zhu establishes the coherence of Edwards's Judeo-centric and cosmic vision of the millennial kingdom and argues that this vision is an indispensable part of Edwards's theological system. He highlights three theological loci in Edwards's millennialism: the greatness of God's divine sovereignty, the magnificence of His glory, and the capaciousness of His kingdom. Zhu demonstrates Edwards's conviction of the progressive realization of the kingdom, refuting the prevailing misinterpretation that Edwards thought the millennium was imminent. He explores Edwards's cosmic vision of the millennial kingdom, which extended from New England and Israel to China and other parts of the "heathen" world. In conclusion, Zhu examines the contemporary relevance of Edwards's millennialism in Chinese millennial movements.

This work takes us beneath the veneer of the famous "Green Mountain Boys" to reveal the true story of how a hardened, quasi-commando army happened to be present in America's northern colonies at the start of the Revolution. Under their first dynamic commander, Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boys indeed formed and fought against a larger, oppressive power-this was the Colony of New York, which repeatedly tried to make claim to Vermont land. Meantime Vermont itself was termed the"Hampshire Grants," and was considered to be a part of that similarly nebulous New England territory. The Vermonters would have little of it, however, even as British Canada also extended its covetous eye, and under Ethan Allen formed their own militia to combat encroachers from either side. Allen was not an innocent in the mix, and had his own agenda, including financial or landowning ones. But the spirit he and his men showed in defense of their isolated mountains has come to epitomize America's own spirit of independence against any untoward or unwanted regime. When the Revolution against Britain arrived, the Green Mountain Boys were one of the few organized, experienced combat units Washington could call on from the northeast. And they were immediately put to good use, seizing the British fortress at Ticonderoga and afterward helping to invade Canada. But in mid-1777 was declared the"Republic of Vermont," sending a signal to all comers that those rustic fighters didn't wish to be governed by anyone except themselves. Nevertheless, at the Battle of Hubbardton, and then Bennington, the Green Mountain Boys performed good service on behalf of the United Colonies. Eventually the Vermonters would be persuaded to join the new nation itself, even if, as this fascinating book proves, they never considered that path such an easy one.

This remarkable memoir is one of the most celebrated documents to emerge from the tumult of America s Revolutionary War. The ordinary and yet exceptional experiences of a young soldier in Washington s army are given a new life in this fourth edition, sensitively edited for a modern readership. * Classic primary source on the Revolutionary War * Edited by a leading US authority on the period * Now with extra maps and a more extensive bibliography * Includes a new Afterword by Karen Guenther on film portrayals of the continental soldier

When Common Sense was published in January 1776, it sold, by some estimates, a stunning 150,000 copies in the colonies. What exactly made this pamphlet so appealing? This is a question not only about the state of mind of Paine's audience, but also about the role of public opinion and debate, the function of the press, and the shape of political culture in the colonies.This Broadview edition of Paine's famous pamphlet attempts to reconstruct the context in which it appeared and to recapture the energy and passion of the dispute over the political future of the British colonies in North America. Included along with the text of Common Sense are some of the contemporary arguments for and against the Revolution by John Dickinson, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; materials from the debate that followed the pamphlet's publication showing the difficulty of the choices facing the colonists; the Declaration of Independence; and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.

Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, they actually came from six German territories within the Holy Roman Empire. Over the course of the war, members of the German corps, including women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North to West Florida and Cuba in the South. They shared in every significant British military triumph and defeat. Thousands died of disease, were killed in battle, were captured by the enemy, or deserted. Collectively, they recorded their experiences and observations of the war they fought in, the land they traversed, and the people they encountered in a large body of letters, diaries, and similar private and official records. Friederike Baer presents a study of Britain's war against the American rebels from the perspective of the German soldiers, a people uniquely positioned both in the midst of the war and at its margins. The book offers a ground-breaking reimagining of this watershed event in world history.

Assembles more than forty speeches, lectures, and essays critical to the abolitionist crusade. Features William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. "An invaluable resource to students, scholars, and general readers alike."—Amazon.com.

Historians have debated how the clergy's support for political resistance during the American Revolution should be understood, often looking to influence outside of the clergy's tradition. This book argues, however, that the position of the patriot clergy was in continuity with a long-standing tradition of Protestant resistance. Drawing from a wide range of sources, Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy's Argument for Political Resistance, 1750-1776 answers the question of why so many American clergyman found it morally and ethically right to support resistance to British political authority by exploring the theological background and rich Protestant history available to the American clergy as they considered political resistance and wrestled with the best course of action for them and their congregations. Gary L. Steward argues that, rather than deviating from their inherited modes of thought, the clergy who supported resistance did so in ways that were consistent with their own theological tradition.

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution--so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty--so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America."

Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and "New Yorker" staff writer, offers a careful and concerned look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence--a history of the Revolution, from the archives. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past--a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty--a yearning for an America that never was.

"The Whites of Their Eyes" reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism--anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.

In a new afterword, Lepore addresses both the recent shift in Tea Party rhetoric from the Revolution to the Constitution and the diminished role of scholars as political commentators over the last half century of public debate.

In the dramatic period leading to the American Revolution, no event did more to foment patriotic sentiment among colonists than the armed occupation of Boston by British soldiers. As If an Enemy's Country is Richard Archer's gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. Bringing colonial Boston to life, Archer moves between the governor's mansion and cobble-stoned back-alleys as he traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. He reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and James Otis Jr. as they responded to London's new policies, and he evokes the outrage many Bostonians felt toward Parliament and its local representatives. Equally important, Archer captures the popular mobilization under the leadership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams that met the oppressive imperial measures-most notably the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act-with demonstrations, Liberty Trees, violence, and non-importation agreements. When the British government responded with the decision to garrison Boston with troops, it was a deeply felt affront to the local population. Almost immediately, tempers flared and violent conflicts broke out. Archer's tale culminates in the swirling tragedy of the Boston Massacre and its aftermath, including the trial of the British troops involved-and sets the stage for what was to follow. "Combining engaging prose and a wealth of interesting characters, Archer has provided a concise, appealing work of first-rate scholarship." -Library Journal (Starred Review) "A remarkably fresh examination of the story of the British occupation of Boston in the years before the Revolution. Its close attention to the social and economic context of the dramatic events of those years gives the book much of its richness; and its telling of the events themselves, ending with a splendid account of the Boston Massacre, is accomplished with great clarity, detail, and verve. Altogether it is a fascinating book." -Robert Middlekauff, author of The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution

"In this clearly written volume, Hawke provides enlightening and colorful descriptions of early Colonial Americans and debunks many widely held assumptions about 17th century settlers."--Publishers Weekly

Winner of the Bancroft Prize Winner of the James Bradford Best Biography Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Finalist, Literary Award for Nonfiction, Library of Virginia Finalist, George Washington Prize James Madison's Notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention have acquired nearly unquestioned authority as the description of the U.S. Constitution's creation. No document provides a more complete record of the deliberations in Philadelphia or depicts the Convention's charismatic figures, crushing disappointments, and miraculous triumphs with such narrative force. But how reliable is this account? "[A] superb study of the Constitutional Convention as selectively reflected in Madison's voluminous notes on it...Scholars have been aware that Madison made revisions in the Notes but have not intensively explored them. Bilder has looked closely indeed at the Notes and at his revisions, and the result is this lucid, subtle book. It will be impossible to view Madison's role at the convention and read his Notes in the same uncomplicated way again...An accessible and brilliant rethinking of a crucial moment in American history." -Robert K. Landers, Wall Street Journal

During the evening of April 7, 1862, twenty-four men infiltrated the Confederate lines below Shelbyville, Tennessee, and travelled by separate routes toward Atlanta. Their goal was to steal a train and head north for Chattanooga, disrupting rail service between the two cities by burning bridges, tearing up track, and cutting telegraph wires. If successful, they would isolate Chattanooga and facilitate its capture and further Union raids into Alabama. The raid failed, and on June 18, 1862, seven of the raiders were hanged as spies in Atlanta. Four months later eight escaped from prison. The remaining six languished in a Southern prison until they were paroled in March 1863. Eight days later they were presented the first Medals of Honour. Among this group was Cpl. William Pittenger. Shortly after the war, Pittenger composed an account of the raid, a book enlarged over subsequent editions and supplemented from various sources to become the most well known and best-regarded account. A 1925 edition was given the more popular title The Great Locomotive Chase. The story of the Andrews raid is fascinating because of the dogged persistence of one man - William Fuller, the conductor of the stolen train who relentlessly pursued the raiders. He chased them on foot, by handcar, and by locomotive, even running the engine in reverse at speeds up to ninety miles an hour. Daring and Suffering is a reproduction of the 1887 edition of Pittenger's account, duplicated exactly as it appeared at that time, with the exception of a brief introduction by Col. James G. Bogle.

Two men from Connecticut, each embarked on a dangerous mission, slipped onto Long Island in September 1776. Only a few weeks earlier, British forces had routed the Continental Army and taken control of New York City. The future of the infant American republic, barely two months old, looked bleak. One of the men, a soldier disguised as a schoolmaster, made his way to the British fortifications on Manhattan and began furtively taking notes and making sketches to bring back to the beleaguered American general, George Washington. The second visitor had quite different plans. He had come to Long Island to accept a captain's commission in a loyalist regiment, an undertaking that obligated him to return to Connecticut and recruit more farmers to join the King's forces. As events turned out, neither man completed his mission. Instead, each met his death at the end of a hangman's rope, one executed as a spy for the American cause and the other as a traitor to it. In this book, Virginia Anderson traces the lives of these two men, Nathan Hale and Moses Dunbar, to explore how middle-class men made decisions on a daily basis amidst the uncertainties of war that determined not just their own fates but also the ways in which they have been remembered or forgotten in history. Hale uttered a line that has become famous ("I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country") and, after being captured and executed as a spy by the British, and the Americans winning the war, has been memorialized as a martyr to the Revolutionary cause. His life is neatly contrasted with Dunbar, a Loyalist who was captured and sentenced to death by the Connecticut Assembly. This braided narrative, intertwining the lives of Hale and Dunbar, offers a poignant snapshot of the political loyalties men forge in momentous times, how their families shaped and reacted to those decisions, and how difficult it is to judge individuals' decisionmaking in wartime without the benefit of hindsight, when the outcome is dependent on complex factors. This book bridges"great man" biographies about the American Revolution and the "bottom up" social histories of common men, and the histories of patriots and loyalists. Its accessible style makes it appropriate for anyone interested in Revolutionary America.

The Trials of Allegiance examines the law of treason during the American Revolution: a convulsive, violent civil war in which nearly everyone could be considered a traitor, either to Great Britain or to America. Drawing from extensive archival research in Pennsylvania, one of the main centers of the revolution, Carlton Larson provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the treason prosecutions brought by Americans against British adherents: through committees of safety, military tribunals, and ordinary criminal trials. Although popular rhetoric against traitors was pervasive in Pennsylvania, jurors consistently viewed treason defendants not as incorrigibly evil, but as fellow Americans who had made a political mistake. This book explains the repeated and violently controversial pattern of acquittals. Juries were carefully selected in ways that benefited the defendants, and jurors refused to accept the death penalty as an appropriate punishment for treason. The American Revolution, unlike many others, would not be enforced with the gallows. More broadly, Larson explores how the Revolution's treason trials shaped American national identity and perceptions of national allegiance. He concludes with the adoption of the Treason Clause of the United States Constitution, which was immediately put to use in the early 1790s in response to the Whiskey Rebellion and Fries's Rebellion. In taking a fresh look at these formative events, The Trials of Allegiance reframes how we think about treason in American history, up to and including the present.

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours.

He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical -- though not most profound -- political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances, local lending libraries and national legislatures. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation's federal compromise. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow "leather-aprons" more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

"Her story is adapted to move the compassion of those she visits. She has bad nerves, and seems in great disorder of mind, which she pretends to be owing to the ill usage of her father [...] She attempts to borrow money of [sic] waiters, servants, and chaise boys, and offers to leave something in pawn with them to the value. Her name is supposed to be Sarah Wilson." - London Evening-Post, 30 October 1766 Beginning in her late teens, Sarah Wilson travelled alone all over England, living on her wits, inventing new identities, and embroidering stories to fool her victims into providing money and fine clothes. When her crimes eventually caught up with her, she was transported to America - where she reinvented herself in the guise of the Queen's sister and began a new set of adventures at the onset of the American War of Independence. Using original research, newspaper reports and court records, this is the story of 'the greatest Impostress of the present Age': a real-life Moll Flanders who created a remarkable series of lives for herself on both sides of the Atlantic.