Poseidon's Curse interprets the American Revolution from the vantage point of the Atlantic Ocean. Christopher P. Magra traces how British naval impressment played a leading role in the rise of Great Britain's seaborne empire, yet ultimately contributed significantly to its decline. Long reliant on appropriating free laborers to man the warships that defended British colonies and maritime commerce, the British severely jeopardized mariners' earning potential and occupational mobility, which led to deep resentment toward the British Empire. Magra explains how anger about impressment translated into revolutionary ideology, with impressment eventually occupying a major role in the Declaration of Independence as one of the foremost grievances Americans had with the British government.

Looking to the general trend of Washington's military career, it is emphasized, throughout the volume, that the moral, religious, and patriotic motives that energized his life and shaped his character were so absolutely interwoven with the fibre of his professional experiences, that the soul of the Man magnified the greatness of the Soldier.

Separated by society once before, this time they'll fight to stay together.As Washington burns, Callista Brooke is trapped in the battle between her native England and her adopted homeland. She is on the verge of losing everything, including her life, when a handsome Englishman cuts through the violent crowd to claim her as his. Lord George Gordon Audley was Callista's best friend, but his attempt to rescue her from a loathsome arranged marriage had him sent on a one-way trip to the penal colony of Australia. Against all odds, he survived, and now he vows to do whatever is necessary to protect Callista. But their friendship has become a dangerous passion that may save or destroy them when they challenge the aristocratic society that exiled them both. A sweeping and dramatic historical romance for fans of Bridgerton and Johanna Lindsey.

Poseidon's Curse interprets the American Revolution from the vantage point of the Atlantic Ocean. Christopher P. Magra traces how British naval impressment played a leading role in the rise of Great Britain's seaborne empire, yet ultimately contributed significantly to its decline. Long reliant on appropriating free laborers to man the warships that defended British colonies and maritime commerce, the British severely jeopardized mariners' earning potential and occupational mobility, which led to deep resentment toward the British Empire. Magra explains how anger about impressment translated into revolutionary ideology, with impressment eventually occupying a major role in the Declaration of Independence as one of the foremost grievances Americans had with the British government.

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."

Originally published in 1947, this book presents the text of a journal kept by Thomas Hughes from 1778-9. It includes an account of his experiences as a British officer during the American War of Independence, including a period in captivity. The manuscript of the journal, which had been in possession of his family, was previously unprinted at the time of publication. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the American War of Independence and eighteenth-century history.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents in modern history-the inspiration for what would become the most powerful democracy in the world. Indeed, at every stage of American history, the Declaration has been a touchstone for evaluating the legitimacy of legal, social, and political practices. Not only have civil rights activists drawn inspiration from its proclamation of inalienable rights, but individuals decrying a wide variety of governmental abuses have turned for support to the document's enumeration of British tyranny. In this sweeping synthesis of the Declaration's impact on American life, ranging from 1776 to the present, Alexander Tsesis offers a deeply researched narrative that highlights the many surprising ways in which this document has influenced American politics, law, and society. The drafting of the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement-all are heavily indebted to the Declaration's principles of representative government. Tsesis demonstrates that from the founding on, the Declaration has played a central role in American political and social advocacy, congressional debates, and presidential decisions. He focuses on how successive generations internalized, adapted, and interpreted its meaning, but he also shines a light on the many American failures to live up to the ideals enshrined in the document. Based on extensive research from primary sources such as newspapers, diaries, letters, transcripts of speeches, and congressional records, For Liberty and Equality shows how our founding document shaped America through successive eras and why its influence has always been crucial to the nation and our way of life.

Following the American Declaration of Independence, communities from Boston to Savannah were forced to make a choice: to strike out for an independent republic, or remain true to the British Crown. This study explores the origins, methods and combat record of the combatants on both sides. The American Revolutionary War was America's first civil war. As the conflict raged from Canada to the Caribbean and from India to Gibraltar, it was in American communities that the war was the most intimate, the most personal, and - accordingly - the most vicious. In 1775, the inhabitants of British America included those born in North America and newly arrived immigrants; the established landed aristocracy and the indigent; the diverse nations of the Native Americans; and people of African descent, both enslaved and free. The coming of war forced every person to make the choice of whether to side with the Patriots or remain loyal to the British Crown. With so many cross-cutting imperatives, the individual decisions made splintered communities, sometimes even households, turning neighbour against neighbour in an escalating spiral of ostracism, embargo, exile, raid, reprisal and counter-reprisal. Accordingly, the war on the frontiers and on the margins of conflict was as underhanded and ugly as any of the 21st century's insurgencies. In this study, the origins, fighting methods and combat effectiveness of the combatants fighting on both sides are assessed, notably in three significant clashes of the American Revolutionary War.

Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American Civil War are among the most classic and controversial in motion picture history. From D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to Free State of Jones (2016), the war has provided the setting, ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of morality, race, gender, and nation, as well as serving as historical education for a century of Americans. In The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars across the disciplines to explore these issues. The essays included here span a wide range of films, from the silent era to the present day, including Buster Keaton's The General (1926), Red Badge of Courage (1951), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), and Cold Mountain (2003), as well as television mini-series The Blue and The Gray (1982) and John Jakes' acclaimed North and South trilogy (1985-86). As an accessible volume to dedicated to a critical conversation about the Civil War on film, The American Civil War on Film and TV will appeal to not only to scholars of film, military history, American history, and cultural history, but to fans of war films and period films, as well.

Having urged political reforms in Britain, Richard Price (1723 91) turned to defending the cause of American independence. Born in Wales, Price became an influential moral philosopher, dissenting Protestant preacher, political pamphleteer, and economic theorist. Known for his trenchant defence of the freedom of the human will against philosophical sceptics, Price applied his justification of individual moral agency to political issues - particularly the American Revolution - during the latter part of his life. This tract on America first appeared in 1784. Defining the right of American colonists to oppose British corruption, it suggested that their independence would offer much 'benefit to the world'. But it also offered a relatively rare critique of the system of racial slavery that continued to develop in America. Reissued here is the 1785 publication that also contained translations from French of a letter to Price by the economist Turgot and a parody by Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour which had amused Benjamin Franklin.

Little is known of the true origins of the French adventurer Victor-Antoine-Claude Robert, Count de Parades (1752-86). He arrived in Paris in 1778, just as the Franco-American alliance, which guaranteed French military support to the United States against Great Britain, was being signed. Parades was determined to join the French Army, but lacking the connections to do so, offered his services as a spy. He travelled repeatedly to England, visiting ports and fortifications to gather confidential information. First published in 1791, this work provides a detailed account of Parades' adventures and misfortune. Written while he was jailed in the Bastille, the book denounces the corruption of ministers who wrongly accused him of state treason after the failure of the 1779 Franco-Spanish 'Armada' against Plymouth. A fascinating historical document, it sheds light on the political relations between France and England during the American War of Independence.

First published in 1781, this work of the Abbe Raynal (1713-69) is the English translation of the last volume of his widely known and influential Philosophy and Political History of the East and West Indies which first appeared in 1770. Raynal's work begins with a description of the distressed state of England in 1763 and her calls for help from the colonies in the build-up to the war. Written during the Revolution itself, the book speculates about the ending of the conflict in chapters entitled 'What ought to be the politics of the House of Bourbon, if victorious' and 'What idea should be formed of the thirteen united provinces'. Raynal's work was heavily criticised by, among others, Thomas Paine, who published A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North-America (also reissued in this series) in 1782, correcting what he perceived as Raynal's mistakes and false assumptions.

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.

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. Opening in June 1775, Volume 1 leads readers through the first eighteen months of the conflict. Organized chronologically, the substantial body of material reproduced here reveals the thoughts of a man engaged in warfare, politics and the forging of an independent nation. As such, it promises to enlighten the 'reasoning philosophic reader, which wishes to explore the secret springs of action'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this provocative study, Paul Atwood attempts to show Americans that their history is one of constant wars of aggression and imperial expansion. In his long teaching career, Atwood has found that most students know virtually nothing about America's involvement in the wars of the 20th century, let alone those prior to World War I. War and Empire aims to correct this, clearly and persuasively explaining US actions in every major war since the declaration of independence. The book shows that, far from being dragged reluctantly into foreign entanglements, America's leaders have always picked its battles in order to increase their influence and power, with little regard for the American soldiers and 'enemy' civilians killed or made to suffer in the process. This book is an eye-opening introduction to the American way of life for undergraduate students of American history, politics and international relations.

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.

David Richards here argues the position that understanding the intent of the Founders is essential to the legal interpretation of the United States Constitution. To this extent he makes common cause with conservative constitutional theorists, but he arrives at conclusions that differ radically from theirs. Indeed, his stated project here is to `reclaim' the Founders intent on behalf of the liberal humanist tradition they embodied. Richards examines the role of the Founders' understanding of history, philosophy, political theory, and political science in the evolution of their constitutional design. In his reconstruction, the Constitution emerges as a brilliant expression of European humanist and critical thought, shaped by such influences as the political ideas of Machiavelli, Harrington, Montesquieu, and Hume, the Lockean theory of legitimate government, and the common law model of interpretive practice. Armed with this new understanding of the Founders' intent, Richards is able to fully develop the methodology of constitutional interpretation sketched in his earlier book, TOLERATION AND THE CONSTITUTION (OUP 1986), and uses it effectively to defend a liberal reading of constitutional guarantees of individual rights.

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.

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