The slave societies of the American colonies were quite different from the "Old South" of the early-nineteenth-century United States. In this engaging study of a colonial older South, Robert Olwell analyzes the structures and internal dynamics of a world in which both masters and slaves were also imperial subjects. While slavery was peculiar within a democratic republic, it was an integral and seldom questioned part of the eighteenth-century British empire.Olwell examines the complex relations among masters, slaves, metropolitan institutions, officials, and ideas in the South Carolina low country from the end of the Stono Rebellion through the chaos of the American Revolution. He details the interstices of power and resistance in four key sites of the colonial social order: the criminal law and the slave court; conversion and communion in the established church; market relations and the marketplace; and patriarchy and the plantation great house. Olwell shows how South Carolina's status as a colony influenced the development of slavery and also how the presence of slavery altered English ideas and institutions within a colonial setting. Masters, Slaves, and Subjects is a pathbreaking examination of the workings of American slavery within the context of America's colonial history.

Among the thousands of political refugees who flooded into the United States during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, none had a greater impact On the early republic than the United Irishmen. They were, according to one Federalist, "the most God-provoking Democrats on this side of Hell". "Every United Irishman", insisted another, "ought to be hunted from the country, as much as a wolf or a tyger". David A. Wilson's lively book is the first to focus specifically on the experiences, attitudes, and ideas of the United Irishmen in the United States.

Wilson argues that America served a powerful symbolic and psychological function for the United Irishmen as a place of wish-fulfillment, where the broken dreams of the failed Irish revolution could be realized. The United Irishmen established themselves on the radical wing of the Republican Party, and contributed to Jefferson's "second American Revolution" of 1800; John Adams counted them among the "foreigners and degraded characters" whom he blamed for his defeat.

After Jefferson's victory, the United Irishmen set out to destroy the Federalists and democratize the Republicans. Some of them believed that their work was preparing the way for the millennium in America. Convinced that the example of America could ultimately inspire the movement for a democratic republic back home, they never lost sight of the struggle for Irish independence. It was the United Irishmen, writes Wilson, who originated the persistent and powerful tradition of Irish-American nationalism.

Reissued in new paperback format and design

"In hard, tight, and exact language, disciplined by close reasoning and close documentation, and seasoned with a sharp sense of character and drama, Hiller B. Zobel has written a definitive account. . . . Full of gripping detail, a good deal of myth-shattering, and some discriminating reappraisals." -Arthur B. Tourtellot, author of Lexington and Concord, in the New York Times Book Review

"Make[s] eighteenth-century courtroom scenes crackle with excitement."-Yale Review

In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of declaring independence from Britain? In this powerful new history of the fifteen tense months that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, Robert G. Parkinson provides a troubling answer: racial fear. Tracing the circulation of information in the colonial news systems that linked patriot leaders and average colonists, Parkinson reveals how the system's participants constructed a compelling drama featuring virtuous men who suddenly found themselves threatened by ruthless Indians and defiant slaves acting on behalf of the king. Parkinson argues that patriot leaders used racial prejudices to persuade Americans to declare independence. Between the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and the Declaration, they broadcast any news they could find about Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and Hessian mercenaries working with their British enemies. American independence thus owed less to the love of liberty than to the exploitation of colonial fears about race. Thirteen Clocks offers an accessible history of the Revolution that uncovers the uncomfortable origins of the republic even as it speaks to our own moment.

"[Melvoin] writes with both grace and precision. . . . A terrific tale of frontier adventure." —William Pencak, American Historical Review

"[An] accessible, readable, and appealing study of New England's most famous frontier town. . . . One of the clearest, most persuasive analyses to date of how the relations between Indian tribes (and particularly inter-Indian warfare) influenced the processes of settlement in colonial America. . . . What this splendid book does is enable us to understand, in detail, the harrowing, extraordinary processes by which Deerfield—and by extension Lancaster, Haverhill, and many other places like it—became an 'ordinary' New England town at last. . . . Melvoin's narrative achieves the kind of compelling quality that Parkman managed in A Half-Century of Conflict; yet, it is in every sense analytically superior to that classic account." —Fred Anderson, Western Historical Quarterly

"An outstanding study that carefully examines the impact of religion, social class, and intertribal and international rivalry on a frontier community." —Choice

"In its frontier phase Deerfild was multicultural, decidedly nonindividualistic, and a creative blend of tradition and innovation. Throughout this provocative reinterpretation, Melvoin maintains a lively, dramatic, highly readable narrative. . . . [Points] the way toward a more dynamic view of both community and frontier." —Neal Salisbury, William and Mary Quarterly

"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

In George Washington and the American Military Tradition, Don Higginbotham investigates the interplay of militiaman and professional soldier, of soldier and legislator, that shaped George Washington's military career and ultimately fostered the victory that brought independence to our nation. Higginbotham then explores the legacy of Washington's success, revealing that the crucial blending of civil and military concerns characteristic of the Revolution has been variously regarded and only seldom repeated by later generations of American soldiers. Washington's training, between 1753 and 1755, included frontier command in the Virginia militia, adjunct service to the British regulars during the French and Indian War, and increasing civil service in the Virginia House of Burgesses and Continental Congress. The result of this combination of pursuits was Washington's concern for the citizen behind the soldier, his appreciation of both frontier tactics and professional discipline, and his sensitivity to political conflict and consensus in thirteen colonies in forming a new, united nation. When, in 1775, Washington accepted command of the Continental Army from the Continental Congress, he possessed political and military experience that enabled him, by 1783, to translate the Declaration of Independence into victory over the British. Yet, Higginbotham notes, the legacy of Washington's success has sometimes been overlooked by generals concerned with professional training and a permanent military establishment, and therefore apt to revere foreign heros such as Jomini, Napoleon, and Bismarck more than Washington. Other leaders, most notably the World War II chief of staff, George Marshall, have recognized and implemented Washington's unique understanding of civil and military coordination. In times almost wholly dominated by a military agenda, Washington's and Marshall's steady subordination of soldier to citizen, of strategy to legislation, recalls the careful consensus of thirteen colonies in 1776.

The American Revolution was a vicious civil war fought between families and neighbors. Nowhere was this truer than in South Carolina. Yet, after the Revolution, South Carolina's victorious Patriots offered vanquished Loyalists a prompt and generous legal and social reintegration. From Revolution to Reunion investigates the way in which South Carolinians, Patriot and Loyalist, managed to reconcile their bitter differences and reunite to heal South Carolina and create a stable foundation for the new United States to become a political and economic leader. Rebecca Brannon considers rituals and emotions, as well as historical memory, to produce a complex and nuanced interpretation of the reconciliation process in post-Revolutionary South Carolina, detailing how Loyalists and Patriots worked together to heal their society. She frames the process in a larger historical context by comparing South Carolina's experience with that of other states. Brannon highlights how Loyalists apologized but also went out of their way to serve their neighbors and to make themselves useful, even vital, members of the new experiment in self-government and liberty ushered in by the Revolution. Loyalists built on existing social ties to establish themselves in the new Republic, and they did it successfully. By 1784 the state government reinstated almost all the Loyalists who had stayed, as the majority of Loyalists had reinscribed themselves into the postwar nation. Brannon argues that South Carolinians went on to manipulate the way they talked about Loyalism in public to guarantee that memories would not be allowed to disturb the peaceful reconciliation they had created. South Carolinians succeeded in creating a generous and lasting reconciliation between former enemies, but in the process they unfortunately downplayed the dangers of civil war-which may have made it easier for South Carolinians to choose another civil war.

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.

In this fresh look at liberty and freedom in the Revolutionary era from the perspective of black Americans, Woody Holton recounts the experiences of slaves who seized freedom by joining the British as well as those -- slave and free -- who served in Patriot military forces. Holton's introduction examines the conditions of black American life on the eve of colonial independence and the ways in which Revolutionary rhetoric about liberty provided African Americans with the language and inspiration for advancing their cause. Despite the rhetoric, however, most black Americans remained enslaved after the Revolution. The introduction outlines ways African Americans influenced the course of the Revolution and continued to be affected by its aftermath. Amplifying these themes are nearly forty documents -- including personal narratives, petitions, letters, poems, advertisements, pension applications, and images -- that testify to the diverse goals and actions of African Americans during the Revolutionary era. Document headnotes and annotations, a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and index offer additional pedagogical support.

"Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month." With these words to the assembled members of the Senate and House of Representatives on April 30, 1789, George Washington inaugurated the American experiment. It was a momentous occasion and an immensely important moment for the nation. Never before had a people dared to invent a system of government quite like the one that Washington was preparing to lead, and the tensions between hope and skepticism ran high. In this book, distinguished scholar of early America Stephen Howard Browne chronicles the efforts of the first president of the United States of America to unite the nation through ceremony, celebrations, and oratory. The story follows Washington on his journey from Mount Vernon to the site of the inauguration in Manhattan, recounting the festivities-speeches, parades, dances, music, food, and flag-waving-that greeted the president-elect along the way. Considering the persuasive power of this procession, Browne captures in detail the pageantry, anxiety, and spirit of the nation to arrive at a more nuanced and richly textured perspective on what it took to launch the modern republican state. Compellingly written and artfully argued, The First Inauguration tells the story of the early republic-and of a president who, by his words and comportment, provides a model of leadership and democratic governance for today.

Wars rarely turn out as expected. This book shows how Britain entered a conflict that it believed could not be lost. The American Patriots were similarly optimistic about their martial prospects. Although they eventually secured independence, it was only with the assistance of France and indirectly Spain, who diverted British resources from the conflict in America, allowing France eventually to deliver a knockout blow at Yorktown. This extensive yet accessible exploration into the War of American Independence provides aclear analysis of why this complex conflict occurred and why it ended as it did, revealing the fragile nature of the American Patriot cause. An essential guide for any history student, including those specializing in war/peace studies and the study of international relations, as well the general reader with an interest in the study of war.

Dr. Benjamin Rush was the Founding Father of an America that other Founding Fathers forgot or ignored--an America of women, African-Americans, Jews, Quakers, Roman Catholics, indentured workers, and the poor. Ninety percent of the people lived in that other America, but none could vote and none had rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, either before or after independence from Britain. Alone among the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush heard their cries and stepped forth as the nation's first great humanitarian and social reformer. Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, city-wide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, universal public education, humane treatment and therapy for the insane, prison reform, an end to capital punishment, and improved medical care for injured troops. Using archival material found in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, as well as significant new materials from Rush's descendants recently made available, Harlow Giles Unger's startling biography of Benjamin Rush is the first in more than a decade. Dr. Benjamin Rush is an important biography of the Founding Father who never forgot America's forgotten people.

In The Letters of Mary Penry, Scott Paul Gordon provides unprecedented access to the intimate world of a Moravian single sister. This vast collection of letters-compiled, transcribed, and annotated by Gordon-introduces readers to an unmarried woman who worked, worshiped, and wrote about her experience living in Moravian religious communities at the time of the American Revolution and early republic. Penry, a Welsh immigrant and a convert to the Moravian faith, was well connected in both the international Moravian community and the state of Pennsylvania. She counted among her acquaintances Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker and Hannah Callender Sansom, two American women whose writings have also been preserved, in addition to members of some of the most prominent families in Philadelphia, such as the Shippens, the Franklins, and the Rushes. This collection brings together more than seventy of Penry's letters, few of which have been previously published. Gordon's introduction provides a useful context for understanding the letters and the unique woman who wrote them. This collection of Penry's letters broadens perspectives on early America and the eighteenth-century Moravian Church by providing a sustained look at the spiritual and social life of a single woman at a time when singleness was extraordinarily rare. It also makes an important contribution to the recovery of women's voices in early America, amplifying views on politics, religion, and social networks from a time when few women's perspectives on these subjects have been preserved.

Female loyalists occupied a nearly impossible position during the American Revolution. Unlike their male counterparts, loyalist women were effectively silenced - unable to officially align themselves with either side or avoid being persecuted for their family ties. In this book, Kacy Dowd Tillman argues that women's letters and journals are the key to recovering these voices, as these private writings were used as vehicles for public engagement. Through a literary analysis of extensive correspondence by statesmen's wives, Quakers, merchants, and spies, Stripped and Script offers a new definition of loyalism that accounts for disaffection, pacifism, neutralism, and loyalism-by-association. Taking up the rhetoric of violation and rape, this archive repeatedly references the real threats rebels posed to female bodies, property, friendships, and families. Through writing, these women defended themselves against violation, in part, by writing about their personal experiences while knowing that the documents themselves may be confiscated, used against them, and circulated.

Female loyalists occupied a nearly impossible position during the American Revolution. Unlike their male counterparts, loyalist women were effectively silenced - unable to officially align themselves with either side or avoid being persecuted for their family ties. In this book, Kacy Dowd Tillman argues that women's letters and journals are the key to recovering these voices, as these private writings were used as vehicles for public engagement. Through a literary analysis of extensive correspondence by statesmen's wives, Quakers, merchants, and spies, Stripped and Script offers a new definition of loyalism that accounts for disaffection, pacifism, neutralism, and loyalism-by-association. Taking up the rhetoric of violation and rape, this archive repeatedly references the real threats rebels posed to female bodies, property, friendships, and families. Through writing, these women defended themselves against violation, in part, by writing about their personal experiences while knowing that the documents themselves may be confiscated, used against them, and circulated.

The first complete biography of a little-known but fascinating figure in the history of espionage and the American Revolution A man of as many names as motives, Edward Bancroft is a singular figure in the history of Revolutionary America. Born in Massachusetts in 1745, Bancroft moved to England as a young man in the 1760s and began building a respectable resume as both a scientist and a man of letters. In recognition of his works in natural history, Bancroft was unanimously elected to the Royal Society, and while working to secure French aid for the American Revolution, he became a close associate of such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and John Adams. Though lauded in his time as a staunch American patriot, when the British diplomatic archives were opened in the late nineteenth century, it was revealed that Bancroft led a secret life as a British agent acting against French and American interests. In this book, the first complete biography of Bancroft, historian Thomas J. Schaeper reveals the full extent of the agent's deception during the crucial years of the American Revolution. Operating under aliases, working in ciphers, and leaving coded messages in the trees of Paris's Tuileries Gardens, Bancroft filtered information from unsuspecting figures including Franklin and Deane back to his contacts in Britain, navigating a complicated web of political allegiances. Through Schaeper's keen analysis of Bancroft's correspondence and diplomatic records, this biography reveals whether Bancroft should ultimately be considered a traitor to America or a patriot to Britain.

The series of essays that comprise The Federalist constitutes one of the key texts of the American Revolution and the democratic system created in the wake of independence. Written in 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the proposed Constitution, these papers stand as perhaps the most eloquent testimonial to democracy that exists. They describe the ideas behind the American system of government: the separation of powers; the organization of Congress; the respective positions of the executive, legislative, and judiciary; and much more. The Federalist remains essential reading for anyone interested in politics and government, and indeed for anyone seeking a foundational statement about democracy and America.

This new edition of The Federalist is edited by Robert Scigliano, a professor in the political science department at Boston College. His substantive Introduction sheds clarifying new light on the historical context and meaning of The Federalist. Scigliano also provides a fresh and definitive analysis of the disputed authorship of several sections of this crucial work.

Set in seventeenth-century New England in the aftermath of the Pequod War, Hope Leslie not only chronicles the role of women in building the republic but also refocuses the emergent national literature on the lives, domestic mores, and values of American women.

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end. Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the 'Moses' of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, where they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.

From William H. Chafe, the best-selling author of The Unfinished Journey, comes a new text that offers in-depth and enlightening coverage of the history of the United States in the twentieth century. The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890-2010 describes the rise--and potential fall--of the U.S., a nation more powerful, more wealthy, and more dominant than any in human history. It also acknowledges the persistent challenges the U.S. has faced and continues to face--inequalities of race, gender, and income that contradict its vision of itself as "a land of opportunity."
Examining the evolution of the United States since 1890, The Rise and Fall of the American Century chronicles the varying mood of the country through its changing presidencies, from the rise of the metropolis and Teddy Roosevelt in the 1890s to the turbulent era of the Bush administration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By analyzing the shifting moods and social and political upheavals (both at home and abroad) and the United States's reactions to these events, the book seeks to understand how the country both achieved its vision for itself in some ways but failed to realize it in others. Working in a political framework, Chafe also provides a strong balance of social and cultural history, touching on the African-American, Latino, and Asian communities, the West, and the changing status of women. The book's epilogue discusses important economic and political events through 2008, including the financial crisis and the 2008 Presidential Election.

The American Revolutionary War was a conflict that Britain did not want, and for which it was not prepared. The British Army in America at the end of 1774 was only 3,000 strong, with a further 6,000 to arrive by the time that the conflict started in the spring of 1775. The Royal Navy, on which the British depended for the defence of its shores, trade and far-flung colonies, had been much reduced as a result of the economies that followed the Seven Years War. In 1775 the problem facing government ministers, the War Office, and the Admiralty was how to reinforce, maintain and supply an army (that grew to over 90,000 men) while blockading the American coast and defending Britain's many interests around the world; a problem that got bigger when France entered the war in 1778. With a 3,000 mile supply line, taking six to eight weeks for a passage, the scale of the undertaking was enormous. Too often in military histories the focus is on the clash of arms, with little acknowledgement of the vital role of that neglected stepchild - logistics. In All At Sea, John Dillon concentrates on the role of the Navy in supporting, supplying and transporting the British Army during the war in America. Because of individual egos, other strategic priorities, and the number of ships available, that support was not always at the level the British public expected. However, without the navy the war could not have been fought at all.

Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lacked triumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson focus on, respectively, the Battle of Monongahela (1755), the Battle of Manila (1898), and the Battle of Makuan, Afghanistan (2020)-conflicts in which American soldiers were forced to engage in "irregular" warfare, confronting an enemy entirely alien to them. This enemy rejected the Western conventions of warfare and defined success and failure-victory and defeat-in entirely different ways. Symmetry of any kind is lost. Here was not ennobling engagement but atrocity, unanticipated insurgencies, and strategic stalemate. War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat and what its effects have been. They are therefore worth comparing for what they hold in common as well as what they reveal about our attitude toward war itself. The Other Face of Battle reminds us that "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare is now not the exception but the rule. Understanding its roots seems more crucial than ever.