A distinguished historian of the Revolution restores some of its
luster. Presenting his own essays from 1947 to 1975 as a sort of
historian's progress, Edmund Morgan challenges the Revolution's
various detractors - or, as he might put it, invokes the
Revolutionary record as challenge. Against the contention that
colonial opposition to Parliamentary taxation was shifty
opportunism, he cites consistent objections to taxation without
representation. To those, led by Charles Beard, who see economic
self-interest as the revolutionists' motivation, he points out that
property was deemed synonymous with liberty (the very reason for
opposition to externally-imposed taxation). Taking the
revolutionists at their words, moreover, he traces the 18th-century
shift from preoccupation with saving individual souls to saving
governments from corruption - by asserting three cardinal political
principles: that one people ought not to rule another, that a
people can act independently of a government, that a large
(national) republic is the best safeguard against tyranny of the
majority. Still another strand is the role of the Puritan Ethic,
which caused the Revolution to be regarded as "a defense of
industry and frugality, whether in rulers or people, from the
assaults of British vice." The question of attitudes toward work
leads to the problem of slavery and "the central paradox of
American history: the simultaneous growth of slavery and of the
devotion to freedom that animated the leaders of the Revolution."
By curtailing the growth of a discontented white laboring class,
black slavery, he finds, nourished white representative government.
Ultimately the yoke was broken - via the Northwest Ordinance, under
which the rebellious western states entered the union on equal
terms with existing states, thus paving the way for reducing other
inequities. Closely argued and extensively documented, Morgan's
multiple theses gain interest and force in juxtaposition. A
substantial contribution to the ongoing Revolutionary reappraisal.
(Kirkus Reviews)
The Revolution is fertile ground for the historian's craft, as
these essays attest. Edmund S. Morgan discovers in American
protests against British taxation an affirmation of rights that the
colonists adhered to with surprising consistency, and that guided
them ultimately to independence. Then, after a general reassessment
of the importance of the Revolution, he moves to a study of it as
an intellectual movement, which challenged the best minds of the
period to transform their political world. Next, in studying the
ethical basis of the Revolution, Morgan traces the shaping of
national consciousness by puritanical attitudes toward work and
leisure. This leads him to an exploration of the paradoxical
relationship between slavery and freedom, and the role their
relationship played in the Revolution. Finally, thinking about the
Revolution on its anniversary, Morgan looks once again at the
Founding Fathers and the innovative daring, admiring most their
ability to reject what had hitherto been taken for granted.
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