One difficulty in writing a balanced history of the American Revolution arises in part from its success as a creator of our nation and our nationalistic sentiment. Unlike the Civil War, unlike the French Revolution, the American Revolution produced no lingering social trauma in the United States-it is a historic event widely applauded by Americans today as both necessary and desirable. But one consequence of this happy unanimity is that the chief losers of the War of Independence-the American Loyalists-have fared badly at the hands of historians. This explains, in part, why the account of the Revolution recorded by self-professed Loyalist and Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, Peter Oliver, has heretofore been so routinely overlooked. Oliver's manuscript, entitled "The Origins & Progress of the American Rebellion," written in 1781, challenges the motives of the founding fathers, and depicts the revolution as passion, plotting, and violence. His descriptions of the leaders of the patriot party, of their program and motives, are unforgiving, bitter, and inevitably partisan. But it records the impressions of one who had experienced these events, knew most of the combatants intimately, and saw the collapse of the society he had lived in. His history is a very important contemporary account of the origins of the revolution in Massachusetts, and is now presented here in it entirety for the first time.

John Adams and Benjamin Rush were two remarkably different men who shared a devotion to liberty. Their dialogues on the implications of fame for their generation prove remarkably timely--even for the twenty-first century.Adams and Rush championed very different views on the nature of the American Revolution and of the republic established with the United States Constitution; yet they shared one of the most important correspondences of their time.John Adams and Benjamin Rush met in 1774 as members of the Continental Congress--Adams from Massachusetts, Rush from Pennsylvania. In 1805, after Adams was defeated in his quest of a second term as the new republic's second President, the two men self-consciously commenced an exchange of letters. Their recurring subject was fame. This emphasis on fame was crucial, Adams and Rush believed, because on the fame attached to individual leaders of the Revolutionary generation would depend the view of the Revolution and of the Constitution and republican government that would be embraced by generations to come, including our own.The new Liberty Fund edition of "The Spur of Fame" reproduces a text originally published by the Huntington Library.Douglass Adair (1912-1968) edited the "William and Mary Quarterly" from 1947 to 1955, and was a greatly influential professor and writer. Adair co-edited "Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion" with John A. Schutz in 1961.