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Winner of the Bancroft Prize""
"The New York Times Book Review," Editor's Choice
American Heritage, Best of 2009
In this vivid new biography of Abigail Adams, the most illustrious
woman of the founding era, Bancroft Award-winning historian Woody
Holton offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Adams's life story and
of women's roles in the creation of the republic.
Using previously overlooked documents from numerous archives,
Abigail Adams shows that the wife of the second president of the
United States was far more charismatic and influential than
historians have realized. One of the finest writers of her age,
Adams passionately campaigned for women's education, denounced sex
discrimination, and matched wits not only with her brilliant
husband, John, but with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
When male Patriots ignored her famous appeal to "Remember the
Ladies," she accomplished her own personal declaration of
independence: Defying centuries of legislation that assigned
married women's property to their husbands, she amassed a fortune
in her own name.
Adams's life story encapsulates the history of the founding era,
for she defined herself in relation to the people she loved or
hated (she was never neutral), a cast of characters that included
her mother and sisters; Benjamin Franklin and James Lovell, her
husband's bawdy congressional colleagues; Phoebe Abdee, her
father's former slave; her financially naive husband; and her son
John Quincy.
At once epic and intimate, Abigail Adams, sheds light on a
complicated, fascinating woman, one of the most beloved figures of
American history.
A "deeply researched and bracing retelling" (Annette Gordon-Reed,
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian) of the American Revolution,
showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked
Americans--women, Native Americans, African Americans, and
religious dissenters. Using more than a thousand eyewitness
records, Liberty Is Sweet is a "spirited account" (Gordon S. Wood,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Radicalism of the American
Revolution) that explores countless connections between the
Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom
often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. "It is
all one story," prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton
describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from
Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always
focusing on marginalized Americans--enslaved Africans and African
Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters--and on
overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique
geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public
opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans
exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while
others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women
provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for
soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides
courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet
is a "must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation"
(Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on
the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the
Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn--for example, Holton
makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning
the war--this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we
already knew.
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution
Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's
origins by telling the history of the average Americans who
challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the
revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers
who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse
America's post-Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They
believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence
over state and national policies. That the framers were only
partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the
reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans.
If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people,
what motivated the framers? In "Unruly Americans and the Origins of
the Constitution," Holton provides the startling discovery that the
primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make
America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that
endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away
from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the
Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that
produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn
near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere.
In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known
events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined
their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from
Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions
against their own rule. The Virginia gentry's efforts to shape
London's imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by
a coalition of Indian nations. In 1774, elite Virginians suspended
trade with Britain in order to pressure Parliament and, at the same
time, to save restive Virginia debtors from a terrible recession.
The boycott and the growing imperial conflict led to rebellions by
enslaved Virginians, Indians, and tobacco farmers. By the spring of
1776 the gentry believed the only way to regain control of the
common people was to take Virginia out of the British Empire.
Forced Founders uses the new social history to shed light on a
classic political question: why did the owners of vast plantations,
viewed by many of their contemporaries as aristocrats, start a
revolution? As Holton's fast-paced narrative unfolds, the old story
of patriot versus loyalist becomes decidedly more complex.
|Challenging traditional interpretations of the American
Revolution, Woody Holton argues that the Virginia gentry were
forced to rebel against Britain because of pressures exerted by
Indians, farmers, and slaves.
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.
The Seven Years' War (1754 1763) was a pivotal event in the history
of the Atlantic world. Perspectives on the significance of the war
and its aftermath varied considerably from different cultural
vantage points. Northern and western Indians, European imperial
authorities, and their colonial counterparts understood and
experienced the war (known in the United States as the French and
Indian War) in various ways. In many instances the progress of the
conflict was charted by cultural differences and the implications
participants drew from cultural encounters. It is these cultural
encounters, their meaning in the context of the Seven Years' War,
and their impact on the war and its diplomatic settlement that are
the subjects of this volume. Cultures in Conflict: The Seven Years'
War in North America addresses the broad pattern of events that
framed this conflict's causes, the intercultural dynamics of its
conduct, and its profound impact on subsequent events most notably
the American Revolution and a protracted Anglo-Indian struggle for
continental control. Warren R. Hofstra has gathered the best of
contemporary scholarship on the war and its social and cultural
history. The authors examine the viewpoints of British and French
imperial authorities, the issues motivating Indian nations in the
Ohio Valley, the matter of why and how French colonists fought, the
diplomatic and social world of Iroquois Indians, and the responses
of British colonists to the conflict. The result of these efforts
is a dynamic historical approach in which cultural context provides
a rationale for the well-established military and political
narrative of the Seven Years' War. These synthetic and interpretive
essays mark out new territory in our understanding of the Seven
Years' War as we recognize its 250th anniversary."
The Seven Years' War (1754-1763) was a pivotal event in the history
of the Atlantic world. Perspectives on the significance of the war
and its aftermath varied considerably from different cultural
vantage points. Northern and western Indians, European imperial
authorities, and their colonial counterparts understood and
experienced the war (known in the United States as the French and
Indian War) in various ways. In many instances the progress of the
conflict was charted by cultural differences and the implications
participants drew from cultural encounters. It is these cultural
encounters, their meaning in the context of the Seven Years' War,
and their impact on the war and its diplomatic settlement that are
the subjects of this volume. Cultures in Conflict: The Seven Years'
War in North America addresses the broad pattern of events that
framed this conflict's causes, the intercultural dynamics of its
conduct, and its profound impact on subsequent events-most notably
the American Revolution and a protracted Anglo-Indian struggle for
continental control. Warren R. Hofstra has gathered the best of
contemporary scholarship on the war and its social and cultural
history. The authors examine the viewpoints of British and French
imperial authorities, the issues motivating Indian nations in the
Ohio Valley, the matter of why and how French colonists fought, the
diplomatic and social world of Iroquois Indians, and the responses
of British colonists to the conflict. The result of these efforts
is a dynamic historical approach in which cultural context provides
a rationale for the well-established military and political
narrative of the Seven Years' War. These synthetic and interpretive
essays mark out new territory in our understanding of the Seven
Years' War as we recognize its 250th anniversary.
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