Culture And Liberty In The Age Of The American Revolution

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Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution

Author : Michal Jan Rozbicki
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813931541
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution by : Michal Jan Rozbicki

Download or read book Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution written by Michal Jan Rozbicki and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the gap between the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American Founding. Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary liberty—one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms. His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank rather than a universal right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital—a conceptual arsenal of rights and freedoms—at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its nominal inclusiveness include them in fact.

Liberty on the Waterfront

Author : Paul A. Gilje
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812202023
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty on the Waterfront by : Paul A. Gilje

Download or read book Liberty on the Waterfront written by Paul A. Gilje and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through careful research and colorful accounts, historian Paul A. Gilje discovers what liberty meant to an important group of common men in American society, those who lived and worked on the waterfront and aboard ships. In the process he reveals that the idealized vision of liberty associated with the Founding Fathers had a much more immediate and complex meaning than previously thought. In Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution, life aboard warships, merchantmen, and whalers, as well as the interactions of mariners and others on shore, is recreated in absorbing detail. Describing the important contributions of sailors to the resistance movement against Great Britain and their experiences during the Revolutionary War, Gilje demonstrates that, while sailors recognized the ideals of the Revolution, their idea of liberty was far more individual in nature—often expressed through hard drinking and womanizing or joining a ship of their choice. Gilje continues the story into the post-Revolutionary world highlighted by the Quasi War with France, the confrontation with the Barbary Pirates, and the War of 1812.

Liberty and Freedom

Author : David Hackett Fischer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195162530
Total Pages : 880 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty and Freedom by : David Hackett Fischer

Download or read book Liberty and Freedom written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of "Washington's Crossing" and "Albion's Seed" offers a strikingly original history of America's founding principles. Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or political abstractions, but as folkways and popular beliefs deeply embedded in American culture. 400+ illustrations, 250 in full color.

Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution

Author : Sarah L. Swedberg
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498573878
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution by : Sarah L. Swedberg

Download or read book Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution written by Sarah L. Swedberg and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-12-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution, Sarah L. Swedberg examines how conceptions of mental illness intersected with American society, law, and politics during the early American Republic. Swedberg illustrates how concerns about insanity raised difficult questions about the nature of governance. Revolutionaries built the American government based on rational principles, but could not protect it from irrational actors that they feared could cause the body politic to grow mentally or physically ill. This book is recommended for students and scholars of history, political science, legal studies, sociology, literature, psychology, and public health.

The Persistence of Empire

Author : Eliga H. Gould
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807899879
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The Persistence of Empire by : Eliga H. Gould

Download or read book The Persistence of Empire written by Eliga H. Gould and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Revolution was the longest colonial war in modern British history and Britain's most humiliating defeat as an imperial power. In this lively, concise book, Eliga Gould examines an important yet surprisingly understudied aspect of the conflict: the British public's predominantly loyal response to its government's actions in North America. Gould attributes British support for George III's American policies to a combination of factors, including growing isolationism in regard to the European continent and a burgeoning sense of the colonies as integral parts of a greater British nation. Most important, he argues, the British public accepted such ill-conceived projects as the Stamp Act because theirs was a sedentary, "armchair" patriotism based on paying others to fight their battles for them. This system of military finance made Parliament's attempt to tax the American colonists look unexceptional to most Britons and left the metropolitan public free to embrace imperial projects of all sorts--including those that ultimately drove the colonists to rebel. Drawing on nearly one thousand political pamphlets as well as on broadsides, private memoirs, and popular cartoons, Gould offers revealing insights into eighteenth-century British political culture and a refreshing account of what the Revolution meant to people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Age of Homespun

Author : Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307416860
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis The Age of Homespun by : Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Download or read book The Age of Homespun written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-08-26 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They began their existence as everyday objects, but in the hands of award-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, fourteen domestic items from preindustrial America–ranging from a linen tablecloth to an unfinished sock–relinquish their stories and offer profound insights into our history. In an age when even meals are rarely made from scratch, homespun easily acquires the glow of nostalgia. The objects Ulrich investigates unravel those simplified illusions, revealing important clues to the culture and people who made them. Ulrich uses an Indian basket to explore the uneasy coexistence of native and colonial Americans. A piece of silk embroidery reveals racial and class distinctions, and two old spinning wheels illuminate the connections between colonial cloth-making and war. Pulling these divergent threads together, Ulrich demonstrates how early Americans made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert their identities, shape relationships, and create history.

1774

Author : Mary Beth Norton
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0804172463
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis 1774 by : Mary Beth Norton

Download or read book 1774 written by Mary Beth Norton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book tracing the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In this masterly work of history, the culmination of more than four decades of research and thought, Mary Beth Norton looks at the sixteen months leading up to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775. This was the critical, and often overlooked, period when colonists traditionally loyal to King George III began their discordant “discussions” that led them to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire. Drawing extensively on pamphlets, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Norton reconstructs colonial political discourse as it took place throughout 1774. Late in the year, conservatives mounted a vigorous campaign criticizing the First Continental Congress. But by then it was too late. In early 1775, colonial governors informed officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of local committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans had in effect “declared independence ” even before the outbreak of war in April 1775 by obeying the decrees of the provincial governments they had elected rather than colonial officials appointed by the king. Norton captures the tension and drama of this pivotal year and foundational moment in American history and brings it to life as no other historian has done before.

1776: Son of Liberty

Author : Elizabeth Massie
Publisher : Tor Teen
ISBN 13 : 1466856114
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis 1776: Son of Liberty by : Elizabeth Massie

Download or read book 1776: Son of Liberty written by Elizabeth Massie and published by Tor Teen. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." On his farm in Maryland, sixteen-year-old Caleb Jacobson hears rumors of an armed rebellioni of the Massachusetts colonists against he oppressive tyranny of King George III and his soliders. Educated in a small Quaker school, Caleb has been taught that it is wrong to raise one's hand against another. Yet Caleb is a free black living in a slave colony. He knows firsthand the horrors and hardships of slavery and wonders what good an American victory will do if his fellow blacks - including his best friend Gaddi - remain shackled in bondage. Then comes news that the British Governor Lord Dunmore promises freedom to any slave who joins his army against the Americans. Can he be trusted to keep his work? Or should Caleb support the colonists' fight in hope of a better future for his people? Caleb will have to choose." At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Liberty and Freedom

Author : David Hackett Fischer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199774900
Total Pages : 862 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty and Freedom by : David Hackett Fischer

Download or read book Liberty and Freedom written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-15 with total page 862 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberty and freedom: Americans agree that these values are fundamental to our nation, but what do they mean? How have their meanings changed through time? In this new volume of cultural history, David Hackett Fischer shows how these varying ideas form an intertwined strand that runs through the core of American life. Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or political abstractions, but as folkways and popular beliefs deeply embedded in American culture. Tocqueville called them "habits of the heart." From the earliest colonies, Americans have shared ideals of liberty and freedom, but with very different meanings. Like DNA these ideas have transformed and recombined in each generation. The book arose from Fischer's discovery that the words themselves had differing origins: the Latinate "liberty" implied separation and independence. The root meaning of "freedom" (akin to "friend") connoted attachment: the rights of belonging in a community of freepeople. The tension between the two senses has been a source of conflict and creativity throughout American history. Liberty & Freedom studies the folk history of those ideas through more than 400 visions, images, and symbols. It begins with the American Revolution, and explores the meaning of New England's Liberty Tree, Pennsylvania's Liberty Bells, Carolina's Liberty Crescent, and "Don't Tread on Me" rattlesnakes. In the new republic, the search for a common American symbol gave new meaning to Yankee Doodle, Uncle Sam, Miss Liberty, and many other icons. In the Civil War, Americans divided over liberty and freedom. Afterward, new universal visions were invented by people who had formerly been excluded from a free society--African Americans, American Indians, and immigrants. The twentieth century saw liberty and freedom tested by enemies and contested at home, yet it brought the greatest outpouring of new visions, from Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms to Martin Luther King's "dream" to Janis Joplin's "nothin' left to lose." Illustrated in full color with a rich variety of images, Liberty and Freedom is, literally, an eye-opening work of history--stimulating, large-spirited, and ultimately, inspiring.

God of Liberty

Author : Thomas S Kidd
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465022774
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis God of Liberty by : Thomas S Kidd

Download or read book God of Liberty written by Thomas S Kidd and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "thought-provoking, meticulously researched" testament to evangelical Christians' crucial contribution to American independence and a timely appeal for the same spiritual vitality today (Washington Times). At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, America was already a nation of diverse faiths-the First Great Awakening and Enlightenment concepts such as deism and atheism had endowed the colonists with varying and often opposed religious beliefs. Despite their differences, however, Americans found common ground against British tyranny and formed an alliance that would power the American Revolution. In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd offers the first comprehensive account of religion's role during this transformative period and how it gave form to our nation and sustained it through its tumultuous birth -- and how it can be a force within our country during times of transition today.

Liberty Is Sweet

Author : Woody Holton
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476750394
Total Pages : 688 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty Is Sweet by : Woody Holton

Download or read book Liberty Is Sweet written by Woody Holton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Liberty and Freedom:A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas

Author : David Hackett Fischer
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195162530
Total Pages : 864 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty and Freedom:A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas by : David Hackett Fischer

Download or read book Liberty and Freedom:A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-11-15 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberty and freedom: Americans agree that these values are fundamental to our nation, but what do they mean? How have their meanings changed through time? In this new volume of cultural history, David Hackett Fischer shows how these varying ideas form an intertwined strand that runs through the core of American life.Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or political abstractions, but as folkways and popular beliefs deeply embedded in American culture. Tocqueville called them "habits of the heart." From the earliest colonies, Americans have shared ideals of liberty and freedom, but with very different meanings. Like DNA these ideas have transformed and recombined in each generation.The book arose from Fischer's discovery that the words themselves had differing origins: the Latinate "liberty" implied separation and independence. The root meaning of "freedom" (akin to "friend") connoted attachment: the rights of belonging in a community of freepeople. The tension between the two senses has been a source of conflict and creativity throughout American history.Liberty & Freedom studies the folk history of those ideas through more than 400 visions, images, and symbols. It begins with the American Revolution, and explores the meaning of New England's Liberty Tree, Pennsylvania's Liberty Bells, Carolina's Liberty Crescent, and "Don't Tread on Me" rattlesnakes. In the new republic, the search for a common American symbol gave new meaning to Yankee Doodle, Uncle Sam, Miss Liberty, and many other icons. In the Civil War, Americans divided over liberty and freedom. Afterward, new universal visions were invented by people who had formerly been excluded from a free society--African Americans, American Indians, and immigrants. The twentieth century saw liberty and freedom tested by enemies and contested at home, yet it brought the greatest outpouring of new visions, from Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms to Martin Luther King's "dream" to Janis Joplin's "nothin' left to lose."Illustrated in full color with a rich variety of images, Liberty and Freedom is, literally, an eye-opening work of history--stimulating, large-spirited, and ultimately, inspiring.

Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era

Author : Woody Holton
Publisher : Macmillan Higher Education
ISBN 13 : 1319241646
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era by : Woody Holton

Download or read book Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era written by Woody Holton and published by Macmillan Higher Education. This book was released on 2009-01-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Liberty Tree

Author : Alfred F. Young
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814796850
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberty Tree by : Alfred F. Young

Download or read book Liberty Tree written by Alfred F. Young and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006-11-06 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of Liberty Tree, acclaimed historian Alfred F. Young presents a selection of his seminal writing as well as two provocative, never-before-published essays. Together, they take the reader on a journey through the American Revolution, exploring the role played by ordinary women and men (called, at the time, people out of doors) in shaping events during and after the Revolution, their impact on the Founding generation of the new American nation, and finally how this populist side of the Revolution has fared in public memory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, which include not only written documents but also material items like powder horns, and public rituals like parades and tarring and featherings, Young places ordinary Americans at the center of the Revolution. For example, in one essay he views the Constitution of 1787 as the result of an intentional accommodation by elites with non-elites, while another piece explores the process of ongoing negotiations would-be rulers conducted with the middling sort; women, enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans. Moreover, questions of history and modern memory are engaged by a compelling examination of icons of the Revolution, such as the pamphleteer Thomas Paine and Boston's Freedom Trail. For over forty years, history lovers, students, and scholars alike have been able to hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary people during the Revolutionary Era, thanks to Young's path-breaking work, which seamlessly blends sophisticated analysis with compelling and accessible prose. From his award-winning work on mechanics, or artisans, in the seaboard cities of the Northeast to the all but forgotten liberty tree, a major popular icon of the Revolution explored in depth for the first time, Young continues to astound readers as he forges new directions in the history of the American Revolution.

Protocols of Liberty

Author : William B. Warner
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022606140X
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Protocols of Liberty by : William B. Warner

Download or read book Protocols of Liberty written by William B. Warner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fledgling United States fought a war to achieve independence from Britain, but as John Adams said, the real revolution occurred “in the minds and hearts of the people” before the armed conflict ever began. Putting the practices of communication at the center of this intellectual revolution, Protocols of Liberty shows how American patriots—the Whigs—used new forms of communication to challenge British authority before any shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. To understand the triumph of the Whigs over the Brit-friendly Tories, William B. Warner argues that it is essential to understand the communication systems that shaped pre-Revolution events in the background. He explains the shift in power by tracing the invention of a new political agency, the Committee of Correspondence; the development of a new genre for political expression, the popular declaration; and the emergence of networks for collective political action, with the Continental Congress at its center. From the establishment of town meetings to the creation of a new postal system and, finally, the Declaration of Independence, Protocols of Liberty reveals that communication innovations contributed decisively to nation-building and continued to be key tools in later American political movements, like abolition and women’s suffrage, to oppose local custom and state law.

A Cultural History of the American Revolution Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789

Download A Cultural History of the American Revolution Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789 PDF Online Free

Author : Kenneth Silverman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 699 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (963 download)

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Book Synopsis A Cultural History of the American Revolution Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789 by : Kenneth Silverman

Download or read book A Cultural History of the American Revolution Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789 written by Kenneth Silverman and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution

Author : John Phillip Reid
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226708966
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution by : John Phillip Reid

Download or read book The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution written by John Phillip Reid and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Liberty was the most cherished right possessed by English-speaking people in the eighteenth century. It was both an ideal for the guidance of governors and a standard with which to measure the constitutionality of government; both a cause of the American Revolution and a purpose for drafting the United States Constitution; both an inheritance from Great Britain and a reason republican common lawyers continued to study the law of England." As John Philip Reid goes on to make clear, "liberty" did not mean to the eighteenth-century mind what it means today. In the twentieth century, we take for granted certain rights—such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press—with which the state is forbidden to interfere. To the revolutionary generation, liberty was preserved by curbing its excesses. The concept of liberty taught not what the individual was free to do but what the rule of law permitted. Ultimately, liberty was law—the rule of law and the legalism of custom. The British constitution was the charter of liberty because it provided for the rule of law. Drawing on an impressive command of the original materials, Reid traces the eighteenth-century notion of liberty to its source in the English common law. He goes on to show how previously problematic arguments involving the related concepts of licentiousness, slavery, arbitrary power, and property can also be fit into the common-law tradition. Throughout, he focuses on what liberty meant to the people who commented on and attempted to influence public affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. He shows the depth of pride in liberty—English liberty—that pervaded the age, and he also shows the extent—unmatched in any other era or among any other people—to which liberty both guided and motivated political and constitutional action.