A prize-winning historian provides the missing piece in the story of America’s founding, introducing us to the ordinary men and women who turned a faltering rebellion against colonial rule into an unexpectedly potent and enduring revolution.
Over eight years of war, ordinary Americans accomplished something extraordinary. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took responsibility for the course of the revolution. They policed their neighbors, sent troops and weapons to distant strangers committed to the same cause, and identified friends and traitors. By taking up the reins of power but also setting its limits, they ensured America’s success. Without their participation there would have been no victory over Great Britain, no independence. The colonial rebellion would have ended like so many others—in failure.
The driving force behind the creation of a country based on the will of the people, T. H. Breen shows, was in fact the people itself. In villages, towns, and cities from Georgia to New Hampshire, Americans managed local affairs, negotiated shared sacrifice, and participated in a political system in which each believed they were as good as any other. Presenting hundreds of stories, Breen captures the powerful sense of equality and responsibility resulting from this process of self-determination.
With striking originality, Breen restores these missing Americans to our founding and shows why doing so is essential for understanding why our revolution ended differently from others that have shaped the modern world. In the midst of revolution’s anger, fear, and passion—the forgotten elements in any effective resistance—these Americans preserved a political culture based on the rule of law. In the experiences of these unsung revolutionaries can be seen the creation of America’s singular political identity.
T. H. Breen is John Kluge Professor of American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress and Founding Director of the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has taught American history at Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale universities and is James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont. He is the author of many books, including George Washington’s Journey, winner of the History Prize of the Society of the Cincinnati and finalist for the George Washington Book Prize; and Marketplace of Revolution, winner of the Society of Colonial Wars Book Award. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement.
Understanding wealth in the United States—who has it, how they acquired it, and how they
preserve it—is crucial to addressing the economic and political challenges facing the nation. But until now we have had little reliable information. Edward Wolff, one ...
The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: We the People. Robert
Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion—the defiant groups that refused to accept ...
Tracking the movement of finance capital toward far-flung investment frontiers, Noam Maggor reconceives the emergence
of modern capitalism in the United States. Brahmin Capitalism reveals the decisive role of established wealth in the transformation of the American economy in the ...
Hulliung argues that the standard American account of a continuous Jacobin republican tradition--illiberal to the
core--is fatally misleading. In reality it was the nineteenth-century French liberals who undermined the cause of liberalism, and it was French republicans who eventually saved ...
A sweeping history of American cities and towns, and the utopian aspirations that shaped them,
by one of America’s leading urban planners and scholars.The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given ...
Does America have a free press? Many who answer yes appeal to First Amendment protections
that shield the press from government censorship. But in this comprehensive history of American press freedom as it has existed in theory, law, and practice, ...
The engineering of plants has a long history on this continent. Fields, forests, orchards, and
prairies are the result of repeated campaigns by amateurs, tradesmen, and scientists to introduce desirable plants, both American and foreign, while preventing growth of alien ...
An extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of home, through explorations literary and political, philosophical and
deeply personal, by the acclaimed author of Loneliness as a Way of Life.Home as an imagined refuge. Home as a place of mastery and domination. ...
