Revolutionary Founders

Revolutionary Founders PDF Author: Ray Raphael
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
In twenty-two original essays, leading historians reveal the radical impulses at the founding of the American Republic. Here is a fresh, new reading of the American Revolution that gives voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers whose revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the “Founding Fathers.” While the Founding Fathers advocated a break from Britain and espoused ideals of republican government, none proposed significant changes to the fabric of colonial society. Yet during this “revolutionary” period some people did believe that “liberty” meant “liberty for all” and that “equality” should be applied to political, economic, and religious spheres. Here are the stories of individuals and groups who exemplified the radical ideals of the American Revolution more in keeping with our own values today. This volume helps us to understand the social conflicts unleashed by the struggle for independence, the Revolution’s achievements, and the unfinished agenda it left to future generations to confront.

Revolutionary Founders

Revolutionary Founders PDF Author: Ray Raphael
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book

Book Description
In twenty-two original essays, leading historians reveal the radical impulses at the founding of the American Republic. Here is a fresh, new reading of the American Revolution that gives voice and recognition to a generation of radical thinkers and doers whose revolutionary ideals outstripped those of the “Founding Fathers.” While the Founding Fathers advocated a break from Britain and espoused ideals of republican government, none proposed significant changes to the fabric of colonial society. Yet during this “revolutionary” period some people did believe that “liberty” meant “liberty for all” and that “equality” should be applied to political, economic, and religious spheres. Here are the stories of individuals and groups who exemplified the radical ideals of the American Revolution more in keeping with our own values today. This volume helps us to understand the social conflicts unleashed by the struggle for independence, the Revolution’s achievements, and the unfinished agenda it left to future generations to confront.

Revolutionary Characters

Revolutionary Characters PDF Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101201665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, "What made these men great?" and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life of each—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine—is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.

America's Black Founders

America's Black Founders PDF Author: Nancy I. Sanders
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1556528116
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Celebrates the lesser-known lives and contributions of early African-American men and women, in a volume that features such complementary activities as recipes for colonial foods and advice for petitioning the government. Original.

Forced Founders

Forced Founders PDF Author: Woody Holton
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807899860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
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.

Revolutionary Medicine

Revolutionary Medicine PDF Author: Jeanne E Abrams
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081475936X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
An engaging history of the role that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin played in the origins of public health in America. Before the advent of modern antibiotics, one’s life could be abruptly shattered by contagion and death, and debility from infectious diseases and epidemics was commonplace for early Americans, regardless of social status. Concerns over health affected the Founding Fathers and their families as it did slaves, merchants, immigrants, and everyone else in North America. As both victims of illness and national leaders, the Founders occupied a unique position regarding the development of public health in America. Historian Jeanne E. Abrams’s Revolutionary Medicine refocuses the study of the lives of George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and James and Dolley Madison away from politics to the perspective of sickness, health, and medicine. For the Founders, republican ideals fostered a reciprocal connection between individual health and the “health” of the nation. Studying the encounters of these American Founders with illness and disease, as well as their viewpoints about good health, not only provides a richer and more nuanced insight into their lives, but also opens a window into the practice of medicine in the eighteenth century, which is at once intimate, personal, and first hand. Today’s American public health initiatives have their roots in the work of America’s Founders, for they recognized early on that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry—beginning the conversation about the country’s state of medicine and public healthcare that continues to be a work in progress.

Founding Gardeners

Founding Gardeners PDF Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307390683
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, a fascinating look at the Founding Fathers like none you've seen before. “Illuminating and engrossing.... The reader relives the first decades of the Republic ... through the words of the statesmen themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.

Fighting Over the Founders

Fighting Over the Founders PDF Author: Andrew M. Schocket
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814708161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Explores how politicians, screenwriters, activists, biographers, jurists, museum professionals, and reenactors portray the American Revolution. The American Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards and as small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns, relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation’s founding moment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths, and remains the most accessible and most contested event in US history: more than any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation’s aspirations. Americans’ increased fascination with the Revolution over the past two decades represents more than interest in the past. It’s also a site to work out the present, and the future. What are we using the Revolution to debate? In Fighting over the Founders, Andrew M. Schocket explores how politicians, screenwriters, activists, biographers, jurists, museum professionals, and reenactors portray the American Revolution. Identifying competing “essentialist” and “organicist” interpretations of the American Revolution, Schocket shows how today’s memories of the American Revolution reveal Americans' conflicted ideas about class, about race, and about gender—as well as the nature of history itself. Fighting over the Founders plumbs our views of the past and the present, and illuminates our ideas of what United States means to its citizens in the new millennium.

Founding Brothers

Founding Brothers PDF Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375705244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A landmark work of history explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals—Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison—confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. “A splendid book—humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit.” —The New York Times Book Review The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers—re-examined here as Founding Brothers—combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government. Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes—Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence—Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.

The Founders' Revolution

The Founders' Revolution PDF Author: Michael S. Law
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
ISBN: 1683505867
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
A historian’s “revealing and much-needed retelling of the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the events that led up to it” (William D. Watkins, author of The New Absolutes). Tying American history to our current political climate, The Founders’ Revolution is designed to help readers understand the principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence. The book unpacks the intent of the Founding Fathers in drafting the document, and the historical circumstances surrounding its development. Every charge and every paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is discussed with supporting evidence coming from the original words of the Founding Fathers and other original source documents. The Founders’ Revolution also makes astute comparisons between actions taken by America’s current federal government and those taken by the King of England at the time of the Declaration, showing how our founding document and its principles are still applicable today. In this revealing history, readers will rediscover the forgotten treasures of the Declaration of Independence, recognizing the dedication of the Founding Fathers to the principles written down.

The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America

The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America PDF Author: Matthew Harris
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195326490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. Historians Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd offer an authoritative examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume - writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers - show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were "created" equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. Harris and Kidd show that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.