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.

Fighting Over the Founders

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

Get Book Here

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Founding Conservatives

The Founding Conservatives PDF Author: David Lefer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101622660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
“It is not only the cause, but our manner of conducting it, that will establish character.” —John Dickinson, 1773 A nation at war and widespread mistrust of the mil­itary. A financial crash and an endless economic crisis. A Congress so divided it barely functioned. Bitter partisan disputes over everything from taxa­tion and the distribution of wealth to the role of banks and corporations in society. Welcome to the world of the Founding Fathers. According to most narratives of the American Revolution, the founders were united in their quest for independence and steadfast in their efforts to create a stable, effective government. But the birth of our republic was far more complicated than many realize. The Revolution was nearly derailed by extremists who wanted to do too much, too quickly and who refused to rest until they had remade American society. If not for a small circle of conservatives who kept radicalism in check and promoted capitalism, a strong military, and the preservation of tradition, our country would be vastly different today. In the first book to chronicle the critical role these men played in securing our freedom, David Lefer provides an insightful and gripping account of the birth of modern American conservatism and its impact on the earliest days of our nation. Among these founding conservatives were men like John Dickinson, who joined George Washington’s troops in a battle against the British on July 4, 1776, and that same week drafted the Articles of Confederation; James Wilson, a staunch free-market capitalist who defended his home against a mob of radicals demanding price controls and in the process averted a bloody American equivalent to Bastille Day; Silas Deane, who mixed patriotism with profit seeking while petitioning France to aid America; and Robert Morris, who financed the American Revolution and founded the first bank and the first modern multinational corporation in the United States. Drawing on years of archival research, Lefer shows how these and other determined founders cham­pioned American freedom while staying faithful to their ideals. In the process, they not only helped defeat the British but also laid the groundwork for American capitalism to thrive. The Founding Conservatives is an intellectual adven­ture story, full of gunfights and big ideas. It is also an extraordinary reminder of the punishing battles our predecessors fought to create and maintain the free and prosperous nation we know today.

The Royalist Revolution

The Royalist Revolution PDF Author: Eric Nelson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067473534X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey Finalist, George Washington Prize A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015 Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch. “The Royalist Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and Nelson is to be commended for reviving discussion of the complex ideology of the American Revolution. He reminds us that there was a spectrum of opinion even among the most ardent patriots and a deep British influence on the political institutions of the new country.” —Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Wall Street Journal “A scrupulous archaeology of American revolutionary thought.” —Thomas Meaney, The Nation “A powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy.” —Colin Kidd, London Review of Books “[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution.” —John Brewer, New York Review of Books

Revolutionary Founders

Revolutionary Founders PDF Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307596834
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. As privileged and propertied white males, they did not seek a revolution in the modern sense; instead, they tried to maintain the underlying social structure and political system that enabled men of wealth to rule. They firmly opposed social equality and feared popular democracy as a form of “levelling.” 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 for future generations to confront.

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.

Founding Fathers

Founding Fathers PDF Author: K. M. Kostyal
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426211759
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Kostyal tells the story of the great American heroes who created the Declaration of Independence, fought the American Revolution, shaped the US Constitution--and changed the world. The era's dramatic events, from the riotous streets in Boston to the unlikely victory at Saratoga, are punctuated with lavishly illustrated biographies of the key founders--Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison--who shaped the very idea of America. An introduction and ten expertly-rendered National Geographic maps round out this ideal gift for history buff and student alike. Filled with beautiful illustrations, maps, and inspired accounts from the men and women who made America, Founding Fathers brings the birth of the new nation to light.