In this classic account of the American revolution, Pauline Maier traces the step-by-step process through which the extra-legal institutions of the colonial resistance movement assumed authority from the British. She follows the American Whigs as they moved by stages from the organized resistance of the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 through the non-importation associations of the late 1760s to the collapse of royal government after 1773, the implication of the king in a conspiracy against American liberties, and the consequent Declaration of Independence. Professor Maier's great achievement is to...

Together in one book, the two most important documents in United States history form the enduring legacy of America's Founding Fathers including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

The Declaration of Independence was the promise of a representative government; the Constitution was the fulfillment of that promise.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued a unanimous declaration: the thirteen North American colonies would be the thirteen United States of America, free and independent of Great Britain. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the...

Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified.
Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the...

The old revolutionaries were Samuel Adams, Isaac Sears, Thomas Young, Richard Henry Lee, and Charles Carroll, five men of widely varying backgrounds who played significant roles in the American Revolution. What motivations brought these different men together and made them decide to join the movement for Independence? In telling their stories, Pauline Maier explores the American Revolution not so much as a collective movement as a commitment to an ideal republic which different people interpreted differently. Pauline Maier has written a new Introduction to the Norton paperback edition, in...

For the Second Edition, the authors have expanded and strengthened the innovation theme and pared some supporting detail to create a more concise and effective teaching text.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Winner of the George Washington Book Prize

When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, the new Constitution they had written was no more than a proposal. Elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states would have to ratify it before it could take effect. There was reason to doubt whether that would happen. The document we revere today as the foundation of our country's laws, the cornerstone of our legal system, was hotly disputed at the time. Some Americans denounced the Constitution for...

Pauline Maier ist seit mehr als 20 Jahren ehrenamtlich als Sanitäterin und seit mehr als 10 Jahren im Pflege- und Besuchsdienst tätig.