Tom Paine's America explores the vibrant, transatlantic traffic in people, ideas, and texts that profoundly shaped American political debate in the 1790s. In 1789, when the Federal Constitution was ratified, -democracy- was a controversial term that very few Americans used to describe their new political system. That changed when the French Revolution--and the wave of democratic radicalism that it touched off around the Atlantic World--inspired a growing number of Americans to imagine and advocate for a wide range of political and social reforms that they proudly called...

Tom Paine's America explores the vibrant, transatlantic traffic in people, ideas, and texts that profoundly shaped American political debate in the 1790s. In 1789, when the Federal Constitution was ratified, -democracy- was a controversial term that very few Americans used to describe their new political system. That changed when the French Revolution--and the wave of democratic radicalism that it touched off around the Atlantic World--inspired a growing number of Americans to imagine and advocate for a wide range of political and social reforms that they proudly called...