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 debat...