Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)

Although he called himself merely a "printer" in his will, Benjamin Franklin could have also called himself a diplomat, a doctor, an electrician, a frontier general, an inventor, a journalist, a legislator, a librarian, a magistrate, a postmaster, a promoter, a publisher -- and a humorist. John Adams wrote of Franklin, "He had wit at will. He had humor that when he pleased was pleasant and delightful... and] talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill, to the promotion of moral and political truth." In Benjamin Franklin's Humor, author Paul M. Zall shows...

Allen Jayne analyzes the ideology of the Declaration of Independence -- and its implications -- by going back to the sources of Jefferson's ideas: Bolingbroke, Kames, Reid, and Locke. He concludes that the Declaration must be read as an attack on two claims of absolute authority: that of government over its subjects and of religion over the minds of men. Today's world is more secular than Jefferson's, and the importance of philosophical theology in eighteenth-century critical thought must be recognized in order to understand fully and completely the Declaration's implications. Jayne...

Adrian Leiby offers an exciting narrative of the people of Dutch New Jersey and New York during this conflict. Historians will find colorful...

"Telling the story from the perspective, and often the words, of men in the ranks, Dwyer has written a dramatic account of this turning point in...

Covering the years from 1781 into the 1820s, these valuable accounts remain the chief source of information about Thomas Jefferson's domestic and personal life, interests, habits, appearance, and day-to-day activities at Monticello.

Isaac Jefferson and Edmund Bacon were each sixty-five years old when their recollections were recorded. What they remember best, of course, are scenes from the past made vivid and immediate by details involving their own experience. Although their recollections of Jefferson differ in a number of ways, apparent in both accounts is a concern for the master...

Many visitors over the generations have recorded their impressions of Monticello and its creator. These writings, especialy those from Jefferson's lifetime, preserve important details about him and the house and grounds that might otherwise have been lost. In Visitors to Monticello, Merrill D. Peterson provides a collegtion of thirty-five of these writings dating from 1780 to 1984.

While recent years have seen a flood of literature on the Bill of Rights, this collection of essays, all by highly regarded constitutional scholars, is the first to offer a comprehensive amendment-by-amendment, clause-by-clause account of the Bill's recent sweeping transmutation.

The book confirms the suspicions of critics of judicial activism, suggesting that the provisions of the Bill of Rights have been subjected to much greater interpretive revision by the Supreme Court than other parts of the Constitution.

This book traces the development of the United States from the 1760s to the consolidation of the federal government during the 1790s. The author argues that the creation of the American republic was a major revolution; by the time it was complete the United States was radically different from Britain and the colonies out which it had emerged. Extensive coverage is given to the establishment of governments, first in the states then at the national level, and to social development in the states. It is argued that many of of the most significant changes took place at this level.

This analysis of Jefferson's antislavery views and the actions to which they gave rise, the subject matter of The Wolf by the Ears, is necessarily episodic; while chronology has been generally observed, it was not possible to weld this disparate material into the form of a biographical narrative.

In this comprehensive account of Thomas Jefferson's constitutional thought, David N. Mayer offers a fresh perspective on Jefferson's philosophy of government. Eschewing the "liberalism versus civic republicanism" debate that has so dominated early American scholarship in recent years, Mayer examines Jefferson's thought in Jefferson's own terms- as "whig," "federal," and "republican." In the interrelationships and tensions among these three essential aspects of Jefferson's theory, Mayer explaines Jefferson's response to the particular constitutional issues and problems of his time. In...

Volume 6 documents Washington's decisions and actions during the heart of the New York campaign--the period from late summer to early fall 1776 when his British opponent, General William Howe, took the offensive and outmaneuvered the American forces in and around New York City through a series of amphibious landings. Faced with an enemy superior in numbers, mobility, and discipline, Washington attempted to defend New York by placing his green troops behind fortifications on high ground and hoping that courage and patriotism would offset their lack of experience and training. That strategy...

In this revisionary look at the eighteenth-century frontier, Michael A. Bellesiles shows us that more than a legendary Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen was the leader of a group of frontier subsistence farmers united in their opposition to New York elites and land speculators; the independence Allen and his followers fought for was as much from eastern elites as it was from the British crown. But what makes the story of the Green Mountain frontier so remarkable is that the settlers won.

Revolutionary Outlaws is both a biography of Ethan Allen and a social history of the conflict...