Gale U.S. History in Context
Magazine and journal articles, reference works and primary documents on the American Revolution
Selected Resources
The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society by
The War for Independence had a substantial impact on the lives of all Americans, establishing a nation and confirming American identity. The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society focuses on a conflict which was both civil war and revolution and assesses how Americans met the challenges of adapting to the ideals of Independence and Republicanism. The war effected political reconstruction and brought economic self sufficiency and expansion, but it also brought oppression of dissenting and ethnic minorities, broadened the divide between the affluent and the poor and strengthened the institution of slavery. Focusing on the climate of war itself and its effects on the lives of those who lived through it, this book includes discussion of: *Recruitment and Society *The Home Front *Constraints on Liberty *Women and family during the war years *African Americans and Native Americans The War for Independence is a fascinating account of the wider dimension to the meaning of the American Revolution.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781857286571Publication Date: 1999-09-01
A People's History of the American Revolution by
A sweeping narrative of the wartime experience, A People's History of the American Revolution is the first book to view the revolution through the eyes of common folk. Their stories have long been overlooked in the mythic telling of America's founding, but are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the fight for independence. Now, the experiences of farmers, laborers, rank and file soldiers, women, Native Americans, and African Americans -- found in diaries, letters, memoirs and other long-ignored primary sources -- create a gritty account of rebellion, filled with ideals and outrage, loss, sacrifice, and sometimes scurrilous acts...but always ringing with truth.
Call Number: E208.R25 2002ISBN: 0060004401Publication Date: 2002-06-18
The Idea of America by
The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution-from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment-and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy. As Wood reveals, while the founders hoped to create a virtuous republic of yeoman farmers and uninterested leaders, they instead gave birth to a sprawling, licentious, and materialistic popular democracy. Wood also traces the origins of American exceptionalism to this period, revealing how the revolutionary generation, despite living in a distant, sparsely populated country, believed itself to be the most enlightened people on earth. The revolution gave Americans their messianic sense of purpose-and perhaps our continued propensity to promote democracy around the world-because the founders believed their colonial rebellion had universal significance for oppressed peoples everywhere. Yet what may seem like audacity in retrospect reflected the fact that in the eighteenth century republicanism was a truly radical ideology-as radical as Marxism would be in the nineteenth-and one that indeed inspired revolutionaries the world over. Today there exists what Wood calls a terrifying gap between us and the founders, such that it requires almost an act of imagination to fully recapture their era. Because we now take our democracy for granted, it is nearly impossible for us to appreciate how deeply the founders feared their grand experiment in liberty could evolve into monarchy or dissolve into licentiousness. Gracefully written and filled with insight, The Idea of America helps us to recapture the fears and hopes of the revolutionary generation and its attempts to translate those ideals into a working democracy.
Call Number: E302.1.W77 2011ISBN: 9781594202902Publication Date: 2011-05-12
Overview and Primary Resources
- Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 From the Library of Congress - Contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
- American Revolution and The New Nation Primary Documents in American History from the Library of Congress
- Internet History Sourcebooks - American Independence The Internet Modern History Sourcebook is one of series of history primary sourcebooks. It is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures.
- A Guide to the American Revolution, 1763-1783 The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with the American Revolution, including manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, books, and maps. This guide compiles links to digital materials related to the American Revolution that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site.
- American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774-1776 Peter Force, printer and document collector, intended to publish rare pamphlets, correspondence, and proceedings relating to the "Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America" that covered the time period 1763-1789. After years of work, the final (but unfinished) result was 9 volumes of material covering the years 1774-1776. Since this material is of extreme importance to scholars of the Revolutionary War period, and is collected in this one source, Northern Illinois University Libraries received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in order to provide free electronic access to Force's American Archives. Through the use of sophisticated indexing and searching software provided by the University of Chicago, as well as the thematic indexing of this material by a subject expert (Allan Kulikoff, Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities at the University of Georgia), this project is able to provide a uniquely new way to access these documents.
- Founders' Constitution Hailed as "the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history," The Founders' Constitution has proved since its publication in 1986 to be an invaluable aid to all those seeking a deeper understanding of one of our nation's most important legal documents.
- Archive of Early American Images A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.
- The American Revolution - A Documentary History The Avalon Project collects digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.
- Skipwith Revolutionary War Letters The Skipwith Revolutionary War Collection consists primarily of the papers of Nathanael Greene, Major-General of the Continental Army. During the latter years of the war, Greene commanded the Southern Army, which had suffered from weaker commanders.