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In 1778, two years after the British forced the Continental Army out of New York City, George Washington and his subordinates organized a secret spy network to gather intelligence in Manhattan and Long Island. Known today as the "Culper Spy Ring," Patriots like Abraham Woodhull and Robert Townsend risked their lives to report on British military operations in the region. Vital reports clandestinely traveled from New York City across the East River...
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In this innovative study, David Waldstreicher investigates the importance of political festivals in the early American republic. Drawing on newspapers, broadsides, diaries, and letters, he shows how patriotic celebrations and their reproduction in a rapidly expanding print culture helped connect local politics to national identity. Waldstreicher reveals how Americans worked out their political differences in creating a festive calendar. Using the...
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'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' This sentence is perfectly familiar. We know it as a core principle of our founding. But few, if any of us consider why Jefferson wrote it in exactly this way. Why 'unalienable rights' and not simply rights? Why 'self-evident' truths and not...
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One of the most fascinating figures of the American Revolution, General Francis Marion slipped in and out of the Carolina swamps to strike sudden, devastating blows against the British. Cutting through the Swamp Fox legend, Robert D. Bass has arrived at a realistic and fascinating appraisal of this military genius with this 1959 literary work.
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When the Continental Congress decided to declare independence from the British empire in 1776, ten percent of the population of their fledgling country were from Ireland. By 1790, close to 500,000 Irish citizens had immigrated to America. They were was very active in the American Revolution, both on the battlefields and off, and yet their stories are not well known. The important contributions of the Irish on military, political, and economic levels...
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Originally published in 1961, author Carl Berger has "attempted to encompass the story of propaganda and subversion in the American Revolutionary War. The archives and literature of the Revolution contain many intriguing references to "secret arts and machinations," some relating to incidents familiar to us, others touching on events long forgotten. This book for the first time brings them together in a single narrative, examining their role and importance."...
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Boston, 1775: A town occupied by General Thomas Gage's redcoats and groaning with Tory refugees from the Massachusetts countryside. Besieged for two months by a rabble in arms, the British decided to break out of town. American spies discovered their plans, and on the night of June 16, 1775, a thousand rebels marched out onto Charlestown peninsula and began digging a redoubt (not on Bunker Hill, which they had been ordered to fortify, but on Breeds...
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This Violent Empire traces the origins of American violence, racism, and paranoia to the founding moments of the new nation and the initial instability of Americans' national sense of self.Fusing cultural and political analyses to create a new form of political history, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg explores the ways the founding generation, lacking a common history, governmental infrastructures, and shared culture, solidified their national sense of self...
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A Scots-Irish immigrant, James McHenry determined to make something of his life. Trained as a physician, he joined the American Revolution when war broke out. He then switched to a more military role, serving on the staffs of George Washington and Lafayette. He entered government after the war and served in the Maryland Senate and in the Continental Congress. As Maryland's representative at the Constitutional Convention, McHenry helped to add the...
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This book examines dozens of books, articles, speeches, and radio broadcasts by such figures as Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Larry Schweikart, and David Barton to expose the deep historical flaws in their use of America's founding history. In contrast to their misleading method of citing proof texts to serve a narrow agenda, Austin allows the Founding Fathers to speak for themselves, situating all quotations in the proper historical context....
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The Anti-Federalist Luther Martin of Maryland is known to us-if he is known at all-as the wild man of the Constitutional Convention: a verbose, frequently drunken radical who annoyed the hell out of James Madison, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, and the other giants responsible for the creation of the Constitution in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. In Bill Kauffman's rollicking account of his turbulent life and times, Martin is still something...
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Fort Lee was built in 1788 on the site of what is now Charleston, West Virginia, at the junction of the Kanawha River and the Elk River. It is named for Virginia Governor Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee, and played a great part in the Indian wars of that area until they came to an end in 1794. The fort was established by a group of men led by the Clendenin brothers George and William, for whose father Charles the city of Charleston was later named....
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Stepfamilies are not a modern phenomenon, but despite this reality, the history of stepfamilies in America has yet to be fully explored. In the first book-length work on the topic, Lisa Wilson examines the stereotypes and actualities of colonial stepfamilies and reveals them to be important factors in early United States domestic history. Remarriage was a necessity in this era, when war and disease took a heavy toll, all too often leading to domestic...
456) Revolutionary Princeton 1774–1783: The Biography of an American Town in the Heart of a Civil War
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The battles of Trenton and Princeton have been the subject of several recent books, but this story complements them by expanding the story to include the many experiences of the people of Princeton in the wider Revolution and their contributions to it. This story combines social history with the better-known military and political history of the Revolution. It does not just deal with amorphous groups and institutions, but rather with individuals working...
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As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer.
In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson’s genius with language and his ability to use the power of words to inspire and shape a nation. A man renowned for many talents, writing was one of the major activities of the statemen’s life,...
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Astonishing Events from the American Revolution That They Don't Teach in School!
We all know about Washington's crossing of the Delaware and Betsy Ross's stitching together the Stars and Stripes, but how about a little-known, valid reason for the war itself and why General George was able to survive a plague that wiped out many of his fellow countrymen?
History buff Tim Rowland provides an entertaining look at happenings during and surrounding the...
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Aristocrat. Catholic. Patriot. Founder. Before his death in 1832, Charles Carroll of Carrollton-the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence-was widely regarded as one of the most important Founders. Today, Carroll's signal contributions to the American Founding are overlooked, but the fascinating new biography American Cicero rescues Carroll from unjust neglect.
Drawing on his considerable study of Carroll's published and unpublished...
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One was a media mogul, the other a celebrity evangelist. The first championed personal responsibility. The second preached salvation by grace. Both worked their way from obscurity, breaking down barriers to become the most famous men in America. Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic, yet their decades-long friendship propelled them and their ideas to change the fabric of America's values: minimizing class,...