Why is it that so many Americans have not heard of John Dickinson? John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Delaware was an early leader of the resistance to British rule in the American colonies. In fact, to many, he was the most prominent figure in the struggle for independence, though his Quaker-influenced opposition to violence kept him from signing one of its most famous documents in July 1776. Still, Dickinson, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, did more to promote...

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, vol. 1 inaugurates a multivolume documentary edition that will, for the first time ever, provide the complete collection of everything Dickinson published on public affairs over the course of his life. The documents include essays, articles, broadsides, resolutions, petitions, declarations, constitutions, regulations, legislation, proclamations, songs and odes. Among them are many of the seminal state papers prod...

In 1767, John Dickinson began publishing his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which earned him international celebrity as the leader of the American resistance to Britain. They educated Americans about their rights and how to defend them without violence. Importantly, they also taught the colonists to unite and understand themselves first and foremost as Americans rather than as Britons. He followed with letters on religious liberty in the Episcopal controver...

During the years 1764 through 1766, John Dickinson became a leading figure in the Pennsylvania Assembly and in the growing American resistance to unjust British taxation. The documents in this volume show that, in both roles, he sought to protect the fundamental rights of ordinary Americans. In the 1764 Assembly, after working to punish those responsible for the slaughter of peaceful Indians, Dickinson challenged Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Galloway in their plan to abolish Pennsylvania’s...

In the late-seventeenth century, Quakers originated a unique strain of constitutionalism, based on their theology and ecclesiology, which emphasized constitutional perpetuity and radical change through popular peaceful protest. While Whigs could imagine no other means of drastic constitutional reform except revolution, Quakers denied this as a legitimate option to governmental abuse of authority and advocated instead civil disobedience. This theory of a perpetual yet amendable constitution...

John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Delaware was an early leader of the resistance to British rule in the American colonies. In fact, to many, he was the most prominent figure in the struggle for independence, though his Quaker-influenced opposition to violence kept him from signing one of its most famous documents in July 1776. Still, Dickinson, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, did more to promote the cause behind it than almost anyone else, not only as the lead draftsman in all ...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.

**“Exceptional... a remarkable study of the key chapter of American history and its ongoing influence on American character.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Founding Era reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the American Revolution remains so essential to our identity and culture.**For Gordon S. Wood, the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American id...

The cities of eighteenth-century America packed together tens of thousands of colonists, who met each other in back rooms and plotted political tactics, debated the issues of the day in taverns, and mingled together on the wharves or in the streets. In this fascinating work, historian Benjamin L. Carp shows how these various urban meeting places provided the tinder and spark for the American Revolution. Carp focuses closely on political activity in colonial America's five most populous cit...

Here is a vividly written and compact overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the "Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen. In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human bein...

**A New York Times bestseller!"Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best." —The Philadelphia Inquirer**In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, What made these men great, and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter.The life of each—Washing...

**Winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for General NonfictionShortlisted for the 2014 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature**From the revered historian, the long-awaited conclusion of the magisterial history of slavery and emancipation in Western culture that has been nearly fifty years in the making.David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Priz...