1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton
1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton
From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and past president of the American Historical Association -- a groundbreaking book, the first to look at the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from December 1773 to mid-April 1775, from the Boston Tea Party and the first Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
In this original and important book, Mary Beth Norton's first in almost a decade, she looks at the sixteen months during which the traditional loyalists to King George III began their discordant "discussions" that led to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire and to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775.
Drawing extensively on contemporary pamphlets, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Norton writes not only of Massachusetts, but of all the colonies, from Maine to Georgia, reconstructing colonial political discourse as it happened, and showing the vigorous campaign mounted by conservatives criticizing congressional actions. By then it was too late. In early 1775, governors throughout the colonies informed officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of the local committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans had in effect declared independence even before the outbreak of war in April 1775, by obeying the decrees of their new provincial governments rather than of colonial officials.
Alfred A. Knopf, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 2020
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK