American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People by T.H. Breen
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People by T.H. Breen
Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging decades of received wisdom, T.H. Breen's strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans -- most of the members of farm families living in small communities -- were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know. It is a story of rumor, charity, vengeance, and restraint. American Insurgents, American Patriots reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception.
A few celebrated figures in the Continental Congress do not make for a revolution. It requires tens of thousands of ordinary men and women willing to sacrifice, kill, and be killed. Breen not only gives us the history of the ordinary Americans but, drawing upon a wealth of overlooked documents, restores their primacy to American independence. Mobilizing two years before the Declaration of Independence, American insurgents in all thirteen colonies concluded that resistance to British oppression required organized violence against the state. They channeled popular rage through elected committees of safety and observation, which before 1776 were the heart of American resistance. American Insurgents, American Patriots is the stunning account of their insurgency, without which there would have been no independent republic as we know it.
Hill & Wang, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2010
THIS IS A USED BOOK IN FINE CONDITION. THE DUST WRAPPER IS ALSO IN FINE CONDITION, EXCEPT FOR ONE SMALL "DING" ON THE BOTTOM FRONT CORNER.