| International Standard Book Number |
9781324078982 (ePub ebook)
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| International Standard Book Number |
9781324078975 (hardcover)
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| International Standard Book Number |
1324078979 (hardcover)
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| Personal Name |
Larson, Edward J. (Edward John), author.
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| Title Statement |
Declaring independence : why 1776 matters / Edward J. Larson.
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| Edition Statement |
First edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York, NY : W.W. Norton and Company, 2026.
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| Physical Description |
xv, 221 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm.
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-211) and index.
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| Formatted Contents Note |
The meaning of 1776 -- New Year's Day 1776 -- Launching a year of Common Sense -- Early spring -- Planting season for independence -- Midsummer's dream of independence -- A late summer war of posts -- Autumn initiatives -- Winter crossings -- Looking back on 1776 -- Notes -- Index.
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| Summary, Etc. |
At the beginning of 1776, virtually no one in the colonies was advocating independence: Americans based their grievances against Parliament on their rights as British subjects. By the end of 1776, independence was on every patriot's lips. The many tyrannies of a king had made an independent republic necessary. In Declaring Independence, Edward J. Larson gives us a compact, insightful history of that pivotal year. He traces a narrative arc that runs from the inspiring appeals of Paine's Common Sense in January; through the soaring ideals of midsummer, when the Continental Congress grounded independence in the self-evident truths of human equality and individual rights, and the states wove revolutionary principles of republican government and the rule of law into their new constitutions; to Paine's urgent pleas of December, when "the times that try men's souls" required Americans not "to shrink from the service of their country." Dramatic military clashes also punctuate the year: the British evacuation of Boston forced by the brilliant maneuvers of Washington's Army; the Battle of Long Island, a costly defeat that opened New York to British occupation; and the desperate year-end victory of a threadbare American army at Trenton. Combined, these ideals and the sacrifices remind us why, on this anniversary and at this political moment, 1776 matters to all of us.
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| Summary, Etc. |
On the 250th anniversary of American independence, with the history of our founding a political battleground, this study of the ideas and battlefield sacrifices of 1776 by a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar could not be more timely.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Seventeen seventy-six, A.D.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
United States History Revolution, 1775-1783.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
United States Politics and government 1775-1783.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Informational works.
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