The Wars of Independence in Spanish America

The Wars of Independence in Spanish America

Author: Christon I. Archer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780842024693

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This volume of readings examines the revolutions, civil wars, guerrilla struggles, insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, and interventions of this period. Offering a solid perspective on the Independence period, The Wars of Independence is an excellent text for Latin American survey courses and courses focusing on the colonial era.


From Independence to the U.S. Constitution

From Independence to the U.S. Constitution

Author: Douglas Bradburn

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2022-03-31

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 081394743X

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The "Critical Period" of American history—the years between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789—was either the best of times or the worst of times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution’s framers destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over to the wealthy. This era—what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as America’s "Critical Period"—has rarely been separated from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in Fiske’s words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom, in the newly independent United States. As the United States is experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into matters—from national identity and the place of slavery in a republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of democracy—whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present day. Contributors:Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University * Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood, University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College


Almost a Miracle

Almost a Miracle

Author: John E. Ferling

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 694

ISBN-13: 0195382927

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Describes the military history of the American Revolution and the grim realities of the eight-year conflict while offering descriptions of the major engagements on land and sea and the decisions that influenced the course of the war.


Scars of Independence

Scars of Independence

Author: Holger Hoock

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0804137285

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Tory hunting -- Britain's dilemma -- Rubicon -- Plundering protectors -- Violated bodies -- Slaughterhouses -- Black holes -- Skiver them! -- Town-destroyer -- Americanizing the war -- Man for man -- Returning losers


The American Revolution

The American Revolution

Author: Colin Bonwick

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780813913476

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This book traces the development of the United States from the 1760s to the consolidation of the federal government during the 1790s. The author argues that the creation of the American republic was a major revolution; by the time it was complete the United States was radically different from Britain and the colonies out which it had emerged. Extensive coverage is given to the establishment of governments, first in the states then at the national level, and to social development in the states. It is argued that many of of the most significant changes took place at this level.


Winning Independence

Winning Independence

Author: John Ferling

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 1635572770

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Co-Winner of the 2022 Harry M. Ward Book Prize From celebrated historian John Ferling, the underexplored history of the second half of the Revolutionary War, when, after years of fighting, American independence often seemed beyond reach. It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the U.S a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France's entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a “southern strategy.” The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its pre-war American empire. Deep into 1780 Britain's new approach seemed headed for success as the U.S. economy collapsed and morale on the home front waned. By early 1781, Washington, and others, feared that France would drop out of the war if the Allies failed to score a decisive victory that year. Sir Henry Clinton, commander of Britain's army, thought “the rebellion is near its end.” Washington, who had been so optimistic in 1778, despaired: “I have almost ceased to hope.” Winning Independence is the dramatic story of how and why Great Britain-so close to regaining several southern colonies and rendering the postwar United States a fatally weak nation ultimately failed to win the war. The book explores the choices and decisions made by Clinton and Washington, and others, that ultimately led the French and American allies to clinch the pivotal victory at Yorktown that at long last secured American independence.


First Freedom

First Freedom

Author: David Harsanyi

Publisher: Threshold Editions

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1501174010

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From one of America’s smartest political writers comes a “captivating and comprehensive journey” (#1 New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh) of the United States’ unique and enduring relationship with guns. For America, the gun is a story of innovation, power, violence, character, and freedom. From the founding of the nation to the pioneering of the West, from the freeing of the slaves to the urbanization of the twentieth century, our country has had a complex and lasting relationship with firearms. In First Freedom, nationally syndicated columnist and veteran writer David Harsanyi explores the ways in which firearms have helped preserve our religious, economic, and cultural institutions for over two centuries. From Samuel Colt’s early entrepreneurism to the successful firearms technology that helped make the United States a superpower, the gun is inextricably tied to our exceptional rise. In the vein of popular histories like American Gun, Salt, and Seabiscuit, Harsanyi takes us on a captivating and thrilling ride of Second Amendment history that demonstrates why guns are not only an integral part of America’s past, but also an essential part of its future. First Freedom is “a briskly paced journey…a welcome lesson on how guns and America have shaped each other for four hundred years” (National Review).


Becoming Men of Some Consequence

Becoming Men of Some Consequence

Author: John A. Ruddiman

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0813936187

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Young Continental soldiers carried a heavy burden in the American Revolution. Their experiences of coming of age during the upheavals of war provide a novel perspective on the Revolutionary era, eliciting questions of gender, family life, economic goals, and politics. "Going for a soldier" forced young men to confront profound uncertainty, and even coercion, but also offered them novel opportunities. Although the war imposed obligations on youths, military service promised young men in their teens and early twenties alternate paths forward in life. Continental soldiers’ own youthful expectations about respectable manhood and their goals of economic competence and marriage not only ordered their experience of military service; they also shaped the fighting capacities of George Washington’s army and the course of the war. Becoming Men of Some Consequence examines how young soldiers and officers joined the army, their experiences in the ranks, their relationships with civilians, their choices about quitting long-term military service, and their attempts to rejoin the flow of civilian life after the war. The book recovers young soldiers’ perspectives and stories from military records, wartime letters and journals, and postwar memoirs and pension applications, revealing how revolutionary political ideology intertwined with rational calculations and youthful ambitions. Its focus on soldiers as young men offers a new understanding of the Revolutionary War, showing how these soldiers’ generational struggle for their own independence was a profound force within America’s struggle for its independence.


Whirlwind

Whirlwind

Author: John Ferling

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 162040172X

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Amid a great collection of scholarship and narrative history on the Revolutionary War and the American struggle for independence, there is a gaping hole; one that John Ferling's latest book, Whirlwind, will fill. Books chronicling the Revolution have largely ranged from multivolume tomes that appeal to scholars and the most serious general readers to microhistories that necessarily gloss over swaths of Independence-era history with only cursory treatment. Written in Ferling's engaging and narrative-driven style that made books like Independence and The Ascent of George Washington critical and commercial successes, Whirlwind is a fast-paced and scrupulously told one-volume history of this epochal time. Balancing social and political concerns of the period and perspectives of the average American revolutionary with a careful examination of the war itself, Ferling has crafted the ideal book for armchair military history buffs, a book about the causes of the American Revolution, the war that won it, and the meaning of the Revolution overall. Combining careful scholarship, arresting detail, and illustrative storytelling, Whirlwind is a unique and compelling addition to any collection of books on the American Revolution.