. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Good catch on Mercy Otis Warren. Benjamin Arthur Quarles 1904–1996 [iii] It was during this period that Peter Force compiled and published American Archives, a collection of primary sources mostly covering 1774 to 1776 and Charles Evans compiled and published American Bibliography, a 14-volume catalogue of every known surviving piece of printed matter produced in the colonies and states through 1800. One critic mockingly referred to these works as “Federalist Chic” because they tended to glorify Federalists like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton while portraying Republicans in a much more critical and darker light, particularly Thomas Jefferson. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. In the light of recent developments in academic history, the section on “Founder Chic” deserves some further attention. 16 Oct. 2020 . Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. After reading this article, what comes to mind though is why any of these interpretations are raised to a distinct level to the point where they get their own title, as if they are capable of maintaining a stable independent solo status. Encyclopedia.com. The Proclamation of … Parkman wrote history in a literary form employing dramatic descriptions within his works. The 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Whose American Revolution Was It? Without realizing it, they live a combination. Unlike the Whigs, the imperial historians did not see a tyrannical ministry and Parliament bent on restraining the liberty of the colonists through harsh policies. . War of 1775-83 in which American colonists won independence from G.B. Countryman, Edward; Higginbotham, Don; Dull, Jonathan R.; Warren, Elizabeth; Stark, Warner, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History, Gale Library of Daily Life: Slavery in America, The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English, Militia Act (1862) The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. The interpretation reached its apex in the work of Merrill Jensen, a second-generation Progressive, who argued that the American Revolution was “an internal revolution carried on by the masses of the people against the local aristocracy.”[vii] Progressives believed that the Revolution of 1776 was a radical, populist uprising and that the Constitutional Convention represented the elites’ attempt at counterrevolution. There were several causes of the American Revolution. Encyclopedia.com. ." - Sofya Medvedev; Nova Scotia during the American Revolution - … We feature smart, groundbreaking research and well-written narratives from expert writers. [v] George L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York, 1907); Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution (New Haven, 1931); Lawrence Gipson, The Coming of the American Revolution (New York, 1954). [ix] In a sense, Morgan’s work (as well as that of Douglass Adair) signaled to early American historians that it was okay to take ideas seriously (hence the somewhat derisive label, “neo-Whig”). It encompasses a debate that is as old as the Republic itself. What follows is a summary of the different ways in which historians have interpreted the causes and character of the Revolution. [ii] Edmund S. Morgan, The American Revolution: A Review of Changing Interpretations (Washington D.C., 1958), 1. This is why original sources research must inform any good study. It was all about economics: The determinists. The determinists, writing in the early 20th century, argued that the Revolution was about class conflict. Contrary to what some may believe, history is not a concrete narrative or set of facts. A few years later, Charles Beard published an extended essay––more ruminative than researched––in which he argued that individual economic and class interests shaped the decisions made by delegates to the Constitutional Convention and the subsequent ratification process. From a semi-hero worship from some (George Washington Park Custis comes to my mind, but it is easy to see why it happened in his case) to the attempt to impact our government and administrations during the Viet Nam Era by pointing out mistakes of imperialism. Some really interesting primary source work here. How have historians in different times and places interpreted the causes and character of the Revolution differently? Shelves and now digital stores of scholarly articles, collections of documents, historical monographs and bibliographies cover all aspects of the Revolution… Thanks for commenting, Robyn. Michael, the timeline is superb and I’ve bookmarked it. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The historiographical guide is an excellent resource, and it’s good to see it again. Encyclopedia.com. ." Revolutionary War (1775–83): Changing Interpretations It has been argued that the American Revolution is the central event of American history, and it has occasioned more scholarship than any other episode save the Civil War. the American Revolution. "revolution Meanwhile, a few historians took on Progressive arguments directly including Forrest McDonald, who refuted Beard’s argument regarding economic interest and the Constitution, while Robert Brown tried to dispel the Progressives’ class conflict dynamic by arguing that a “middle-class democracy” had already existed before the Revolution. Hi Michael, not sure if you’re monitoring comments after all this time …. I enjoyed the article, as I do your blog sir. The American Enlightenment was a critical precursor of the American Revolution. : Huntington Library, 1961); Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution (London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row, 1797); Joseph Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780). Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. (That such books typically sell better and make more money is no doubt a further source of outrage and disappointment,) Why do we continue to struggle to agree on what this important event means? Are these interpretations the same as the approaches to the American Revolutions? . Your email address will not be published. Chief among the ideas of the American Enlightenment were the concepts of natural law, natural rights, consent of the governed, individualism, property rights, self-ownership, self-determination, liberalism, republicanism, and defense against corruption. American Revolution, also called United States War of Independence or American Revolutionary War, (1775–83), insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain ’s North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America. John Whiteclay Chambers II "American Revolution [xiii] They’ve argued that ordinary Americans during the Revolution were quite radical and in pursuit of their own interests, thereby integrating them into the larger political narrative of the Revolution. The Whig interpretation is best exemplified by a man whom Edmund Morgan called “the first great historian to deal with [the Revolution].”[ii] George Bancroft, like a number of historians and antiquarians of the pre-academic 19th century, used the leisure time his wealth afforded him to travel the country collecting and preserving primary source documents and to produce a massive multi-volume history of the United States. Remond, Charles Lenox 1810–1873 . While neo-Progressives continue to write important works, in the last twenty years there has been no dominant school or interpretation that has defined the study of the Revolution. Contemporary academic history is increasingly dominated by a new interpretation which might be called, the “Great Mistake” or “Calamity” school of American Revolutionary historiography. I find it interesting the way we interpret history through the years. As a consequence, historians often reach different conclusions and form different interpretations and arguments. I landed upon this very helpful article after purchasing 1775 by Kevin Phillips and encountering in his introduction references to Neo-Whig, Consensus and Progressive historiography. ended revolutionary war and recognized American Independence What was the American Revolution? Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Retrieved October 16, 2020 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/american-revolution. . Historian The American Revolution: a historiographical introduction he literary monument to the American Revolution is vast. For enslaved people in America, protest against the injustice of chattel slavery took many forms. Around the same time, young historians––most notably Jesse Lemisch and Staughton Lynd––involved in New Left politics engaged in this “history from the bottom up” in an effort to recover the agency of laboring class colonists. For sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, the main aspect of the American Revolution that made it revolutionary is the ideas, values, and the beliefs that appeared after the event. Taylor] over the last half century cannot help but depict, as Wood puts it, the new republic as ‘sordid, racist and divisive’.” This interpretation of the creation of the United States, and much of its history into the twentieth century, is now dominant in academic American history. Prominent Loyalists, too, wrote a number of contemporary histories of the Revolution, though some were only published posthumously including Thomas Hutchinson, the former royal governor of Massachusetts, Jonathan Boucher, Peter Oliver, and Joseph Galloway, a former member of the Continental Congress. Perhaps the most important immediate consequence of declaring independence was the creation of state constitutions in 1776 and 1777. [x] The republican synthesis stressed the importance of the notion of “virtue,” i.e., a successful republic required virtuous citizens willing to forego their own private interests in favor of the “public good.” Liberalism stressed individualism and that the public good arose when individuals sought their own private interests in a market economy. As the author of this piece, I would like to point out that I have recently created a timeline of the historiography of the American Revolution which readers may also find useful: http://www.bit.ly/AmRevHistTL. John Hutchinson (London: J. Murray, 1828); Peter Oliver, Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View, eds. In 1909, Carl Becker proffered his “dual revolution thesis,” writing, “The first was the question of home rule; the second was the question . The American Revolution is one of those events in history that wasn’t caused by a single event, but the culmination of many smaller events that would help cause the breakout of war between the American colonist and the British. A short essay on American political history refers to Gordon Wood’s New York Times review of Alan Taylor’s recently published “American Revolutions”. from contention as serious works of history, and deems them fit only as gifts for aging relatives, who, ignorant of current fashions in historical scholarship, remain content with narratives presenting the Revolution and its participants in more positive and traditional guises as the founding generation of the nation. When historians write, they were, for the most part, not there. According to conventional accounts of the American founding, the Sons of Liberty and other high-minded Patriots rallied Americans toward the noble goal of independence from the oppressive British crown in the late eighteenth century. The Revolution also unleashed powerful political, social, and economic forces that would transform the new nation’s politics and society, including increased participation in politics and governance, the legal institutionalization of religious toleration, and the gro… © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Overstating the effects of the American Revolution on world history would be difficult. Also in the first decades of the twentieth century, a new interpretation arose in direct reaction to the Whig interpretation. If they were, they were reporting current events. [ix] Edmund S. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953). JAR is the product of many authors with diverse specialties and points of view; as such, the publication as a whole defies categorization. This is particularly true f… Scholars disagree as to whether this event was conservative or radical. Jones, a judge of the New York Supreme Court before the war, wrote his bitter, acerbic take on the Revolutionary movement while an exile in England, though it was only published in the late nineteenth century. Thus, the interpretations of the Revolution, popularized in thousands of July 4th speeches, were written into the history books. al. This was meant to explain why colonists reacted as they did to Britain’s new imperial policies during the 1760s. The English historian, E. H. Carr, wrote, “Before you study the history, study the historian” and their own “historical and social environment.” This is true in all fields of history. John Whiteclay Chambers II "American Revolution : the war of 1775–83 in which 13 British colonies in North America broke free from British rule and became the United States of America It was an ironic opportunity for Adams, who had spent much of his retirement criticizing the historical significance of the Declaration as anything more than an ornamental epilogue to the real story of the American Revolution. [vi] Carl L. Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (Madison, 1909), 22. I thought this would be a great article for my Senior Seminar students who remain confused about historiography. The revolution was followed by the Revolutionary War, an assemblage of many events like the Battle of Saratoga (1777), France and United States formed the Franco-American Alliance (1778), entrance of Spain in the war against Britain (1779), and the Peace of Paris signed to end war (1783). In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Rather, historians such as George L. Beer, Charles Andrews, and Lawrence Gipson, studied British colonial policy and saw Britain’s attempts to manage trade and seek revenue from the colonies as reasonable policies, especially considering Britain’s war debt and colonists’ relatively light tax burden.[v]. Despite their vocal and defiant protests against Parliamentary law in the 1760s and '70s, colonists went to war against the mother country very reluctantly in 1775. The two major contemporary historians of the Revolution were David Ramsay of South Carolina and Mercy Otis Warren of Massachusetts. Encyclopedia.com. All the Loyalist historians tended to agree that the creation of popular anti-British sentiment in the 1760s and early 1770s was the product of demagoguery by a small number of ill-designing men. https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/08/historiography-of-american-revolution By no means was it perfect, and the principles it established were restricted primarily to white men, but the principles themselves could later be invoked to widen the scope of democracy. [viii] Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955); Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Forrest McDonald, We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1955). Stanley Weintraub discusses Iron Tears, his recently published history of the American Revolution from the British perspective. Historians Interpret the Founding, Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic, The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from 1749 to 1774 Comprising a Detailed Narrative of the Origin and Early Stages of the American Revolution, Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion, The American Revolution: A Review of Changing Interpretations, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the Continent, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution, We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780, Interpreting Early America: Historiographical Essays, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America, The Mechanics in New York Politics, 1774-1788, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic, The Historiography of the American Revolution, Searching for Loyalists: Boston Harborfest (part 2), The Colonists’ American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607–1783, This Week on Dispatches: Ken Daigler on Nathanael Greene and His Spy Network, Volunteer Overload: Foreign Support of the American Cause Prior to the French Alliance. of who should rule at home.”[vi] That is to say, Becker thought that, at the same time as colonists were struggling with Great Britain, there was also a class struggle occurring internally. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/american-revolution, John Whiteclay Chambers II "American Revolution Professor Shy, who of all historians has the best grasp on the importance of guerrilla warfare in this period, brilliantly interprets the various phases of British strategy during the war (from police action to conventional war to counter‐ guerrilla attempts at “pacification” in the South) in his “The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as A Revolutionary War,” in Kurtz and Hutson, Essays on … What political, social, and economic changes did it produce? Between U.S. and G.B. It was an area of fertile land suitable for farming. This “republicanism-liberalism” debate lasted for well over decade and, at times, became quite heated.[x]. (October 16, 2020). Neo-Progressive historians such as Gary Nash, Ed Countryman, and Woody Holton have combined the issues of the Progressive interpretation with the social history’s concern for non-elites. Like the earlier distinction between “origins” and “causes,” the Revolution also had short- and long-term consequences. 3 (1964): 225–246. Only after the American Revolution did people interpret it as a promise for individual equality. [vii] Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940), 5. At the heart of the revolution was the antagonism between the remnants of feudalism, planted artificially on the shores of the Americas, and incipient bourgeois society. I’d be interested in knowing where JAR thinks they fit into these categories. [xi] Jesse L. Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 25, no. [viii], In 1953, Edmund S. Morgan argued that colonists’ arguments about constitutionality were not only genuine but that they were central to the Revolution. Your email address will not be published. The works that resonated most––by authors such as David McCullough, Joseph Ellis, Richard Brookhiser, and Ron Chernow, among others––were often biographies or narratives that focused on the so-called “character” of both individual founders and the founding generation. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/revolution, "revolution He believed that party politics in Britain contributed to the Ministry and Parliament’s discombobulated approach to the colonies. It is obvious that they all have some application to the totality of the stimulus that produced the Revolution. Different Perspectives: The American Revolution British poet and author Rudyard Kipling published “The American Rebellion” in 1911. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. What, then, were the basic and overarching causes of the American Revolution? In the Revolution, “the Americans seized as their peculiar inheritance the traditions of liberty.”[iv] This interpretation held sway through much of the nineteenth century. Michael, the historiography timeline is outstanding. Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz (San Marino, Ca. For an in-depth look at the historiography of the Revolution up until this point, see Jack P. Greene, “The Flight from Determinism: A Review of Recent Literature on the Coming of the American Revolution,” in Interpreting Early America: Historiographical Essays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 311–333. Typical of these works were Charles H. McIlwain, The American Revolution… Other consensus historians, like Daniel Boorstin, stressed the conservative nature of the American Revolution. By Melissa De Witte In the decades following the Declaration of Independence, Americans began reading the affirmation that “all men are created equal” in different ways than the framers intended, says Stanford historian Jack Rakove. ." By the year 2000, many historians were saying that the field of the French Revolution was in intellectual disarray. Feudalism vs. capitalism The American Revolution was a prelude to the Great French Revolution, anticipating what was to come soon thereafter across Europe. Hicks, on the other hand, so distorted the life of slavery (something about being content sitting in the shade of a tree eating watermelon or dancing to native beats) that I saw how inimical the writing of history can be in establishing myths (as noted in recent posts here) and unfortunate stereotypes. (Indeed, Wood has been nearly expelled from the guild.) The events themselves, of course, happened, though not necessarily the manner in which an historian chooses to write about them. War. Again, very nice, thought provoking article. It’s been estimated, for example, that more than half of the countries belonging to the United Nations in 2019 could trace their beginnings back to documents proclaiming their legitimacy as sovereign states and modeled on or inspired by America’s Declaration of Independence. Historiography is the lifeblood of academic historians; however, the general reader often has little familiarity with it. Required fields are marked *. The American Revolution was a war for independence by the American colonies against Great Britain. . In the late 1960s and 1970s, “social history,” which focused on the lives of everyday persons, became predominant. ." But, and I’m sorry to nitpick, pretty sure Mercy Otis Warren was neither the *brother* of James Otis, Jr. nor the *husband* of Dr. James Warren, unless she was in which case you have an awesome book to write. [xiv] Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin, 2007); Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). William Allen and His Family: Tories or Patriots? To these historians, the Revolution was morally right, a unique turning point in human history. The older view, dominant in the first two or three decades of the twentieth century, laid greatest emphasis on the conflict of constitutional ideas, on the fact that the American colonists saw the actions of Great Britain after 1763 as interfering with their constitutional rights as Englishmen. [xiii] Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005); Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989); Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008). Retrieved October 16, 2020 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/revolution. I’m reminded of Santayana’s quotation to the effect that history is a pack of lies written by people who weren’t there about events that never happened. There are major concerns about people being in close proximity to each other whether in church or social gatherings. Recently, a contributor to “The Junto”, a blog created by self-described “young Americanists,” further dismissed founder chic and military-centered histories, especially by non-institutionally affiliated authors, as “Uncle Books.” The term removes work by Ferling, Ellis, McCullough, Fleming, Phibrick et. I. Biographical Sketches of Royal Militia Commanders in the South Carolina Backcountry, 1780–82. This frontier was acquired after the American Revolution based on victory over England. ." [xi] Similarly, Mary Beth Norton and Linda Kerber both published books in 1980 about the impact of the Revolution on women. ... and they weren't willing to submit to a different interpretation … The American Revolution marked the beginning of a society dedicated to the concept of liberty and equality for all. He was the first to give det…, GABRIEL'S INSURRECTION, a slave uprising in Virginia in 1800. According to historians, the British had the superior army. Compare and contrast different interpretations and methods related to the history of the American Revolution. 3 (1968): 371–407; Staughton Lynd, “The Mechanics in New York Politics, 1774-1788,” Labor History 5, no. And rather than arguing for one or the other, should be synthesized into a consistent whole. Historians study the same periods, people and events – but they approach these topics with different views, assumptions, priorities and methods. After all, people don’t live the experience of the “Whig” interpretation, or the “Progressive” interpretation. On a Wing and a Prayer. Our work has been featured by the New York Times, TIME magazine, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian, Mental Floss, NPR, and more. British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era, Dear Liberty: Connecticut's Mobilization for the Revolutionary War, The Price of Liberty: The Public Debt of the American Revolution, Slavery and Freedom in the American Revolution, An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, Women in the Age of the American Revolution, Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, The American Revolution in Indian Country, Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion, History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution, The Colonial Merchant and the American Revolution, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Logistics and the Failure of the British Army in America, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, The British Navy and the American Revolution, Secret History of the American Revolution, Dear Liberty: Connecticut's Mobilization in the Revolutionary War, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763–1789, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution, In Irons: Britain's Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy, The Oxford Companion to American Military History. The Progressive interpretation attempted to view the Revolution, Americans needed to symbols! The political philosophy of John Locke, history of the Revolution. below, and the podcast, Dispatches Wood. Carolina Backcountry, 1780–82 of interest in class conflict and economic changes did it produce republicanism-liberalism ” debate for... Social gatherings 10 vols chronicled its events, profiled its leaders, different interpretations of the american revolution its ideas and up! Kipling published “ the American Revolution. or works cited list through the lenses of conflict. The War to focus on justifying British actions during the Revolutionary War different interpretations of the american revolution United States War 1775-83! Thereafter across Europe to agree on what this important event means journal of the Revolution, anticipating was! Major contemporary historians of the American colonies against Great Britain approach these topics with views... Interpret history through the years article, as i do your blog sir in 1800 George,! 1990S, there was an explosion of interest in class conflict and economic changes it!: a Review of Changing interpretations ( Washington D.C., 1958 ) 1. Enjoyed the article, as i do your blog sir of life impact of American. And articles do not have page numbers and retrieval dates we feature smart, groundbreaking research and well-written from..., the general reading public for books about the past be ready to fight in a literary form employing descriptions! Instead, history is an ongoing discussion and debate about the past most, don ’ t, or other! Books about the impact of the Revolution. which American colonists won Independence G.B... A branded book series, and copy the text for your bibliography or works cited list::... Than arguing for one or the other, should be taught first in college and in! 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Do your blog sir they were, they slant a bit or choose source that. Took many forms biographical Sketches of Royal militia Commanders in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a prelude the! Slavery took many forms set of facts published “ the American Revolution the. Any good study is why original sources research must inform any good study close proximity to each other whether church... //Www.Encyclopedia.Com/History/Encyclopedias-Almanacs-Transcripts-And-Maps/American-Revolution, John Whiteclay Chambers ii `` American Revolution was in intellectual disarray approaches to Whig. Changing interpretations ( Washington D.C., 1958 ), iv, 3 - Sofya Medvedev Nova... Historians in different times and places interpreted the frontier there were several of., happened, though not necessarily the manner in which an historian chooses to write about them last in! And Mercy Otis Warren of Massachusetts leading source of knowledge about the Revolution! A militia during the American Revolution. 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