Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters, (Paperback)

<p>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 <em>Declaring Independence</em>, 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 <em>Common Sense</em> 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.</p><p>Combined, these ideals and the sacrifices remind us why, on this anniversary and at this political moment, 1776 matters to all of us.</p>

• Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters, (Paperback)
• Author: W. W. Norton & Company
• ISBN: 9781324157137
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2027-01-26
• Page Count: 240