Historians past and present have offered many guides to the Founding era, but what make Bradley Birzer's account so delightful are his wholehearted patriotism and the fairness with which he tells the story. In this telling, we hear the dramatic, symphonic nature of one of the most exciting political times ever recorded in the course [...]
While we should rightly praise Thomas Jefferson for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, we should never ignore the role of John Adams. If Jefferson was the pen, Adams was the voice. The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty (278 pages, Stone House Press, 2026) “Who shall write the history of the [...]
In the end, America’s greatness does not lie in its ability to exist as an ideal in the minds of men, but in its success as a lived experience and its character as a nation forged in a history steeped in order, justice, and freedom, for which it is rightfully esteemed. The “miracle at Philadelphia,” [...]
Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, — "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern [...]
Samuel Adams believed that men are ruled more by fear or other emotions than by reason. And Sam Adams knew how to generate anger and fear. Thus he kept up the flow of propaganda that followed from the town's versions of what had happened in the Boston Massacre. Samuel Adams (September 27, 1722-October 2, 1803), [...]
The problem of authority is not merely a political problem or even simply a problem of faith. It instead requires a gathering up of the whole of life, indeed the world in all of its rich multitude of aspects, in relation to its meaning-granting center. Anxious about trends he was witnessing in the ’60s and [...]
The adoption of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776 formally ended a process that had been set in motion almost as soon as colonies were established in what became British North America. The early settlers, once separated physically from the British Isles by an immense ocean, [...]
The most interesting response from Parliament to the imperial crisis came, not surprisingly, from Edmund Burke. An Irishman by birth, Burke had been raised Church of England though his mother and sister were Roman Catholic. Crucially, this upbringing in a mixed family radically shaped Burke’s understanding of the world, he as always sided with the [...]
The two principal writers (Jefferson the author and Adams the orator) of the Declaration died on its fiftieth anniversary. This has become a sort of cute, trivial point to us two hundred years later. But to the Americans of the day, it was astounding, surely confirmation that God smiled upon the Declaration and upon America. [...]
In very different historical circumstances, two strong-willed, athletic men with intelligence and leadership ability survived multiple dangers, but neither attributed his survival to his abilities or to sheer willpower. Instead, both men consistently and publicly credited Divine Providence. Their stories are well-known, but worth reviewing, since they serve as witnesses to us in our own [...]
The American Revolution began at dawn on April 19, 1775, when 700 Redcoats commanded by Major John Pitcairn confronted 200 Lexington militia on the town green. The militiamen, consisting of almost all able-bodied men sixteen to sixty, supplied their own firearms, although a few poor men had to borrow a gun. During the first six [...]
The narrative of a North-South divide in American History is a powerful, yet problematic one. However, closer metaphysical inspection of both regions uncovers a series of considerable similarities and ironic connections between the Puritans of New England fully embodied in Jonathan Edwards, and the Presbyterians of the Old South fully embodied in James Thornwell. Their [...]
For many in the American colonies, it was an open question: Should you favor independence, are you also willing to surrender your lives, your honor, and your sacred fortunes? One of my greatest duties at Hillsdale College is teaching an upper-level course entitled Founding of the American Republic. My colleague, David Raney, and I share [...]
George Orwell was initially tempted to dismiss Charles Dickens because he seemed to have “no political program” to offer. But soon Orwell recognized this presumed defect to be a virtue and decided that Dickens was a moralist, not a revolutionary. Having recently celebrated the anniversary of our revolution of 1776, let’s remember the kind of [...]