The First American Revolution: The American Colonies on the Eve of Independence

From his monumental Seedtime of the Republic, Rossiter culled this account of colonial government, religion, social structure, and intellectual life. Index.

Clinton Rossiter (1917 – 1970) was a historian and political scientist who taught at Cornell University from 1946 until his suicide in 1970. He wrote The American Presidency along with 20 other books on American institutions and history. He won the Bancroft Prize and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for his book Seedtime of the Republic.

Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III was the son of Winton Goodrich Rossiter and Dorothy Shaw. Winton Goodrich Rossiter died on February 14, 1954 at age 64, ending his prominent career as a New York stockbroker.

Clinton grew up in Bronxville, New York as the third of four siblings: Dorothy Ann Rossiter, William Winton Goodrich Rossiter (William also attended Westminster and Cornell University), Clinton, and Joan Rossiter. He was raised to give priority to family and social expectations. He attended Westminster preparatory school in Simsbury, CT and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University in 1939, where he was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society. In 1942 Princeton University awarded him a doctorate for his thesis Constitutional Dictatorship : Crisis government in the modern democracies.

Immediately after American entry into World War II, Rossiter joined the U.S. Naval Reserves and served for three years as a gunnery officer, mostly on the USS Alabama (BB-60) in the Pacific theater, reaching the rank of lieutenant.

He married Mary Ellen Crane in September 1947. They had three sons (all Cornell graduates): David Goodrich Rossiter (1949), Caleb Stewart Rossiter (1951) (Caleb also attended Westminster) who is three years older than Winton Goodrich Rossiter (1954).