American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People

Breen, T. H.

ISBN 10: 0809075881 / ISBN 13: 9780809075881

Published by Hill & Wang Pub, New York, New York, U.S.A., 2010

About this Item

1st Edition/1st Printing. SIGNED and inscribed by author on a bookplate affixed to front end page. $27.00 price present on the DJ flap. Seller Inventory # 022791

Bibliographic Details

Title: American Insurgents, American Patriots: The ...

Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub, New York, New York, U.S.A.

Publication Date: 2010

Binding: Hard Cover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging and displacing decades of received wisdom, T. H. Breen’s strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans—most of them members of farm families living in small communities—were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know. It is a story of rumor, charity, vengeance, and restraint. American Insurgents, American Patriots reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception.

 

A few celebrated figures in the Continental Congress do not make for a revolution. It requires tens of thousands of ordinary men and women willing to sacrifice, kill, and be killed. Breen not only gives the history of these ordinary Americans but, drawing upon a wealth of rarely seen documents, restores their primacy to American independence. Mobilizing two years before the Declaration of Independence, American insurgents in all thirteen colonies concluded that resistance to British oppression required organized violence against the state. They channeled popular rage through elected committees of safety and observation, which before 1776 were the heart of American resistance. American Insurgents, American Patriots is the stunning account of their insurgency, without which there would have been no independent republic as we know it.

About the Author:

T. H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. The author of several works of history, Breen has also written for The New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.