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Title: The American Revolution


1
The American Revolution
  • Using E.Q.U.A.L.
  • The American Institute for History Education
  • Dr. Yohuru Williams

2
Standards Correlations
  • This lesson correlates to the National History
    Standards.
  • Era 3 -Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)
  • Standard 1C -Demonstrate understanding of the
    factors affecting the course of the war and
    contributing to the American victory.
  • This lesson correlates to the National Standards
    for Civics and Government.
  • Standard IV.A.2. -Explain how nation-states
    interact with each other.
  • Constitutional Connection
  • This lesson focuses on the American Revolution,
    which encouraged the founding fathers' desire to
    create a government that would, as stated in the
    Preamble, insure domestic tranquility and provide
    for the common defense.

3
Two American Revolutions?
  • The alleged critical period between the end of
    the Revolution and the Constitutions adoption
    was not dominated by economic depression,
    political turmoil, and international peril,
    jeopardizing the independent survival of the
    American experiment in liberty. Those who
    assembled at the Philadelphia Convention to write
    a new Constitution were not disinterested
    demigods, nor did they intend to establish a
    federal system of divided government powers. The
    Constitution did not have the support of most
    Americans. And finally, rather than representing
    the culmination of the previous Revolution, the
    Constitution represented a reactionary
    counter-revolution against its central
    principles.
  • Source Did the Constitution Betray the
    Revolution? Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, William Marina
    January 1, 1981

4
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution The
Anti-federalists
  • With the words, Give me liberty, or give me
    death, Patrick Henry sounded the keynote of the
    American Revolution. After the Revolution, Henry
    and his supporters blocked the Constitutions
    ratification until it bore the amendments known
    as the Bill of Rights. Mindful of these
    principles, the first generation of Americans
    reinvented themselves and their society.

5
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution
  • The creation of the Constitution entailed hours
    of debate and compromise, and even when it was
    completed, some delegates were unhappy with it.
    The task of fixing the ailing Confederate
    government was not complete yet each state had
    to ratify, or approve, the Constitution.
    Basically, people divided into two groups, the
    Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Each of
    their viewpoints is worth examining, as they both
    had sound reasoning and in a real sense appealed
    to the ideals of the Revolution.

6
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution The
Anti-Federalists
  • The Anti-Federalists did not want to ratify the
    Constitution. Basically, they argued that
  • It gave too much power to the national government
    at the expense of the state governments.
  • There was no bill of rights.
  • The national government could maintain an army in
    peacetime.
  • Congress, because of the necessary and proper
    clause,' wielded too much power.
  • The executive branch held too much power.

7
Betraying the Revolution?
  • They envisioned that the spirit of the revolution
    would be betrayed and the new nation would be
    troubled by the same problems burdened the
    colonies under British Rule.

8
Shays Rebellion 1786 to 1787.
  • When the fighting ceased and with their
    independence won, the American people were left
    with thirteen loosely united states. What seemed
    simple  that these individual states could be
    both independent and united as a nation would
    not be easy.

9
The Anti-Federalists and the American Revolution
  • The way in which we conceptualize the revolution
    and engage its meaning for the Constitution can
    broaden our understanding of its deeper meaning.
    For example, how exactly did their values
    transform politics, economics, and culture in the
    new republic?

10
Breaking down the R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N
  • In order to do this we are literally going to
    break down the Revolution into its parts
    beginning with the letter R . . .

11
R Reason
  • In light of their struggle with Britain the
    colonists saw themselves as a new society based
    on new principles of government. Governments are
    instituted among men, proclaimed Thomas
    Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence,
    deriving their just powers from the consent of
    the governed. This idea that the people, not
    their rulers, are sovereign was revolutionary .
    . . But it also must be understood in the context
    of World History.

12
From Reason to Revolution
  • The eighteenth century is often called the Age of
    Reason or The Age of Enlightenment. During this
    time, the colonies, like many other European
    nations, were caught up in the ideas of such men
    as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Diderot.
    In the popular coffee houses of Paris people from
    all walks of life were meeting to discuss these
    new philosophies. There were five basic ideas of
    the Enlightenment Reason, Nature, Happiness,
    Progress and Liberty.

13
Background The Power of Ideas
  • The Ideas of the Enlightenment
  • The Declaration of Independence
  • The American Revolution
  • The French Revolution
  • The Haitian Revolution

14
Historical Fingerprinting
  • What we will be looking for is the Core. The base
    of the argument or appeal. The crossover, how
    that argument or appeal builds on earlier or
    relates to later historical events. And in what
    ways is it unique or an island unto itself. So
    these five ideas Reason, Nature, Happiness,
    Progress and Liberty Reason are the fingerprints
    of the Enlightenment.

15
R Reason
  • The Revolution Takes Place in the Age of Reason
  • William Pitt

16
Sugar or Equal
  • Sweetening your colonial coffee or more
    appropriately Tea

17
E.Q.U.A.L.
  • The document should contain an Enumeration of
    basic rights and principles.
  • The document should address Quality of life
    issues.
  • The document should promote the cause of
    community Unity.
  • The document should be an Antecedent, forerunner
    to the United States Constitution.
  • The document should express an appreciation of
    freedom and or Liberty.

18
A City Upon a Hill
  • Antecedent documents trace back to the Magna
    Carta (1215) which limited the power of the
    English King and include such diverse sources as
    John Winthrops City Upon a Hill and Nathaniel
    Bacons Declaration of the Rights of the People
    (1676) not to mention the West New Jersey Charter
    (1676).

19
City Upon a Hill
  • Applying the E.Q.U.A.L.
  • Enumeration
  • Quality of Life
  • Promote the cause of Unity
  • Antecedent
  • Expresses a desire for freedom or liberty.

20
The Declaration of Independence
  • When in the Course of human events, it becomes
    necessary for one people to dissolve the
    political bands which have connected them with
    another, and to assume, among the powers of the
    earth, the separate and equal station to which
    the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
    them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
    requires that they should declare the causes
    which impel them to the separation.

21
The Declaration of Independence
  • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
    men are created equal, that they are endowed, by
    their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights,
    that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
    pursuit of Happiness.
  • That to secure these rights, Governments are
    instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
    from the consent of the governed, That whenever
    any Form of Government becomes destructive of
    these ends, it is the Right of the People to
    alter or abolish it, and to institute new
    Government, laying its foundation on such
    principles, and organizing its powers in such
    form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
    their Safety and Happiness.

22
The Declaration of the Rights of Man
  • Approved by the National Assembly of France,
    August 26, 1789 There were 17 in total.
  • 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in
    rights. Social distinctions may be founded only
    upon the general good.
  • 2. The aim of all political association is the
    preservation of the natural and imprescriptible
    rights of man. These rights are liberty,
    property, security, and resistance to oppression.
  • 3. The principle of all sovereignty resides
    essentially in the nation. No body nor individual
    may exercise any authority which does not proceed
    directly from the nation.
  • 4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do
    everything which injures no one else hence the
    exercise of the natural rights of each man has no
    limits except those which assure to the other
    members of the society the enjoyment of the same
    rights. These limits can only be determined by
    law.
  • 5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are
    hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented
    which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be
    forced to do anything not provided for by law.

23
E Emancipation
  • The Revolution presented the opportunity for
    liberation for many people inspired by the
    language of the Enlightenment

24
The Paradox of American Slavery
  • As Lawrence Goldstone provocatively makes clear
    in Dark Bargain, to a significant and
    disquieting degree, Americas most sacred
    document was molded and shaped by the most
    notorious institution in its history.

25
Paradox Defined
  • How could the founding fathers who envisioned a
    nation where all men are created equal also
    hold other human beings in bondage and preserve
    the concept of slavery? This is a question that
    has plagued historians for decades.

26
The Unintended and the Unexpected
  • Recognize the importance of individuals who have
    made a difference in history
  • Appreciate the force of the non-rational, the
    irrational, and the accidental
  • Understand the relationship between geography and
    history as a matrix of time and place.

27
Women, Slaves and Common Men
  • Defending the British soldiers accused in
    perpetrating the Boston Massacre, John Adams
    attempted to calm the town by dismissing the
    waterfront characters who had been killed as "a
    rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes,
    Irish teagues, and outlandish jack tars."

28
The poetry of Grace Growden Galloway, 1760s
  • ". . . I am Dead
  • Dead to each pleasing thought each Joy of Life
  • Turn'd to that heavy lifeless lump a wife."
  • "never get Tyed to a Man
  • for when once you are yoked
  • Tis all a Mere Joke
  • of seeing your freedom again."

29
Abigail Adams
  • Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776
  • I long to hear that you have declared an
    independency. And, by the way, in the new code of
    laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you
    to make, I desire you would remember the ladies
    and be more generous and favorable to them than
    your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power
    into the hands of the husbands.

30
Abigail Adams
  • "Remember, all men would be tyrants if they
    could. If particular care and attention is not
    paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a
    rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by
    any laws in which we have no voice or
    representation.
  • "That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a
    truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no
    dispute but such of you as wish to be happy
    willingly give up -- the harsh tide of master for
    the more tender and endearing one of friend.

31
Abigail Adams
  • "Why, then, not put it out of the power of the
    vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty
    and indignity with impunity? 
  • "Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs
    which treat us only as the (servants) of your
    sex regard us then as being placed by Providence
    under your protection, and in imitation of the
    Supreme Being make use of that power only for our
    happiness."

32
the despotism of the petticoat
  • JOHN ADAMS TO ABIGAIL ADAMS APRIL 14, 1776
  • "We have been told that our struggle has loosened
    the bonds of government everywhere that children
    and apprentices were disobedient that schools
    and colleges were grown turbulent that Indians
    slighted their guardians, and negroes grew
    insolent to their masters.

33
Republican Motherhood Petticoat Despotism
  • But your letter was the first intimation that
    another tribe, more numerous and powerful than
    all the rest, were grown discontented. This is
    rather too coarse a compliment, but you are so
    saucy, I won't blot it out.

34
The power of the petticoat?
  • "Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal
    our masculine systems. Although they are in full
    force, you know they are little more than theory.
    We dare not exert our power in its full latitude.
    We are obliged to go fair and softly, and, in
    practice, you know we are the subjects.
  • John Adams to Abigail Adams April 14, 1776

35
The Cult of Domesticity
  • "We have only the name of masters, and rather
    than give up this, which would completely subject
    us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope
    General Washington and all our brave heroes would
    fight."

36
Desperate First Wives
  • ABIGAIL ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS, MAY 7, 1776
  • "I cannot say that I think you are very generous
    to the ladies for, whilst you are proclaiming
    peace and good-will to men, emancipating all
    nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute
    power over wives.
  • "But you must remember that arbitrary power is
    like most other things which are very hard, very
    liable to be broken and, notwithstanding all
    your wise laws and maxims, we have it in our
    power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue
    our masters, and without violence, throw both
    your natural and legal authority at our feet."

37
Good Wives Republican Wives and Mothers
  • According to historian James Henretta,
    democratic-republican ideology encouraged
    demands for the legal emancipation of women even
    as republican practice denied them. A few
    American public leaders, he continued,
    responded positively to female demands for
    greater equality, but usually with male needs in
    mind.
  • James Henretta, Society and Republicanism
    America in 1787 No. 15, Summer 1987.

38
Good Wives Republican Motherhood
  • In his Thoughts on Female Education (1787),
    Henretta notes, . . . Benjamin Rush advocated
    intellectual training of women, so they would,
    be an agreeable companion for a sensible man.
    Rush and other men of affairs likewise praised
    republican mothers who instructed their sons
    in the principles of liberty and government.

39
The Haitian Revolution
  • In August 1791, a massive slave revolt exploded
    in the French colony Saint Domingue, now known as
    Haiti.  This civil unrest lasted from 1791 to
    1804, and was a result of the conflicts between
    white planters, free coloureds, slaves and petit
    blancs.  Other Caribbean islands experienced
    similar revolts but no other country was able to
    defeat the planters, free the slaves, and make a
    successful bid for independence.

40
The Declaration of the Rights of Man
  • 17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred
    right, no one shall be deprived thereof except
    where public necessity, legally determined, shall
    clearly demand it, and then only on condition
    that the owner shall have been previously and
    equitably indemnified.

41
Historical Agency and the Haitian Revolution
  • The exceptional experience of Haiti can be
    explained by the fact that France, the colonizer,
    was also in a state of revolution from 1789. 
    This lit the flames of revolution in Haiti.  The
    principles of the French Revolution with
    its watchwords of Liberty, Equality and
    Fraternity, served as an inspiration for the
    inhabitants of Haiti.  The white planters saw it
    as an opportunity to secure independence from
    France, the free people of color wanted full
    citizenship, the petits blancs wanted active
    citizenship for all white persons, and the
    slaves wanted freedom.  The conflict between the
    free coloureds and the grand blancs gave the
    slaves a perfect opportunity to fight for their
    freedom.

42
V Victory
  • The Declaration of Independence showed England
    and other countries that Americans were
    determined to become a free nation. If the
    colonists lost the war, all the men who signed
    the declaration would hang.

43
Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989
  • On May 13 the hunger strike began in Tiananmen
    Square. Somehow that was a catalyst more and
    more thoughts began to cross the line Marx was
    replaced by Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and
    Martin Luther King. Never had I expected to see a
    Chinese student in Tiananmen Square with a
    headband bearing the English words, "I have a
    dream."

44
Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989
  • When workers joined the demonstrations, a success
    few had dared to hope for, the students lost
    their ideological nerve. Those demonstrating for
    due process and separation of powers stood side
    by side with those who admired Mao together they
    faced down the army in the wee hours of May 21
    and held control of Peking. "You have won," I
    told my Chinese friends. "The army has
    disobeyed." "The army will never disobey," they
    replied. "This is China." My Chinese friends were
    right. The Chinese government is not designed to
    respond to public opinion. There is no way
    orderly change can occur in a totalitarian
    society. George Jochnowitz, The words of Marx,
    the methods of Lenin, (Tiananmen Square
    massacre, China) National Review August 4, 1989.

45
O Opportunity
  • "I am sure America will be victorious finally,
    but her sufferings for want of union and public
    spirit may be great first. There is no people on
    earth that ever had so fair an opportunity to
    establish their freedom at so easy a rate, if the
    opportunity had been properly approved. God
    grant a happy issue to the war!" Letter from
    Gen. Greene to his wife, May 1777. Gen. Nathanael
    Greene (1742-1786), second-in-command to Gen.
    George Washington

46
L Liberty
  • The only freedom which deserves the name is that
    of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long
    as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs,
    or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the
    proper guardian of his own health, whether
    bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are
    greater gainers by suffering each other to live
    as seems good to themselves, than by compelling
    each to live as seems good to the rest.
  • John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

47
Paradox Defined
  • How could the founding fathers who envisioned a
    nation where all men are created equal also
    hold other human beings in bondage and preserve
    the concept of slavery? This is a question that
    has plagued both apologists and critics of the
    American system.

48
The Paradox of American Slavery
  • Some also took action. Franklin became president
    of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the
    Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free
    Negros Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Washington
    provided in his will for the emancipation of his
    slaves after the death of his wife. John Adams
    never owned slaves, as a matter of principle, yet
    in his letter to two Quaker abolitionists he
    expresses the widespread fear that
    emancipationand agitation for itwould lead to
    violence. All three at various times expressed
    support for colonization.

49
The Paradox of American Slavery
  • And again to Jefferson, who writes in 1809 that
    he has come to believe that black Africans "are
    on a par with ourselves" and that this awareness
    among citizens will hasten "the day of their
    relief." Someday. How one judges these men is
    problematic they have been lauded and condemned
    for their words here.

50
Imperfect gods?
  • When he died in 1799 Washingtoncalled for his
    manservant William Lee to be freed immediately,
    and given a pension.  The other slaves were to be
    freed when his widow died.  Martha chose to free
    them  two years later.  According to Abigail
    Adams this was because she feared her life might
    be in danger,  since her death meant freedom for
    the slaves.  (Hirschfield, p 214) Ironically,
    neither Washington nor his wife could legally
    free the dower slaves which still belonged to the
    Custis estate.  

51
Dark Bargain created a fatal defect
  • But in failing to address the issue of slavery
    fully in the hopes of securing a new
    Constitution, the founders allowed a deadly
    infection to continue to breed that would
    eventually result in the Civil War.

52
The Paradox of American Freedom
  • In his book, American Slavery and Freedom (1975)
    Edmund S. Morgan moved the origins-of-slavery
    debate away from sectional differences and deep
    roots, relocating it in relation to the undoubted
    fact that late-eighteenth-century Virginia gave
    America its foremost exemplars of liberty. The
    link between what they proclaimed and how they
    lived was not, he suggests, mere happenstance or
    a regrettable but minor contradiction. It was
    fundamental.

Edmund S. Morgan American Slavery, American
Freedom The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, (New
York W. W. Norton Co., 1975).
53
What made the founding fathers experts on Liberty?
  • The great paradox of the Revolution is slavery,
    and the men we call the Founding Fathers knew it.
    They talked and wrote about it, justified its
    survival under the Constitution, and northerners
    among them urged its eradication, someday.

54
U Unity
  • Benjamin Franklins "Join or Die" Pennsylvania
    Gazette (Philadelphia), May 9, 1754 Newspaper
    Serial and Government Publications Division
    Library of Congress.

55
U Unity
  • In response to the Coercive Acts (several acts
    designed to restructure colonial government and
    reduce colonial freedoms passed in 1774), the
    colonies (except for Georgia) met at Philadelphia
    in the First Continental Congress. Along with a
    declaration of principle, the delegates also
    elected to boycott all British goods and cease
    exporting American products to Britain and its
    possessions. Women like those in North Carolina
    joined with their male counterparts and refused
    to buy and use British products, especially tea.

56
Unity
  • The colonists invented or adopted emblems --
    images accompanied by a motto -- and
    personifications -- allegorical figures -- to
    express their political needs. They used them as
    propaganda tools to draw together the country's
    diverse peoples (who spoke many languages) in
    order to promote national political union, the
    best hope of securing liberty and equal justice
    for all. Benjamin Franklin was responsible for
    suggesting the country's first emblem -- a native
    rattlesnake -- and its first personification --
    Hercules. Both were readily understood by his
    contemporaries the snake device conveyed the
    need for political solidarity among the colonies,
    while the strength of the infant Hercules was
    likened to that of the mighty young nation.

57
U The Great American Melting Pot
58
T Tension From the Revolution to the Civil War
  • Using ESP. What social, economic and political
    tensions are occasioned by the Revolution and the
    adoption of the new Constitution and persist to
    the American Civil War some 80 years later

59
I Independence
60
I Independence
  • What has this meant in terms of American social,
    economic and political traditions in the United
    States? American foreign policy? American popular
    culture and Americas image abroad?

61
O Order
  • The leaders of the American Revolution, writes
    the distinguished historian Bernard Bailyn, were
    radicals. But their concern was not to correct
    inequalities of class or income, not to remake
    the social order, but to "purify a corrupt
    constitution and fight off the apparent growth of
    prerogative power." They wished, in other words,
    to mend a broken system and improve upon it. In
    doing so they drew on many traditions of
    political and social thought, ranging from
    English conservative philosophers to exponents of
    the continental Enlightenment, from
    backward-looking interpretations of ancient Roman
    civilization to forward-looking views of a new
    American people.

62
O Order "A New Order of the Ages"
63
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"
  • "Novus Ordo Seclorum" was the motto suggested in
    1782 by Charles Thomson, the Founding Father
    chosen by the Continental Congress to come up
    with the final design for the Great Seal of the
    United States. He adapted it from a line in
    Virgil's Eclogue IV, a pastoral poem that
    expresses the longing for a new era of peace and
    happiness which was written by the famed Roman
    writer in the first century B.C.

64
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"
  • He put the motto at the bottom of the reverse
    side where its meaning ties into the imagery
    above it the unfinished pyramid with the date
    MDCCLXXVI (1776). Thomson did not provide an
    exact translation of the motto, but he explained
    its symbolism Novus Ordo Seclorum signifies "the
    beginning of the new American Era," which
    commences from 1776.

65
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"
  • The farsighted founders of the United States
    thought in terms of ages. They looked back into
    history as well as forward, realizing their
    actions would have long-lasting consequences.
  • In January 1776, Thomas Paine inspired the
    Colonies with a vision of this new American Era.
    In Common Sense he wrote "The cause of America
    is in a great measure the cause of all mankind...
    'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an
    age posterity are virtually involved in the
    contest, and will be more or less affected, even
    to the end of time, by the proceedings now."

66
Thomas Paine, The Crisis -- December 1776
  • "These are the times that try men's souls The
    summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in
    this crisis, shrink from the service of his
    country but he that stands it Now, deserves the
    love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like
    hell, is not easily conquered yet we have this
    consolation with us, that the harder the conflict
    the more glorious the triumph." 

67
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"
  • In his farewell letter to the Army (June 8,
    1783), George Washington wrote "The foundation
    of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of
    Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when
    the rights of mankind were better understood and
    more clearly defined, than at any former period."

68
N Nationhood
  • The Federalists had answers to all of the
    Anti-Federalist complaints. Among them
  • The separation of powers into three independent
    branches protected the rights of the people. Each
    branch represents a different aspect of the
    people, and because all three branches are equal,
    no one group can assume control over another.
  • A listing of rights can be a dangerous thing. If
    the national government were to protect specific
    listed rights, what would stop it from violating
    rights other than the listed ones? Since we can't
    list all the rights, the Federalists argued that
    it's better to list none at all.

69
N Nationhood
  • Overall, the Federalists were more organized in
    their efforts. By June of 1788, the Constitution
    was close to ratification. Nine states had
    ratified it, and only one more (New Hampshire)
    was needed. To achieve this, the Federalists
    agreed that once Congress met, it would draft a
    bill of rights. Finally, New York and Virginia
    approved, and the Constitution was a reality.
    Interestingly, the Bill of Rights was not
    originally a part of the Constitution, and yet it
    has proved to be highly important to protecting
    the rights of the people.

70
Forging a new Nation
  • Every time we revisit the issues posed in the
    bill of rights we revisit the Revolution and its
    meaning across time space, the good, the bad and
    the Ugly.

71
The Shot heard around the World. . .
72
Final Thought Gordon Wood
  • Q. One of the most interesting observations you
    make is that Americans are unique in turning to
    the Founders of their country for guidance about
    current issues. Just recently Richard Brookhiser
    devoted an entire book to the subject, providing
    the answers he thinks the founders would give to
    the questions we face. Why do we do this?

73
Final Thought Gordon Wood
  • I think we go back to the Founders to renew and
    reaffirm our faith in the values and ideals of
    the nation. We are not a nation in the usual
    sense of the term. To be an American is not to be
    somebody, but to believe in something. And that
    something is the ideals and values that came out
    of the Revolution and the framing of the
    Constitution. So the Founders give us a sense of
    who we are and what we believe in.. .

74
the Founders give us a sense of who we are and
what we believe in.. .
  • Almost everything we believe as a people--our
    noblest ideals and highest aspirations--come out
    of the Revolution--our belief in liberty,
    equality, constitutionalism, self-government, the
    well-being of ordinary people--so it is not
    surprising that we should want to know about the
    men who created these ideas, institutions, and
    values.
  • Source Interview with Gordon Wood Revolutionary
    Characters By Rick Shenkman, History News
    Network, 12-04-06

75
We, the people, are sovereign! Next Time
Teaching the Preamble . . .
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