Volume 23, Number 13 · August 5, 1976
The American Revolution: Who Were 'The People'?
By Edmund S. Morgan
America Confronts a Revolutionary World, 1776-1976
by William Appleman Williams
Morrow, 224 pp., $8.95
The American Revolution Within America
by Merrill Jensen
New York University Press, 232 pp., $9.50
The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism
edited by Alfred F. Young
Northern Illinois University Press, 481 pp., $5.00 (paper)
Artisans for Independence: Philadelphia Mechanics and the American Revolution
by Charles S. Olton
Syracuse University Press, 182 pp., $9.95
Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
by Eric Foner
Oxford University Press, 326 pp., $13.95
The Minutemen and Their World
by Robert A. Gross
Hill and Wang, 242 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Four hundred years ago it was a commonplace that government rested on the will of God. Three hundred years ago a good many people still thought so. But by two hundred years ago, in England and in England's American colonies government was supposed to rest on the will of the people. The American Revolution was carried out in the name of the people, and it was supposedly 'We, the people,' who created the government that Americans still live under. In the course of American history doubts have arisen from time to time about whether that government has not escaped from the people, and the doubts have more than once led historians to ask whether the people ever had control over the Revolution or over the national government that resulted from it.
Review, 5451 words
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