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Constituting A Revolution: Gouverneur Morris, John Quincy Adams, And The French Revolution’S Imprint On American Identity, Tyler Norton

History Honors Program

Much of the traditional scholarship of the Early American Republic agrees that the national identity of the United States was solidified in 1789. A government and nation emerged from the Constitutional Convention, they argue. While the framers produced a governing document and a system of institutions in Philadelphia that summer, notions of American identity remained fluid. In fact, contemporary events that occurred beyond the United States’ borders left a lasting imprinting on conceptualizations of self and identity. In particular, the French Revolution (1789 – 1794) played a defining role. This paper argues that the development of national identity in the …