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Liberty Through The Looking-Glass: Comparative Democratic Backsliding In Response To The French Revolution (1789-1806), Michael Rosenbaum

Honors Theses

In response to the French Revolution, sections of British and American political society mobilized to curtail the influence of French-inspired radicals and enforce their own power. Between 1789 and 1806, a process of democratic backsliding occurred simultaneously in Britain and America with remarkably similar characteristics. This is notable for the British and American cases, whose political systems famously ensured liberty and tranquility. Elements of both nations remained extremely hostile to the French Revolution beginning with March on Versailles and promoted legislation seeking to directly undermine political opposition. The antipathy towards the Revolution fractured British and American society into conservatives, moderates, …

Imagining A New Nation: Patriotism And National Identity In The Writing Of Late-18th Century American Women, Aysia S. Brenner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Benedict Anderson defined the nation as “an imagined political community” that is “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The research for this paper began with a desire to know how American women in the time leading up to, during, and immediately after the American Revolution and War of Independence did or did not imagine themselves as members of the newly emerging political community eventually known as the United States of America. As tensions between the Colonies and Great Britain increased, as tea was dumped in Boston harbor, and as independence was declared in 1776, how did women make sense …

“Wild Mobs, To Mad Sedition Prone”: Preaching The American Revolution, Barry Levis

Sermon Studies

The Church of England in the American Colonies was really not a single institution. Because no local bishop governed the church in America, falling as it did under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, the clergy tended to have differing loyalties. Especially in the southern colonies, local vestries ruled the clergy because they controlled their stipends; therefore the clergy followed the lead of the local squirearchy and suppressed their personal views regarding independence. The New England Anglican clergy were equally in a difficult position. Midst the hostility of Puritanism and the Sons of Liberty, they seemed like an alien …

The Setauket Gang: The American Revolutionary Spy Ring You've Never Heard About, Fran Leskovar

Summer Research

Why would some people choose to overlook their apparent differences, ethnicity, religion, gender, and race, and risked being hung to participate in something (spying) where the outcome was not certain? Could they have sensed a moment in history was larger than they were and felt premonition of the new country before it was born?

Due to the complex and vibrant environment, a single answer is not possible. The Anglo-American conflict was not as French nor Russian Revolution; instead, it was a gradual transformation of individual social and political views, as Bernard Bailyn argues. The British aggressive imperial policies had a …

Losing The Colonies: How Differing Interpretations Of The British Constitution Caused The American Revolution, Brian M. Flint

Master's Theses

Faced with an economic crisis following the French and Indian War, the British Parliament, along with a young and inexperienced King George III changed its longstanding policy towards the North American colonies. Prior to 1763, Parliament allowed the colonies to generally govern themselves. After 1763, Parliament began to pass legislation aimed at increasing revenue received from the colonies. As the colonies protested these new taxes on constitutional grounds Parliament began a process of implementing and repealing different attempts at controlling the economic system in the colonies. Due to differing interpretations of the British Constitution regarding Parliament's authority over the colonies, …

Little Founders On The Small Screen: Interpreting A Multicultural American Revolution For Children’S Television, Andrew M. Schocket

History Faculty Publications

From 2002 to 2004, the children’s animated series Liberty’s Kids aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the United States’ public television network. It runs over forty half-hour episodes and features a stellar cast, including such celebrities as Walter Cronkite, Michael Douglas, Yolanda King, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liam Neeson, and Annette Bening. Television critics generally loved it, and there are now college students who can trace their interest in the American Revolution to having watched this series when they were children. At the turn of the twenty-first century, it is the most extended and in-depth encounter with …

One Body And One Spirit: Presbyterians, Interdenominationalism, And The American Revolution, William Harrison Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the interdenominational pursuits of the American Presbyterian Church from 1758 to 1801 in order to demonstrate how the Church helped to foster both national and sectional spirit. I have utilized a variety of sources including: the published and unpublished work of both the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, as well as published and unpublished Presbyterian sermons, lectures, hymnals, poetry and letters. With these sources I argue that a self-imposed interdenominational transformation began in the American Presbyterian Church upon its reunion in 1758 and that …

Jacobite Past, Loyalist Present, Michael Newton

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This article is the first analysis of Gaelic sources relating to the involvement of Scottish Highlanders in warfare in North America from the opening of the French and Indian War to the end of the American Revolution. A careful reading of these primary sources — almost totally unknown to historians — can provide a unique window on the sentiments and reasoning of Highlanders regarding these conflicts. This analysis of contemporary Gaelic poetry demonstrates that there is a high degree of continuity and consistency in the ideological framework of the lines of political argumentation from the Jacobite era through the end …

"Averse…To Remaining Idle Spectators:" The Emergence Of Loyalist Privateering During The American Revolution, 1775-1778 Volume Ii. Chapter 9 To Conclusion., Richard D. Pougher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The important topic of loyalist privateering during the American Revolution has remained unaddressed. The intention of this study is to examine the activity's developmental period between 1775-1778. Relying predominantly on primary source materials such as newspapers, admiralty court records, ships papers, correspondence, memorials, diaries, journals, and minute, account, and log books, this work analyzes the participants and assesses their role in the war. There are three key focuses. The first is on the activities of loyalist mariners during the war's first half, prior to official recognition of privateering by the British. Loyalist service on various types of vessels is examined …

The Bermudian Creek Tories, James P. Myers Jr.

Adams County History

The history of the American Revolution which most Americans have learned and which is everyday reinforced in the public media is essentially but one of several competing interpretations of that conflict. We rarely think about this, so successfully has that particular history taken root in our culture. Common sense, however, should caution us that the British also possess a version or versions which differ in important ways from ours. The French, our allies during the Revolution, offer yet another construction, one stressing that war's place in their own long history of conflict with Great Britain. And had the northeastern American …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 25, No. 3, Don Yoder, Donald F. Durnbaugh, Mac E. Barrick, A. Russell Slagle, Ronald L. Michael, Ronald Carlisle, William T. Parsons

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• The Pennsylvania Germans and the American Revolution
• The Blooming Grove Colony
• The Salebill
• The Schlegel Family and the Rosicrucian Movement
• A Log Settler's Fort/Home
• Pennsylvania Dutch Studies at Ursinus College, 1976
• The Country Sale: Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 43

Financial Problems Of A Revolutionary: The Memoir Of John Wilkins, Howard L. Applegate

The Courier

In this article, Howard L. Applegate describes and includes an excerpt of the autobiography of John Wilkins, a shop owner in Pennsylvania during the American Revolution period who became a militia captain. Instead of detailing the colonial militia of the time, Wilkins related how militia members often took on significant financial burdens in order to keep the regiment intact, and lamented the rampant devaluation, inflation and speculation that occurred during this turbulent period in American history.