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The Foundation Of Freedom: Natural Rights And State Power In Revolutionary Massachusetts, Joshua Paul Dunkelberger

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This research project is an attempt to explain the political mindset which drove the actions of the Massachusetts Patriots during the American Revolution. The British government’s attempts to assert increased control over the American colonies, beginning with the Sugar and Stamp Acts in 1764-1765, initiated a decade-long political struggle between Britain and America. During that struggle, all politically active Americans had to wrestle with questions of where their rights came from, the role of government in relation to those rights, and the constitutional limits of a government’s power over the governed. The question of the origin of rights was thus …