The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89

In 1765 John Dickinson thought that American independence from Great Britain would bring "a multitude of Commonwealths, Crimes, and Calamities, Centuries of Mutual Jealousies, Hatreds, Wars of Devastation." Twenty-four years later he saw the United States adopt its present constitution, which he had helped to draft. Here are the events of that remarkable quarter-century which transformed thirteen quarrelsome colonies into a nation. Edmund S. Morgan's account of the Revolutionary period shows how the challenge of British taxation started the Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom. The author demonstrates that these principles were not abstract doctrines of political theory but beliefs growing out of the immediate needs and experiences of the colonists, held with passionate conviction, and incorporated, finally, into the constitutions of the new American states and of the United States. Though the basic theme of the book and his assessment of what the Revolution achieved remain the same, Morgan has updated the revised edition of The Birth of the Republic (1977) to include some textual and stylistic changes as well as a substantial revision of the Bibliographic Note.