The lamp of experience : Whig history and the intellectual origins of the American Revolution
"Pennsylvanian John Dickinson, one of the influential penmen of the American Revolution, wrote in 1773, "We are British Subjects, who are born to Liberty, who know its Worth, and who prize it high." As Americans of this caliber sought to make sense of their peculiar place in the world and their increasing alienation from the mother country, they drew steadily upon theories of whig history rooted in the liberal- ism of seventeenth-century England. Dr. Colbourn's study, an important analysis of this theme in the thought of the Revolutionists, offers not only a singularly useful approach to the intellectual origins of the break from England but emphasizes also the momentous sense of the past in American experience. Although the Americans' reliance on natural rights and rationalist philosophy is well known, their extensive use of history in explaining and justifying the Revolution has never before been so fully explored. Their reading habits, for example, reveal that as a matter of course they were devoted to the study of English history. To their leaders, history was truly "philosophy teaching by examples"; it colored and shaped the meaning they gave to what was happening in America. And as they viewed their own historical situation, certain whig historial principles, such as those concerning the limitation of royal prerogative, the right of resistance, and civil liberty, became increasingly relevant. Dr. Colbourn demonstrates that he sides books available in bookshops and college and subscription libraries, the modest private libraries of colonial leaders also held basic materials in the building of their political theory. In Virginia, Richard Henry Lee II left his son Thomas a library of 300 titles; the merchant Thomas Gadsden in South Carolina had 135 volumes; Thomas Jefferson's father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, willed him 40 volumes, which formed. the core of a collection that at one point totaled 6,000 books. Benjamin Franklin's collection was inventoried at 4,200 volumes, John Adams industriously collect- ed 4,800. The books themselves, examined in the light of marginalia, notes, and citations, constitute historical sources frequently as revealing as personal correspondence. Among the standard works were volumes of Tacitus and Sallust, Blackstone's Commentaries, Coke's Institutes, Molesworth's Account of Den- mark, Burgh's Political Disquisitions, and of course-Catherine Macaulay's popular History of England. Through the study of these and other sources, Dr. Colbourn traces the influence of ancient, medieval, and contemporary history on the thinking of such men as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, James Wilson, Pat- rick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Josiah Quincy, Jr."--Publisher
Print Book, English, 1965
Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1965