Book Description:
When the fundamental testaments under discussion are Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 'the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language,' produced by a bankrupt corsetmaker, 'sometime teacher, preacher, and grocer, and twice dismissed excise officer'; the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson said 'was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion'; the Articles of Confederation, 'a way station on the road to another constitution,' written by men who had 'declared an independence they had not yet achieved'; and the Paris Peace Treaty, an extraordinary document by any standards, 'whether measured by such criteria as the revolutionary objectives of the American negotiators, the very peculiar and complex nature of the bargaining, the relevance of the negotiations to today s diplomacy... or the durable character of the treaty itself'; When the speakers are Bernard Bailyn, Winthrop Professor of History, Harvard University; Cecelia M. Kenyon, Charles N. Clark Professor of Government, Smith College; Merrill Jensen, Vilas Research Professor of History, University of Wisconsin; Richard B. Morris, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus, Columbia University; and J. Russell Wiggins, editor, publisher, and former U.N. ambassador; and the moderator is Julian P. Boyd, editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University; When all these ingredients are present, one can be assured of a lively session. And the second in the series of Library of Congress Symposia on the American Revolution, held May 10 and 11, 1973, was certainly that. The papers, presented in this volume, make no less interesting reading.
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