Revisiting, Revising, and Reviving Americas Founding Era

Most Americans nowadays like to think that they have the American Revolution pretty well figured out. Conventional wisdom starts the saga in 1763 when Britain, saddled with debt at the close of the Seven Years War, levied new taxes that prompted her American colonists to resist, and then to reject, imperial rule. Having declared independence and defeated the British, American patriots then drafted the constitution that remains the law of the land to this day. With George Washingtons inauguration as president in 1789, the story has a happy ending and the curtain comes down. This time-honored script renders the road from colonies to nation clear, smooth, and straight, with familiar landmarks along the way, from Bostons Massacre and Tea†¦show more content†¦They believed that these years were the most important in American history, indeed the most important in the history of the world. Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent--of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe, insisted Thomas Paine in January 1776, urging Americans toward independence. Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Fifty years later Jefferson, reflecting on the meaning of July 4, 1776, echoed Paine on that moments significance. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and assume the blessings of self-government. Thanks to the Revolution, Jefferson concluded, All eyes areShow MoreRelatedOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagespoints both before the year 2000 (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, the surge of globalization from the mid-1990s) and afterward (9/11, or the global recession of 2008) when one could quite plausibly argue that a new era had begun. A compelling case can be made for viewing the decades of the global scramble for colonies after 1870 as a predictable culmination of the long nineteenth century, which was ushered in by the industrial and political revolutions of the late