Declaring independence : why 1776 matters / Edward J. Larson.
| Author/creator | Larson, Edward J. author. |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication | New York, NY : W.W. Norton and Company, [2026] |
| Copyright Date | ©2026 |
| Description | xv, 221 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | The meaning of 1776 -- New Year's Day 1776 -- Launching a year of Common Sense -- Early spring -- Planting season for independence -- Midsummer's dream of independence -- A late summer war of posts -- Autumn initiatives -- Winter crossings -- Looking back on 1776 -- Notes -- Index. |
| Abstract | On the 250th anniversary of American independence, with the history of our founding a political battleground, this study of the ideas and battlefield sacrifices of 1776 by a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar could not be more timely. |
| Abstract | At the beginning of 1776, virtually no one in the colonies was advocating independence: Americans based their grievances against Parliament on their rights as British subjects. By the end of 1776, independence was on every patriot's lips. The many tyrannies of a king had made an independent republic necessary. In Declaring Independence, Edward J. Larson gives us a compact, insightful history of that pivotal year. He traces a narrative arc that runs from the inspiring appeals of Paine's Common Sense in January; through the soaring ideals of midsummer, when the Continental Congress grounded independence in the self-evident truths of human equality and individual rights, and the states wove revolutionary principles of republican government and the rule of law into their new constitutions; to Paine's urgent pleas of December, when "the times that try men's souls" required Americans not "to shrink from the service of their country." Dramatic military clashes also punctuate the year: the British evacuation of Boston forced by the brilliant maneuvers of Washington's Army; the Battle of Long Island, a costly defeat that opened New York to British occupation; and the desperate year-end victory of a threadbare American army at Trenton. Combined, these ideals and the sacrifices remind us why, on this anniversary and at this political moment, 1776 matters to all of us. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-211) and index. |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9781324078982 |
| Genre/form | Informational works. |
| Genre/form | Documents d'information. |
| ISBN | 9781324078975 |
| ISBN | 1324078979 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | (ePub ebook) |