Jan. 12, 2009   back to syllabus           to "Nature and Significance of Radicalism" reading   
                         Declaration of Independence
                            to Trenchard and Gordon reading      
                            to some questions for your consideration in reading on the Revolution and on Tom Paine

History 350: American Radicalism

    Factoid of the Day: From a report issued in 2006 by a conservative research group on "civic literacy": "College seniors are also ignorant of America's founding documents. Fewer than half, 47.9 percent, recognized that the line 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' is from the Declaration of Independence."

I.Declaring Independence

          A. Listing Grievances

          B. Asserting Rights
                   1. Natural? Unalienable?
                   2. From Where? For Whom?

          C. Legacies and Controversies
                   1. Expanding the Scope of rights
                   2. Debates about “rights talk”: Natural rights as “nonsense on stilts”? Created unequal?
                             Sen. John C. Calhoun of S. Carolina attacks the Declaration in 1848
 
II. Sources of Revolutionary Ideology

          A. “Radical Whig ideas: Power vs. Liberty       Some quotes from Trenchard and Gordon

          B. American Millenialism     
                   A sermon calls the Revolution God's cause  : “From the preceeding discourse, I think we have reason to conclude, that the cause of this American continent, against the measures of a cruel, bloody, and vindictive ministry, is the cause of God. We are contending for the rights of mankind, for the welfare of millions now living, and for the happiness of millions yet unborn.... It is God’s own cause: It is the grand cause of the whole human race, and what can be more interesting and glorious. If the principles on which the present civil war is carried on by the American colonies, against the British arms, were universally adopted and practiced upon by mankind, they would turn a vale of tears, into a paradise of God.”

          C. The Revolution as Consumer Protest?


A contemporaneous print representing the destruction of the statue of King George III in New York City following the reading of the Declaration of Independence to the American army, July 9, 1776


Sermon Calls for Resistance to Tyranny