Book Review the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Book Review

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. By Bernard Bailyn. (Cambridge: Harvard, 1967, 396 pp.)

“Listen my children and you will hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, on the eighteenth of April in seventy-five; hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used such prose to give rise to New England patriots before an emerging Civil War. For many years, this text was regarded as a reliable source, and account of the American Revolution.

Over one hundred years later Bernard Bailyn reexamines America’s conception, shedding new light on a much-reviewed subject. Bailyn uses a plethora of primary sources, telling the story behind the story of those famous years from 1763-1796. From the Stamp Act to the ratification of the Constitution this book examines the thoughts, ideas, prejudices, fears and aspirations of not only the Founders, but also lesser known pamphleteers and politicians who shaped our culture and our history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize, Bailyn’s account of this time is illuminating. After a quick stint on the author’s sources, to show relevancy, the reader is appropriately led through the sources relevant to the writers of the time. Locke and Hobbes are touched upon, along with numerous Roman scholars. Like an onion the brain of John Adams and James Madison is peeled back for examination.

By showing the reader the direct influences of the time period, using words written during that period, each point is more poignant than the next. It is the words written in revolutionary pamphlets that seem to hold the most validity. Bailyn remains sagacious throughout each chapter, rarely relying on a secondary source to support his ideas.

As the onion is peeled, theories on power, liberty, rebellion and conspiracy all mesh together in a picture of the revolutionary mindset. The process of transformation from separate states into a common body can easily...