Representation in the American Revolution

Front Cover
University of Virginia Press, 2008 - History - 103 pages

From one of America?s most celebrated historians, the Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon S. Wood, comes an early work whose relevance is undiminished. Originally published in 1969, now revised and with a new preface, Representation in the American Revolution examines the ways in which a government is created and how, in the face of great difficulties as well as great possibilities, its citizens are represented. Written immediately after the completion of Wood?s Bancroft Award-winning The Creation of the American Republic, this book elaborates on issues also explored in that landmark work.

The subject is one that lies at the heart of any discussion of democracy. Establishing a proper method of representation was a goal and measure of the American Revolution, or as Thomas Jefferson said in 1776, "the whole object of the present controversy." A fine example of political and constitutional history, this timeless little book will serve as an excellent introduction to issues of representation for students in the fields of political science, as well as history and law.

Contents

The Explicitness of Consent
14
The Disintegration of Representation
28
The Federalists and the AntiFederalists
54
The End of Classical Politics
69
Notes
83
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. He is a regular contributor to the New Republic and the New York Review of Books and is the author of numerous best-selling books, including most recently Revolutionary Characters and The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.

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