Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Hume's Works in Colonial and Early Revolutionary America
- 2 Historiographical Context for Hume's Reception in Eighteenth-Century America
- 3 Hume's Earliest Reception in Colonial America
- 4 Hume's Impact on the Prelude to American Independence
- 5 Humean Origins of the American Revolution
- 6 Hume and Madison on Faction
- 7 Was Hume a Liability in Late Eighteenth-Century America?
- 8 Explaining “Publius's” Silent Use of Hume
- 9 The Reception of Hume's Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century America
- Afterword
- Appendix A Hume's Works in Early American Book Catalogues
- Appendix B Subscribers to the First American Edition of Hume's History of England
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Humean Origins of the American Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Hume's Works in Colonial and Early Revolutionary America
- 2 Historiographical Context for Hume's Reception in Eighteenth-Century America
- 3 Hume's Earliest Reception in Colonial America
- 4 Hume's Impact on the Prelude to American Independence
- 5 Humean Origins of the American Revolution
- 6 Hume and Madison on Faction
- 7 Was Hume a Liability in Late Eighteenth-Century America?
- 8 Explaining “Publius's” Silent Use of Hume
- 9 The Reception of Hume's Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century America
- Afterword
- Appendix A Hume's Works in Early American Book Catalogues
- Appendix B Subscribers to the First American Edition of Hume's History of England
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's magisterial The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, it is difficult for historians of American political thought to overlook the enduring importance of the political writings of the decade and a half immediately preceding the outbreak of the American War for Independence. Bailyn wrote that in no period of American history “was the creativity as great, the results as radical and as fundamental, as in the period before Independence. It was then that the premises were defined and the assumptions set. It was then that explorations were made in new territories and thought, the first comprehensive maps sketched, and routes marked out.” “It was the most creative period in the history of American political thought. Everything that followed assumed and built upon its results.” He was not the first to appreciate the significance of those years. John Adams, in words which have been quoted by many historians since (Bailyn included), wrote of the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson in 1815:
What do We Mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The Records of thirteen Legislatures, the Pamp[h]lets, Newspapers in all the Colonies, ought [to] be consulted, during that Period, to ascertain the Steps by which the public Opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the Authority of Parliament over the Colonies.
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- David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America , pp. 119 - 153Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005