The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate: Vol. 1, 1764–1772

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In 1763 Great Britain possessed the largest and most powerful empire since the fall of Rome, and its colonists in North America were justifiably proud of their vital place within it. Just thirteen short years later the empire was in tatters, and the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves the free and independent United States of America. How had popular loyalties changed so quickly? Looking back in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, John Adams pointed to the political pamphlets of the era for an answer, famously suggesting that “the Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775 . . . before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.” From the more than a thousand pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic during the period, acclaimed historian Gordon S. Wood has selected thirty-nine of the most influential and emblematic to reveal as never before how this momentous revolution unfolded.

Here, in the first volume of a two-volume set, are nineteen works from the trans-Atlantic debate triggered by Parliament’s imposition of new taxes and regulations designed to reform the empire. What begins as a controversy about the origin and function of colonies—“Cato”, an anonymous English pamphleteer, wonders if they might in the end prove more a curse than a blessing—quickly becomes a deeper dispute about the nature of political liberty itself. As it progresses, Massachusetts lawyer James Otis makes a bold case for the colonists’ natural rights; London bureaucrat Thomas Whately defends the Stamp Act with the novel assertion that Americans are “virtually” represented in Parliament; Benjamin Franklin offers dramatic testimony against the Stamp Act before the House of Commons; John Dickinson calls for collective action in the famous Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, presented here in its entirety; patriot Joseph Warren remembers the Boston massacre in a fiery oration; and the so-called “Boston Pamphlet,” written by Samuel Adams and others, focuses the debate on the crucial question of sovereignty, setting the stage for the final crisis.

Prepared by the nation’s leading historian of the American Revolution, this volume includes an introduction, headnotes, biographical notes about the writers, a chronology charting the rise and fall of the first British empire, a textual essay describing the reception and influence of each work, and detailed explanatory notes. As a special feature, it also presents typographic reproductions of the pamphlets’ original title pages.