Monday, August 30, 2010

Blanning on the American Revolution

Another interesting quote from Tim Blanning's book The Pursuit of Glory:

On the American side, there was some confusion, or at least disagreement, as to whether they were conservatives fighting to defend old liberties in the plural or revolutionaries fighting for liberty in the abstract.  Sensibly, the Continental Congress put the two together in  their Declaration of Rights of 1774, appealing to 'the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters and compacts'.

So, the American revolution was both religious and secular, and both radical and conservative?

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