2012/08/20 by Robert G. Parkinson · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1093/jahist/jas217
openalex publication_date 2012/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Separately, the coeditors Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael have long led the charge to remind Americans that there were more people involved in the American Revolution than those who signed the Declaration of Independence. Now they have joined forces to present a collection of twenty-two short essays written by the leading historians of the period, each nominating a new person or group of people to enter into the revolutionary hall of fame, whether as political “radicals,” military “rebels,” or social “reformers.” These men and women deserve even more attention than the “traditional founders”; the editors argue that the “protagonists” of Revolutionary Founders “wanted to extend the lofty principles expressed” in the declaration (p. 4). The book is divided into three sections, each dedicated to a particular phalanx of “founder.” The essays that make up the section on political “radicals” include Young's piece on the Boston cobbler and street leader Ebenezer Makintosh, Raphael's examination of the political skills of the Worcester blacksmith Timothy Bigelow, T. H. Breen's piece on the career of the New Hampshire insurgent Samuel Thompson, Nash's profile of Philadelphia's radical caucus, Jill Lepore's overview of Thomas Paine's place in radical historiography, and David Waldstreicher's excellent contextualization of the involvement of the poet Phillis Wheatley in Boston's imperial crisis.