An Empire Fit for God’s Kingdom

Chapter 10 examines Franklin’s experience in London during Pennsylvania’s charter crisis of the 1750s, which positioned him to be the chief negotiator in London for American interests during the run up to the War for Independence. His politics were by no means simple since he admired the British constitution, the monarchy, and the British Empire. But the treatment he received in London turned him into a patriot and brought him home to assist the Continental Congress. Still, Franklin’s partiality to the British and his own desires to extend American influence westward made him congenial to Protestants who began to cooperate more consistently during the war and then after established ecumenical and missionary organizations to bring civilization to the American frontier.

Habeas Corpus: A Very Short Introduction

For nearly eight hundred years, the writ of habeas corpus has limited the executive in the Anglo-American legal tradition from imprisoning persons with impunity. Writing in the eighteenth century, William Blackstone declared the writ a “bulwark” of personal liberty. Across the Atlantic, in the lead up to the American Revolution, the Continental Congress declared that the habeas privilege and the right to jury trial were among the most important rights in a free society. This Very Short Introduction chronicles the storied writ of habeas corpus and how it spread from England throughout the British Empire and beyond, witnessing its use today all around the world. Beginning with the English origins of the writ, the book traces its historical development as a part of the common law and as grounded in the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, a statute that dramatically limited the executive's power to detain and that Blackstone called no less than a “second Magna Carta.” The book then takes the story forward to explore how the writ has functioned in the centuries since, including its controversial suspension by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It also explores the role of habeas corpus during World War II and the War on Terror. The story told in these pages reveals the immense challenges that the habeas privilege faces today and suggests that in confronting them, we would do well to remember how the habeas privilege brought even the king of England to his knees before the law.

The Madness of these Deluded People

This chapter evaluates how loyal Britons struggled to strip rebellious Americans of their Britishness. Their counternarrative, a British common cause, was crafted in the days after the thunderclap that the First Continental Congress sounded all across the British Empire. Popular understandings of loyalism celebrated a renewed defense of monarchy and legal government, and remained committed to basic Protestant Whig principles like free trade, political liberty, and religious freedom. But the promulgators of this cause also continued to argue that their opponents were nothing more than deceived subjects who were misled by a few self-interested colonists — mostly New Englanders — into war against their own nation. Loyal subjects thus failed to make rebellious Americans into dangerous enemies. This failure presented real problems for loyal subjects across the North Atlantic. If American Patriots were just misguided Britons, then it stood to reason that the Patriot cause presented no real threat to popular understandings of Britishness. In part, this explains why so many loyal subjects were reluctant to support the war in the early years.

King-Killing Republicans

This chapter explains that many Britons across the Atlantic remained loyal in the early months of 1775. A significant minority of New Yorkers, in fact, opted for loyalty over rebellion. They took to the streets and turned to Rivington's press to construct a persuasive pro-British narrative of the crisis that enjoyed support in mainland British cities like Glasgow and even among some Britons in colonial port cities like Halifax and Kingston. This narrative — Britain's common cause — was, to some extent, defensive and reactive, for it depended mostly on refuting an emerging Patriot cause. But their cause was proactive, too. Loyalist writers took particular aim at the newly formed Continental Congress and the various local committees created to enforce the Continental Association, which they declared were illegitimate, unrepresentative, and resembled popish tyranny. The problem, however, was that this British common cause failed to articulate a clearly defined enemy at a crucial moment in the conflict. Ultimately, the British common cause — a new, shared understanding of Loyalism constructed by loyalist writers in the winter and spring of 1774–75 — struggled to convince a majority of Britons that the Patriot cause was dangerous and that Patriot leaders and their supporters were a legitimate threat to the nation.

Nine Decades of Dealing with Diversity: Language-Related Attitudes, Ideologies and Policies in Federal-Level US Legislative and Executive Documents from 1774 to 1861

The present paper examines the shifting orientations towards languages and linguistic diversity in the United States by analysing relevant Congressional and presidential documents from the beginning of the American nation-building experience until the outbreak of the Civil War. The investigation focuses on the legislative activities of the Continental Congress and those of the first thirty-six federal Congresses as recorded primarily in the Journals of the respective legislative bodies. Additionally, the presidential documents of the first fifteen Chief Executives, from George Washington to James Buchanan, are examined from the same perspective. The preliminary results indicate that the most salient language policy development of the post-1789 period was the overall shift from the symbolic, general language-related remarks towards the formulation of substantive, general policies, frequently conceived in an assimilation-oriented spirit in the broader context of territorial expansion. Although presidents were considerably more reluctant to address language-related matters than the federal legislature, the need to revise the statutes of the United States was recognised as a presidential priority as early as the 1850s.

Elias Boudinot (Gallegina “Buck” Watie)

Born Gallegina “Buck” Watie to a prominent Cherokee family in 1804, Elias Boudinot was, like the Cherokee Nation itself, caught between the need to assimilate with encroaching colonists and the desire to maintain Cherokee sovereignty and identity. Educated through age seventeen in the Spring Place Moravian missionary school, Watie met a man named Elias Boudinot, president of the American Bible Society and former member of the Continental Congress, while en route to study at another mission school in Cornwall, Connecticut. Out of respect, Watie adopted Boudinot’s name. While in Connecticut, Watie, now Boudinot, married a white woman, Harriet Gold, despite strong opposition....

Od Lexington do Trenton kilka refleksji na temat żywiołu wody i jego wpływu na działania wojsk w pierwszych latach walki o amerykańską niepodległość

The battle of Lexington, 1775 started the American War of Independence. The Continental Army was raised by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1775 and two days after it fought in the first battle, known as the battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775). George Washington was appointed as the Commander-in-Chief. He did not took part in it, staying already at Philadelphia. The British Pyrrhic victory caused the break in the fights till the Spring of 1776. In March because of a strong flury the British troops could not to attack, and as a result they left Boston on March 17. This day is celebrated as an Evacuation Day. While General Washington, with the American Army, was blockading the British garison in Boston, the other troops led the attack to invade Canada. They attacked from two maine rivers: The St. Lawrence River and St. Charles River. But the wide and ice covered rivers caused the big problem with transportation of soldiers. This time a snowstorm stopped the American attack, and they withdrew from Canada. The disastrous defeat of the Americans in the battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776 was the first battle after the Proclamation of Independence which led to the loss of New York and retreat to the Delaware River. Heavy rain was a non-attack factor. Among the presented battles, some of them were victories, but some were the defeats of the American soldiers. The nature and the elements of cold, frost, rains, snowstorms, icy roads and ice-covered rivers were not the ally for attacking troops. But sometimes, such an extreme weather conditions led to success, as it was during the battle of Trenton, after Washington’s famous crossing the Delaware River. The image on it is the best known battle picture in the world.

Prologue

George Rogers Clark’s story is not understood today without some knowledge of the time and place in which he served as the military commander of the West. The time is simple to grasp—it was the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath—but because Clark chose to remain a westerner rather than join the Continental Army, the place is complicated to explain and was unknown to nearly all of Washington’s troops. The discrepancies between the revolutions carried out on the Atlantic Coast and in the Ohio River valley are so great that many supporters of either sector appear, from time to time, to forget the other even existed. In fact, the two theaters operated tangentially, one under the financial control of the Continental Congress (for they offered Washington little else, and at that, inadequately), and the other directed by the governor of Virginia. That it worked cohesively at any level was the consequence of Washington’s Virginia roots, which allowed Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to communicate freely with the commander-in-chief with little regard to Congress....