The Rise of American Civilization

Abstract

Charles Beard has published more than any other American historian, in part because he resigned his Columbia professorship in his early forties and, in association with his wife, devoted the last thirty years of his life exclusively to research and writing. His writings provided a historical map of the terrain of reform, as he showed how progress had fought its way through jungles of opposition. Clashes of opinion concerning social philosophy, domestic politics, and foreign policy were seen to be reflections of economic divisions. Pennsylvania was harassed by similar factions–sharply marked in their divisions and violent in their relations–which engaged in long and unseemly wrangles on every issue of the hour. Naturally the American Revolution, a movement carried to its bitter end by the bayonets of fighting farmers, even though it was started by protesting merchants and rioting mechanics, wrought a far-reaching transformation in the land system that had been developed under British inspiration and control.

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