Washington's towering stature and legacy might misleadingly suggest that the early years of the new nation were times of great confidence and self-congratulation. In fact, just the opposite was nearly the case. Americans knew that the historical record of the long-term success of republican governments was exceedingly poor. Previous examples and classical political theory suggested that republics almost all suffered the fate of collapsing into anarchy and then being taken over by a power-seizing tyrant.

English and American backgrounds of the Revolution; issues and arguments in the Anglo-American conflict; colonial resistance and the beginnings of republicanism; the Revolutionary War; constitution writing for the states and nation; and effects of the American Revolution. Concerned primarily with the revolutionary origins of American government. Readings emphasize documents from the period -- pamphlets, correspondence, the minutes or resolutions of resistance organizations, constitutional documents and debates.

This course explores the history of the ideal of personal freedom with an eye towards contemporary debates over the pros and cons of the regulatory state. The first part of the course surveys the sociological and theological sources of the concepts of freedom and civil society, and introduces liberty's leading relatives or competitors: property, equality, community, and republicanism. The second part consists of a series of case studies in the rise of modern liberty and libertarianism: the abolition of slavery, the struggle for religious freedom, and the twentieth-century American civil liberties movement. In the last part of the course, we take up debates over the role of libertarianism vs. the regulatory state in a variety of contexts: counter-terrorism, health care, the financial markets, and the Internet.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain how Great Britain’s response to the destruction of a British shipment of tea in Boston Harbor in 1773 set the stage for the Revolution
Describe the beginnings of the American Revolution

Common Sense: From Monarchy to an American Republic
How Much Revolutionary Change?
Debating Democracy
The Constitutional Convention and Federal Constitution