(Photo above, of Bernard Bailyn and President Barack Obama, is from the New York Times website)
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If, like me, you're reading a lot about the Declaration of Independence, this book provides essential context. Bernard Bailyn (1922-2020; Wikipedia here) was one of the world's authorities on the pre-Revolution era. Published in 1967, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. There's a scanned version on Archive.org here. There is a page about it on Wikipedia here.
Liberty is woven throughout – as the antidote or counterbalance to power. Independence is not liberty, nationality is not liberty. Bailyn observes that the printing press was the wellspring of liberty, with 400 pamphlets printed on the subject before the Declaration. And revolution as duty when power threatens liberty. Recommended.
'... Samuel Adams, speaking for the Boston Town Meeting, declared, "that ambition and lust of power above the law are ... predominant passions in the breasts of most men." These are instincts that have "in all nations combined the worst passions of the human heart and the worst projects of the human mind in league against the liberties of mankind." Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office" ... and nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power...'
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