Robert Nisbet
Was there in fact an American Revolution at the end of the
eighteenth century? this, I mean a revolution involving
sudden, decisive, and irreversible changes in social institutions,
groups, and traditions, in addition to the war of liberation from
England that we are more likely to celebrate.
Clearly, this is a question that generates much contro-
versy. There are scholars whose answer to the question is
strongly negative. Indeed, ever since Edmund Burke's time
there...
Brazil's 300-year experience with race and slavery is very different from that of the United States.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson first met in June 1775 at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The war had begun. Incipient revolutionary governments were in being in both Massachusetts and Virginia. But whether American in- dependence would be declared or won, whether the continent would be united, and what the ultimate course of this revolu- tion would be no one could tell. Adams and Jefferson, finding that they thought alike on the great questions before Congress, quickly became...