The Papers of James Iredell: 1767-1777

The Papers of James Iredell: 1767-1777
Author: James Iredell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 636
Release: 1976
Genre: History
ISBN:

James Iredell (1751- 1799 was born at Lewes, Sussex County, England and came to the America as comptroller of customs at Edenton, North Carolina in 1768. He married Hannah Johnston in 1773. He served on the U.S. Supreme Court. His letters give much insight into North Carolina history.

Constitutional History of the American Revolution

Constitutional History of the American Revolution
Author: John Phillip Reid
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299130701

Brilliantly executed....Reid's central argument is reserved for his contentions about how the American Revolution occurred within the British constitutional framework. Crucial is his assertion that the eighteenth-century British constitution itself was a vital crossroad between the old constitution of 'customary powers, with rights secured as property' and the newer constitution 'of sovereign command and of arbitrary parliamentary supremacy.' The conflict between the two was profound and ultimately irreconcilable as the Americans, with occasional misgivings and uncertainties, sustained the old and Parliament lurched toward the new...This book (has) a compelling intellectual force that deserves the closest scrutiny.' -George M. Curtis III, American Historical Review

Constitutional History of the American Revolution, Volume II

Constitutional History of the American Revolution, Volume II
Author: John Phillip Reid
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2003-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299112943

John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.

The Plantation Machine

The Plantation Machine
Author: Trevor Burnard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2016-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812293010

Jamaica and Saint-Domingue were especially brutal but conspicuously successful eighteenth-century slave societies and imperial colonies. These plantation regimes were, to adopt a metaphor of the era, complex "machines," finely tuned over time by planters, merchants, and officials to become more efficient at exploiting their enslaved workers and serving their empires. Using a wide range of archival evidence, The Plantation Machine traces a critical half-century in the development of the social, economic, and political frameworks that made these societies possible. Trevor Burnard and John Garrigus find deep and unexpected similarities in these two prize colonies of empires that fought each other throughout the period. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue experienced, at nearly the same moment, a bitter feud between planters and governors, a violent conflict between masters and enslaved workers, a fateful tightening of racial laws, a steady expansion of the slave trade, and metropolitan criticism of planters' cruelty. The core of The Plantation Machine addresses the Seven Years' War and its aftermath. The events of that period, notably a slave poisoning scare in Saint-Domingue and a near-simultaneous slave revolt in Jamaica, cemented white dominance in both colonies. Burnard and Garrigus argue that local political concerns, not emerging racial ideologies, explain the rise of distinctive forms of racism in these two societies. The American Revolution provided another imperial crisis for the beneficiaries of the plantation machine, but by the 1780s whites in each place were prospering as never before—and blacks were suffering in new and disturbing ways. The result was that Jamaica and Saint-Domingue became vitally important parts of the late eighteenth-century American empires of Britain and France.

The Counter-Revolution of 1776

The Counter-Revolution of 1776
Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2016-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479806897

Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

Constitutional History of the American Revolution V. 4; Authority of Law

Constitutional History of the American Revolution V. 4; Authority of Law
Author: John Phillip Reid
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2003-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780299139841

This work addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, and the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory.

The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution

The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution
Author: John Phillip Reid
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226708980

"Americans did not rebel from Great Britain because they wanted a different government. They rebelled because they believed that Parliament was violating constitutional precepts. Colonial Whigs did not fight for American rights. They fought for English rights."—from the Preface John Phillip Reid goes on to argue that it was generally the application, not the definition, of these rights that was disputed. The sole—and critical—exception concerned the right of representation. American perceptions of the responsibility of representatives to their constituents, the necessity of equal representation, and the constitutional function of consent had diverged gradually, but significantly, from British tradition. Drawing on his mastery of eighteenth-century legal thought, Reid explores the origins and shifting meanings of representation, consent, arbitrary rule, and constitution. He demonstrates that the controversy which led to the American Revolution had more to do with jurisprudential and constitutional principles than with democracy and equality. This book will interest legal historians, Constitutional scholars, and political theorists.

Press and Speech Under Assault

Press and Speech Under Assault
Author: Wendell Bird
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2016-01-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190461632

The early Supreme Court justices wrestled with how much press and speech is protected by freedoms of press and speech, before and under the First Amendment, and with whether the Sedition Act of 1798 violated those freedoms. This book discusses the twelve Supreme Court justices before John Marshall, their views of liberties of press and speech, and the Sedition Act prosecutions over which some of them presided. The book begins with the views of the pre-Marshall justices about freedoms of press and speech, before the struggle over the Sedition Act. It finds that their understanding was strikingly more expansive than the narrow definition of Sir William Blackstone, which is usually assumed to have dominated the period. Not one justice of the Supreme Court adopted that narrow definition before 1798, and all expressed strong commitments to those freedoms. The book then discusses the views of the early Supreme Court justices about freedoms of press and speech during the national controversy over the Sedition Act of 1798 and its constitutionality. It finds that, though several of the justices presided over Sedition Act trials, the early justices divided almost evenly over that issue with an unrecognized half opposing its constitutionality, rather than unanimously supporting the Act as is generally assumed. The book similarly reassesses the Federalist party itself, and finds that an unrecognized minority also challenged the constitutionality of the Sedition Act and the narrow Blackstone approach during 1798-1801, and that an unrecognized minority of the other states did as well in considering the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The book summarizes the recognized fourteen prosecutions of newspaper editors and other opposition members under the Sedition Act of 1798. It sheds new light on the recognized cases by identifying and confirming twenty-two additional Sedition Act prosecutions. At each of these steps, this book challenges conventional views in existing histories of the early republic and of the early Supreme Court justices.

Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The authority of rights

Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The authority of rights
Author: John Phillip Reid
Publisher:
Total Pages: 422
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN:

Constitutional History of the American Revolution Volume I: The Authority of Rights Volume II: The Authority to Tax Volume III: The Authority to Legislate Volume IV: The Authority of Law John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.