American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence - Hardcover

Maier, Pauline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679454926 ISBN 13: 9780679454922

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1997

Synopsis

A history professor reveals the origins of the Declaration's ideas and phrases, unravels the story of its drafting, follows its role in the nineteenth century, and explores the implications of its treatment as a sacred text. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Pauline Maier was born in St. Paul, Minnesota.  She received her B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1960, was a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics in 1960-61, and took her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968.  She has taught at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), University of Wisconsin, Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been William R. Kenan, Junior, Professor of American History since 1990.  She is the author of From Resistance to Revolution, The Old Revolutionaries, and The American People: A History, a single-authored text for junior high school, as well as numerous other articles and reviews.

From the Inside Flap

r shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified.

Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's []Common Sense[], which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision.

In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice o

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679454926
• ISBN 13: 9780679454922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304