This thesis is an attempt to determine the extent of Burke's influence at the state and national level, and the effect of one man's personality on the revolutionary period in America.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The Mask of Liberty: The Making of Freeholder Democracy in Revolutionary Georgia examines the structures and practices of government in Revolutionary Georgia from the 1750s to ratification of the federal constitution in 1788. Based on evidence compiled from land, probate, legislative, and executive records supplemented by loyalist claims, newspapers, manuscript, shipping, and grand jury records, this dissertation presents a view of the American Revolution in Georgia that reorients previous studies. This study argues that Georgia's American Revolution belonged to non-elite white male freeholders, fiercely committed to local control and autonomy. After Independence, they fashioned a political system that vested real power in small counties and starkly limited the reach of the state's executive and judicial branches. Georgians based their government on a mix of ideas current in Revolutionary America, the utility of which they measured against the state's distinctive history. This study relates that history to the political structures and practices that grew out of it. The American Revolution in Georgia was not a revolution of the dispossessed, of women, of slaves, or of property-less white men. It was fashioned by ambitious, self-interested men, most of whom migrated to Georgia in the decades immediately before or immediately after independence to take advantage of liberal land policies, a growing commercial environment and unusual opportunities to establish themselves, provide for families, and participate in self-government. Late eighteenth century Georgia was, at least for a time, the best freeholders' country, a land where white men could gain a freehold and enjoy a measure of political equality unknown to their fathers and grandfathers. That was the radicalism of Georgia's American Revolution, a radicalism born of the state's distinctive history of late settlement, destructive warfare, and engagement with great political debates of the age.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The Peace of Paris in 1763 marked a turning point in the relationship of Great Britain with her colonies. The mother country's new territorial possessions seemed to require an increased revenue from the American colonies. However, Parliament's attempts to raise it greatly antagonized the colonists. In Massachusetts, the new Parliamentary program brought about a rapprochement between the conservative merchant and propertied classes, and the radicals. But the two allies had differing final goals. The radicals sought more self-rule, whereas many merchants, having prospered under the Old Colonial System, viewed the British Empire as the rock of their prosperity. The Navigation Acts had been advantageous to their trade, while restrictive legislation had been but mildly enforced [TRUNCATED]

Thesis advisor: Cynthia Lyerly / This thesis analyzes the well known events and circumstances that precipitated the Declaration of Independence and the battles of the Revolutionary War under the lens of one of Boston’s common men: Harbottle Dorr. His opinions on such instances and climates as the Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty (of whom Dorr was one), the Boston Massacre, the Tea Act and ensuing Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, and the initial conflicts of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Battle of Bunker Hill give valuable insight into the mind of an everyday patriot. His powerful words emulate the very characteristics for which the Revolution is known, and for which it was fought. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: History.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript. Sponsor: Lyman Bryson. Dissertation Committee: George S. Counts, Lawrence Cremin, . Type C project. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 277-293).

No description available.

This dissertation focuses on the history and archaeology of the American military encampments of the American Revolution. The organization of this dissertation reflects the purpose and methodology of the study to create context — both historically and archaeologically — for the American military encampments of the American Revolution, in order to understand the encampments’ design, implementation, and evolution over the course of the war. By employing a multifaceted approach towards the documentary record, this dissertation illustrates as many perspectives as possible by consulting a diverse collection of primary source material to construct a historical framework that explores how the military and the individual soldiers involved negotiated the theater of war during the encampment periods. Specific attention is paid to the orders that were handed down from the military hierarchy and how the soldiers reacted. This dissertation further refines the discussion of the American military encampments of the American Revolution by examining the physical remains of the encampments through the archaeological record. Utilizing information collected from nearly a century of archaeological investigations at places such as Middlebrook, New Jersey, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Pluckemin, New Jersey, Redding, Connecticut, Morristown, New Jersey, and New Windsor, New York, this dissertation will provide a review and assessment of the archaeology of American military encampments of the American Revolution. In doing so, this dissertation examines the results these investigations have yielded and evaluates whether different approaches or a reevaluation of the results obtained from these investigations can provide new avenues of information to further interpret these historic sites. A case study is presented based on the author’s own excavations within the Valley Forge winter encampment on the grounds of the modern Washington Memorial Chapel. Through this case study, the physical and material remains of this encampment site are interpreted as expressions of the Continental Army’s adaptation to the landscape, as well as an expression of their status and training during this early stage of the war. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s work is presented as a determining factor in this development. This dissertation uses the archaeological remains of these military landscapes to provide insight into the lifeways and power structures of the military as well as the soldiers who defined the social and economic disposition of this diverse community. Viewing each of these sites as a particular marker in time, this dissertation provides case studies of events over the course of the American Revolution to examine how the Army and its soldiers interact with the then-contemporary conflict, training, and the environment. Each of these influences played a role in the evolution of this military force. / Anthropology

In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson argued that his goal in the American Revolution had been to eliminate “feudal and unnatural distinctions” in colonial American society as part of the struggle for independence. This thesis focuses on Jefferson’s years as a revolutionary legislator in the new state of Virginia, and argues that while he was correct in labelling Virginia a feudal society, his reforms were insufficient to the scale of social reformation that he identified. Material addressed includes Jefferson’s synthesis of British feudal and mercantile history that he constructed during the early years of the revolution, his proposed constitution for the state of Virginia, and his legislative reforms to the judiciary, landownership, the established church, education, citizenship, and slavery.