On the 250th anniversary of American independence, with the history of our founding a political battleground, this study of the ideas and battlefield sacrifices of 1776 by a Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar could not be more timely.

At the beginning of 1776, virtually no one in the colonies was advocating independence: Americans based their grievances against Parliament on their rights as British subjects. By the end of 1776, independence was on every patriot’s lips. The many tyrannies of a king had made an independent republic necessary. In Declaring Independence, Edward J. Larson gives us a compact, insightful history of that pivotal year. He traces a narrative arc that runs from the inspiring appeals of Paine’s Common Sense in January; through the soaring ideals of midsummer, when the Continental Congress grounded independence in the self-evident truths of human equality and individual rights, and the states wove revolutionary principles of republican government and the rule of law into their new constitutions; to Paine’s urgent pleas of December, when “the times that try men’s souls” required Americans not “to shrink from the service of their country.” Dramatic military clashes also punctuate the year: the British evacuation of Boston forced by the brilliant maneuvers of Washington’s Army; the Battle of Long Island, a costly defeat that opened New York to British occupation; and the desperate year-end victory of a threadbare American army at Trenton.

Combined, these ideals and the sacrifices remind us why, on this anniversary and at this political moment, 1776 matters to all of us.

About the Author: 

Edward J. Larson is the author of many acclaimed works of history, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, and the recent study of liberty and slavery at the founding, American Inheritance. A chaired professor of history and law at Pepperdine University, Larson lives with his family near Los Angeles.