As we celebrate the founding of our country, let’s reflect on the other Founding Fathers—the men and women we didn’t learn about in history class who nonetheless played major roles in the fight for American independence. Discover the stories of overlooked figures from history who shaped the development of early America in the eBooks below—each $1.99 through July 15!
Click on any of the covers to find the eBook for your device available for order online for $1.99!*
*offer good through 7/15/2019
American Founding Son
John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment
By Gerard N. Magliocca
John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders.
“The first biography of one of America’s most important but under-appreciated statesmen.”—Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School
“An important contribution that provides deep insight into our constitutional tradition.”—Bruce Ackerman, Yale University
“Bingham’s life was fascinating. And so too is this book.”—Randy E. Barnett, Georgetown Center for the Constitution
Renegade Revolutionary
The Life of General Charles Lee
By Phillip Papas
Honorable Mention for the 2015 Book Award from the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond
Honorable Mention for the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award
Renegade Revolutionary: The Life of General Charles Lee is a vivid portrait of one of the most complex and controversial of the American revolutionaries. A former British army officer turned revolutionary, Lee’s erratic behavior and comportment, his capture and more than one year imprisonment by the British, and his court martial after the battle of Monmouth in 1778 have dominated his place in the historiography of the American Revolution. This book retells the story of a man who had been dismissed by contemporaries and by history. Few American revolutionaries shared his radical political outlook, his cross-cultural experiences, his cosmopolitanism, and his confidence that the American Revolution could be won primarily by the militia (or irregulars) rather than a centralized regular army. By studying Lee’s life, his political and military ideas, and his style of leadership, we gain new insights into the way the American revolutionaries fought and won their independence from Britain.
Check out a new From the Square blog post by Philip Papas here.
“This skillfully crafted biography of Charles Lee restores to vivid life the career of very different founding father… Papas’s study corrects… misrepresentations and rightfully highlights both Lee’s early and inspirational rallying to the patriot cause and the appeal and potency of his vision for the waging revolutionary warfare.”—The Historian
“In Renegade Revolutionary, Phillip Papas, in hopes of resuscitating Lee and situating him alongside more celebrated English immigrant, Thomas Paine, provides a sympathetic and nuanced context for Lee’s role in the Revolutionary War. He creates a full portrait of the man who failed to win the hearts of the revolutionaries.”—American Historical Review
The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists
By Lisa Pace Vetter
The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists traces the significance of Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in shaping American political thinking. These women understood the relationship between sexism, racism, and economic inequality; yet, they are virtually unknown in American political thought because they are considered activists, not theorists. Their efforts to expand the reach of America’s founding ideals laid the groundwork not only for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but for the broader expansion of civil, political, and human rights that would characterize much of the twentieth century and continues to unfold today.
“The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists is both wide-ranging and deep. It tells us about early women’s rights advocates, but it does far more than that. Lisa Pace Vetter’s book bears not merely on our understanding of particular moments or issues in American political history but on our understanding of American political history itself.”—Susan McWilliams, author of Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory
“Vetter looks beyond formal conventional modes of theorizing to consider women’s activism, as well as their speeches, letters, and the writings of their contemporaries. She includes nontraditional perspectives, such as the religious underpinnings of their activism and philosophies. The influence of these nontraditional perspectives illustrates her point that American political theory emerged from unexpected venues and diverse voices.”—Hypatia Reviews Online
Freedom’s Prophet
Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers
By Richard S. Newman
“Gold” Winner of the 2008 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, Biography Category
Freedom’s Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African-American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African-American history and influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Du Bois.
Allen (1760–1831) was born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nations leading black activists before the Civil War. Among his many achievements, Allen helped form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, co-authored the first copyrighted pamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of black reformers. In a time when most black men and women were categorized as slave property, Allen was championed as a black hero. As Richard S. Newman writes, Allen must be considered one of America’s black Founding Fathers. Freedom’s Prophet reintroduces Allen to today’s readers and restores him to his rightful place in our nation’s history.
“In this elegant and insightful biography, historian Newman (The Transformation of American Abolitionism) offers a vivid portrait of Bishop Richard Allen. . . . Newman’s beautifully written study is not only a first-rate social history of the early Republic and African-American culture and religion, it provides a detailed sketch of Allen that is sure to become the definitive biography of the leader.”—Publishers Weekly
“A rich, imaginative, and probably definitive portrait of Richard Allen. . . . Newman makes a convincing case that Allen deserves the iconic status of ‘Founding Father’ as much as Washington or Jefferson. Highly recommended.”—Choice
Fighting over the Founders
How We Remember the American Revolution
By Andrew M. Schocket
In Fighting over the Founders, Andrew M. Schocket explores how politicians, screenwriters, activists, biographers, jurists, museum professionals, and reenactors portray the American Revolution. Identifying competing “essentialist” and “organicist” interpretations of the American Revolution, Schocket shows how today’s memories of the American Revolution reveal Americans’ conflicted ideas about class, about race, and about gender—as well as the nature of history itself. Fighting over the Founders plumbs our views of the past and the present, and illuminates our ideas of what United States means to its citizens in the new millennium.
“Organized, accessible history for everyone.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Schocket’s book . . . will appeal to all readers with an interest in the contemporary meaning of the American founding.”—The Historian
“Fighting over the Founders provides lay readers, students and scholars with a thought provoking examination of how collective memory, history, and politics remain inextricably linked.”—Journal of American Culture
General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution
From Redcoat to Rebel
By Hal T. Shelton
At 3 a.m. on December 31, 1775, a band of desperate men stumbled through a raging Canadian blizzard toward Quebec. The doggedness of this ragtag militia—consisting largely of men whose short-term enlistments were to expire within the next 24 hours—was due to the exhortations of their leader. Arriving at Quebec before dawn, the troop stormed two unmanned barriers, only to be met by a British ambush at the third. Amid a withering hale of cannon grapeshot, the patriot leader, at the forefront of the assault, crumpled to the ground. General Richard Montgomery was dead at the age of 37.
Montgomery—who captured St. John and Montreal in the same fortnight in 1775; who, upon his death, was eulogized in British Parliament by Burke, Chatham, and Barr; and after whom 16 American counties have been named—has, to date, been a neglected hero. Written in engaging, accessible prose, General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution chronicles Montgomery’s life and military career, definitively correcting this historical oversight once and for all.
“Shelton’s well-written book will be of interest to any student of the American Revolution.”—The Houston Chronicle
“The definitive biography.”—The Journal of American History
Click on any of the covers to find the eBook for your device available for order online for $1.99!*
*offer good through 7/15/2019
Featured Photo by Free-Photos from Pixabay
