History of the American Revolution, Volumes 1 & 2: v. 1 & 2

The History of the American Revolution has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last twenty-five years. We learn from Ramsay the interpreter of his present and his past. We learn about the intellectual predilections of the eighteenth-century historian: the values, assumptions, principles, and expectations of one who lived and wrote amidst the events he narrated. We learn from the ways in which he shaped history; his use of language, his sense of the significance of people and events, his narrative style, his use of history as propaganda, as exhortation, and as fiction. As Cohen explains quite clearly, we do not rely on Ramsay to tell us what happened during the Revolution. In most respects we know a great deal more about what happened than he did, particularly since we are now the arbiters of what is significant. We rely on Ramsay not for information, but for the ways in which he reveals the sensibility through which the events of his era were filtered.

SirReadaLot.org
June 2006

David Ramsay's premier work of American historiography is now available for the first time in a well-edited reprint. Lester Cohen's foreword is an invaluable guide.

—Arthur H. Shaffer, University of Missouri

David Ramsay's History of the American Revolution appeared in 1789 during an enthusiastic celebration of nationhood. It is the first American national history written by an American revolutionary and printed in America. Ramsay, a well-known Federalist, was an active participant in many of the events of the period and a member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina.

Ramsay discusses the events and ideas of the American Revolution (from the outbreak of turbulence in the 1760s to the onset of Washington's administration) and makes an ardent Federalist defense of the Constitution of 1787.

Based on the original and authorized 1789 version, this is the first new modern edition of the work.

Lester H. Cohen taught history and American Studies at Purdue University.