The Revolution Is Now Begun - by Richard Alan Ryerson (Paperback)

About the Book

Ryerson focuses on the daily business of politics in the Revolutionary period--the art of motivation for radical political purposes--and its economic and social dimensions in the most prominent American city of the time.

Book Synopsis

The success of the American Revolution is less likely to be understood through an examination of its ideological origins than through a close analysis of the political processes by which principles, beliefs, and anxieties were translated into revolutionary action. This book offers the first detailed profile of the several hundred obscure committeemen and propagandists who took up the new revolutionary ideology and carried it that one last step: out of the realm of rhetoric and into the domain of concrete change. And participatory democracy as a principle of American government owes its realization largely to these second-rank politicians and ordinary citizens, who provided the basic muscle of Revolutionary politics.

In the 1760s and early 1770s Pennsylvania lacked nearly every ingredient for revolution found elsewhere in the colonies: a strong dissenting tradition, widely felt economic grievances, or a legislature intimately acquainted with royal government. Only the painstaking enlistment of a strong leadership core, the construction of new political institutions, and the rapid mobilization of the majority of the community could overcome these deficiencies. In Pennsylvania British authority succumbed to the activity of a few hundred men who were drawn into public life by a handful of veteran politicians within just two years. To these men and to their committees Pennsylvania owes its revolution.

In his book Richard Alan Ryerson focuses on the daily business of politics in the Revolutionary period--the art of motivation for radical political purposes--and its economic and social dimensions in the most prominent American city of the time. How were the colonists mobilized for resistance? What was the political process? Who were the disaffected people who became the radical leaders of the Philadelphia community?

To answer these questions, Ryerson compares campaigning styles, nomination and election procedures, and local political organizations in the colonial era with their counterparts during the Revolution. He also examines the age, economic status, religious faith, and national origins of the men who formed the radical committees of Philadelphia between 1765 and 1776.

Review Quotes

"The Revolution Is Now Begun is an instructive work that requires the close attention of all students of Pennsylvania politics during the British-American conflict."-- "American Historical Review"

"A most important contribution to our understanding of Pennsylvania's history."-- "Reviews in American History"

"On the eve of the Revolution, Pennsylvania was governed by a well-entrenched Quaker oligarchy. . . . In two years-from 1774 to 1775-this hegenomy was at first undermined and then overthrown. The author's searching and thoroughly exhaustive analysis of the numerous extraconstitutional committees that rose to prominence in these two years is an attempt to explain both the speed and extent of the revolution and to gauge its precise revolutionary character."-- "Urban History"

"Well written and touched with the author's skill in supplying the suspense of a good mystery story, the book shows how the revolutionary committees served as the prime mechanism first to stimulate Pennsylvania's protest against British policies and then to challenge the existing political order."-- "William and Mary Quarterly"

About the Author

Richard Alan Ryerson retired as Senior Historian at The David Library of the American Revolution. He is coeditor (with Gregory Freemont-Barnes) of The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War: A Political, Social, and Military History and editor of John Adams and the Founding of the Republic.