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In the dramatic period leading to the American Revolution, no event did more to foment patriotic sentiment among colonists than the armed occupation of Boston by British soldiers. This book presents a narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. The book moves between the governor's mansion and cobble-stoned back-alleys as it traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. The book reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and James Otis Jr. as they responded to London's new policies, and it evokes the outrage many Bostonians felt toward Parliament and its local representatives. The text also captures the popular mobilization under the leadership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams that met the oppressive imperial measures—most notably the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act—with demonstrations, Liberty Trees, violence, and non-importation agreements. When the British government responded with the decision to garrison Boston with troops, it was a deeply felt affront to the local population. Almost immediately, tempers flared and violent conflicts broke out. The book's narrative culminates in the swirling tragedy of the Boston Massacre and its aftermath, including the trial of the British troops involved—and sets the stage for what was to follow.

The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the Fifteenth Amendment for granting black men the right to vote but not women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this? This book offers answers to this question and reveals that racism was not the only cause, but that the outcome also depended heavily on money and political maneuver. The book shows that Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believing they had a fighting chance to win woman suffrage after the Civil War, tried but failed to exploit windows of political opportunity, especially in Kansas. When they became most desperate, they succeeded only in selling out their long-held commitment to black rights and their invaluable friendship and alliance with Frederick Douglass.

This book presents an overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the “Founding Fathers” — who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic “philosopher-kings” as American or world history has ever seen. The book reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings — people much like us — who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. It analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems — among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state — that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.

The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union—not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, the United States no longer operates under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791—because it is no longer the same nation. This book provides a comprehensive new look at America’s basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, it notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. The book explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, it takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts—and Congress—redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power.

On April 14, 1861, following the surrender of Fort Sumter, Washington was “put into the condition of a siege,” declared Abraham Lincoln. Located sixty miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the nation's capital was surrounded by the slave states of Maryland and Virginia. With no fortifications and only a handful of trained soldiers, Washington was an ideal target for the Confederacy. The South echoed with cries of “On to Washington!” and Jefferson Davis's wife sent out cards inviting her friends to a reception at the White House on May 1. Lincoln issued an emergency proclamation on April 15, calling for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion and protect the capital. One question now transfixed the nation: whose forces would reach Washington first, Northern defenders or Southern attackers? For 12 days, the city's fate hung in the balance. Washington was entirely isolated from the North-without trains, telegraph, or mail. Sandbags were stacked around major landmarks, and the unfinished Capitol was transformed into a barracks, with volunteer troops camping out in the House and Senate chambers. Meanwhile, Maryland secessionists blocked the passage of Union reinforcements trying to reach Washington, and a rumored force of 20,000 Confederate soldiers lay in wait just across the Potomac River. This book tells this story from the perspective of leading officials, residents trapped inside the city, Confederates plotting to seize it, and Union troops racing to save it, capturing with brilliance and immediacy the precarious first days of the Civil War.