Abstract
Writing as the United States entered the Second World War, the eminent Cambridge historian Sir Denis Brogan (1900–74) began a book about American law and politics by paying homage to what he regarded as the most hallowed shrine in the American national capital.1 For Brogan this was not the White House, Capitol Hill or even the Lincoln Memorial, but rather the Rotunda of the National Archives, whose darkened, church-like interior both moved and inspired him. Within this secular shrine are preserved the ‘The Charters of Freedom’, and each year hundreds of thousands of people pass before the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Federal Constitution (1787) and the Bill of Rights (1791), ‘inspecting — and revering’, as Brogan put it, ‘these fundamental documents of the American nation’.2
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Notes
D. Brogan, Politics and Law in the United States, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942), p. 1.
P. Zec, ‘Liberty Lights the Way’, Daily Mirror, 5 September 1940.
George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, 1 January 1788, in J.C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Washington: The United States Printing Office, 1944), XXIX, p.350.
Thomas Jefferson to Major John Cartwright, 5 June 1824, in A.A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), XVI, pp. 48, 51.
A. Hamilton, ‘The Farmer Refuted’, 23 February 1775, in H.C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), I, p. 122.
A. Lincoln, ‘Message to Congress in Special Session’, 4 July 1861, and ‘Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg’, 19 November 1863, in R.P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953) IV, p.490, V, p. 19.
J.F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961, in T.C. Sorensen, ed., ‘Let the Word Go Forth’: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1988), p. 12.
J.M. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956), pp. 441–2.
J.C. Calhoun, ‘A Disquisition on Government’ (1851), in C.N. Wilson and Shirley B. Cook, eds, The Papers of John C. Calhoun (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 37–8.
J.M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), pp. 288–90.
W. Wilson, ‘An Address to a Joint Session of Congress’, 2 April 1917, in A.S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), XXXXI, p. 525.
Z. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 52–3
For an excellent discussion of this point, see A. Brinkley, ‘A Familiar Story: Lessons from Past Assaults on Freedoms’, in R.C. Leone and G. Anrig, Jr, eds, The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism (New York: The Century Foundation, 2003), pp. 23–46.
Justice O.W. Holmes, Jr., ‘Dissenting Opinion on Abrams v. United States (1919)’, in A. Lief, ed., The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes (New York: Vanguard Press, 1929), p. 50.
See W. Schulz, Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), p. 42.
Biographical information is drawn from R. Hill, Lord Acton (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).
J.E.E.D. Acton, ‘Political Causes of the American Revolution’, in Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, ed., G. Himmelfarb (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1949), p. 200.
Review of Acton, The American Commonwealth, by J. Bryce, English Historical Review, IV (1889) 395.
Acton, ‘Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History’, in Acton, Lectures on Modern History, ed., J.N. Figgis and R.V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1906), p. 6.
From the Cambridge Chronicle, 10 February 1866, quoted in G. Martin, ‘The Cambridge Lectureship of 1866: A False Start for American Studies’, Journal of American Studies, VII (1973) 24.
D. Reynolds, ‘Whitehall, Washington and the Promotion of American Studies in Britain during World War Two’ Journal of American Studies, XVI (1982) 165–88.
Jefferson to John Cartwright, op cit.; Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 26 February 1810, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson XII, pp.369–70
J. Adams, ‘Notes for an Oration at Braintree, Spring 1772’, in L.H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962), II, p. 59
T. Paine, Common Sense (1776), (New York: Penguin, 1986).
A. Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862, quoted in D. Brogan, ‘The Last Best Hope’, Spectator, 29 August 1970, 212.
D. Brogan, ‘A Separation of Powers’, London Calling: Overseas Journal of the BBC, 9 June 1955, 4.
G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922), p. 7.
W.R. Brock, The Character of American History, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 62.
P.J. Parish, The American Civil War (London: Eyre Methuen, 1975), p. 20.
H.G. Nicholas, The American Union: A Short History of the U.S.A. (London: Christophers, 1948), p.303. I am indebted, for this reference, to M. Heale’s essay ‘The British Discovery of American History and the Atlantic Connection’, delivered at the 50th anniversary conference of the British Association for American Studies, Cambridge, April 2005.
W.R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865–1867 (London: Macmillan, 1963), p.vii.
D. Brogan, The American Character (1944), (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 169.
L. Marx, ‘Thoughts on the Origin and Character of the American Studies Movement’, American Quarterly XXXI (1979) 400.
H. Temperley and M. Bradbury, ‘Introduction’, Introduction to American Studies, 3rd edn, (Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), p. 6.
J.M. Colombani, Le Monde, 12 September 2001.
W. Safire, ‘You Are a Suspect’, New York Times, 14 November 2002.
N. Chang, ‘How Democracy Dies: The War on Our Civil Liberties’, in C. Brown, ed., Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom (New York: The New Press, 2003), pp. 33–51.
R. Feingold, ‘On the Anti-Terrorism Bill’, quoted in Chang, ‘How Democracy Dies’, p.34. For other works chronicling opposition to the government measures prompted by the 9/11 attacks, see W. Schulz, Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003)
N. Hentoff, The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003)
D. Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (New York: The New Press, 2003).
D.E. Murphy, ‘Some Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers’, New York Times, 7 April 2003, A12.
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 30 June 1813, in L.J. Cappon, ed., The Adams -Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), II, pp. 346–7.
N. Garland, Opinion Cartoon, Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2005.
Quoted in S.M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 18.
F.S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1926), (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1978), p. 187
W.S. Burroughs, ‘Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986’, Tornado Alley (Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Press, 1989), p. 2.
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© 2006 Simon P. Newman
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Newman, S.P. (2006). British Historians and the Changing Significance of the American Revolution. In: Newman, S.P. (eds) Europe’s American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288454_4
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