Timothy H. Breen

How we make history--and what we then make of it--is engagingly dramatized in T. H. Breen's portrait of a 350-year-old American community faced with the costs of its “progress.” In the particulars of one town's struggle to check development and save its natural environment, Breen shows how our sense of history reflects our ever-changing self-perceptions and hopes for the future. Breen first went to East Hampton, the celebrated Long Island resort town, to write about the Mulford Farmstead, a picturesque saltbox dating from the 1680s. Through his research, he came across a fascinating cast of local characters, past and present, who contributed to, invented, and reinvented the town's history. Breen's work also drew him into contemporary local affairs: factionalism among residents, zoning disputes, and debates over resource management. Driving these heated issues, Breen found, were some dearly held notions about a harmonious, agrarian past that conflicted with what he had come to know about the divisiveness and opportunism of East Hampton's early days.

"Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging decades of received wisdom, T.H. Breen's strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans-- most of them members of farm families living in small communities-- were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know. It is a story of rumor, charity, vengeance, and restraint. American insurgents, American patriots reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception."--Book jacket.

Over eight years of war, ordinary Americans accomplished something extraordinary. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took responsibility for the course of the revolution. They policed their neighbors, sent troops and weapons to distant strangers committed to the same cause, and identified friends and traitors. By taking up the reins of power but also setting its limits, they ensured America's success. In this strikingly original account, Breen restores these missing Americans to our founding and shows why doing so is essential for understanding why our revolution ended differently from other revolutions that have shaped the modern world. In the face of revolution's anger, fear, and passion--forgotten elements in effective resistance--these Americans preserved a political culture based on the rule of law. In the experiences of these unsung revolutionaries can be seen the creation of America's political identity.--