No conclusion emerges more certainly from Gordon S. They pronounced 1776 a major event in world history, one that "enlightened mankind in the art of government" but at home, as David Ramsay of South Carolina wrote in 1794, the revolution brought no "sensible alteration in the circumstances of the people." Even 18th-century Americans seemed at times to agree. Historians have also done their part: a generation ago many pronounced ours a peculiarly "conservative revolution" that sought only to protect an already liberal society from the threat of change. No doubt our own discomfort with revolution (and who could be at ease with revolution so defined?) has contributed to the problem. That honor goes instead to revolutions that shed more blood, brought greater chaos and culminated in dictatorships - in short, to those that failed. IT is surely one of the greatest curiosities of human history that the American Revolution, which accomplished its mission of liberation, should be so often considered no revolution at all. THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONÄ«y Gordon S.
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