The Old Revolutionaries : Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams

The “old revolutionaries” were Samuel Adams, Isaac Sears, Thomas Young, Richard Henry Lee, and Charles Carroll, five men of widely varying backgrounds who played significant roles in the American Revolution. What motivations brought these different men together and made them decide to join the movement for Independence? In telling their stories, Pauline Maier explores the American Revolution not so much as a collective movement as a commitment to an ideal republic—which different people interpreted differently. Pauline Maier has written a new Introduction to the Norton paperback edition, in which she discusses the Old Revolutionaries’ pertinence to current debates over liberalism in the American Revolution. Professor Maier teaches history at MIT and is also the author of From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776.