Historically speaking, the most obvious and most decisive distinction between the American and the French Revolutions was that the... historical inheritance of the American Revolution was "limited monarchy" and that of the French Revolution an absolutism which apparently reached far back into the first centuries of our era and the last centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Burke and Adams had much in common. Adams read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry, for example, as part of his preparation for life and... a career. Burke--who had sympathized with the American Revolution--after all, the patriots were only seeking their rights as Englishmen--became the avowed enemy of the French Revolution. Adams for his part was not only a thinker, he was a doer: a daring patriot, diplomat, vice-president and president. Yet he never abandoned the life of the mind, as his discourse against the French Revolution attests. Burke and Adams had their similar views on events because they each saw man as disposed to selfishness, requiring public institutions to which civic allegiance is owed to restrain those ignoble instincts so that the virtuous side of people would have a chance to flourish. It was, oddly, an optimism based on a pessimistic estimate of human nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their ...religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the ...heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony--unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe's declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During the late war [the American Revolution] I had an infallible rule for deciding what [Great Britain] would do on every occasio...n. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skins... and furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Civil War divided a nation, whereas the American Revolution created and unified it. The Civil War exposed our vilest flaws, wh...ereas the Revolution shaped our character and (we generally assumed) displayed our courage, principles, and highmindedness for all the world to see. What happened in 1776 somehow reflected glory upon us, whereas what happened in 1861, when the polity disintegrated, became an object lesson in the perils of extremism and selfishness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite ...the fact that the American Revolution was successful--realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime--while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The makers of the American Revolution had been quite content to work with man as he is, shaped by traditional kinship, local, and ...religious institutions. For the Jacobins, however, nothing would do but the remaking of man through the power of the state. Hence, the abolition, commencing in 1790, of the ancient estates, the monarchy, the aristocracy, the communes and provinces, the patriarchal family, the guild, the school and university, and any other structures which, by their long existence, might interfere with the state's work of remaking human consciousness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »