Written by Jack Greene, Values and Society in Revolutionary America focuses on the original principles and values of the American Republic; how they were rooted into society and their reflections of the social conditions of the period. With the occurrence of the Bicentennial in 1976, Greene takes the chance to look at the viability of these original principles. The fundamental question that Greene concentrates on is whether the principles of 1776 have any relevance at this moment, if social and political conditions have not changed so drastically as to render the political system that had been developed between 1776 and 1789 entirely out of date or in need of revision. During the Revolutionary period, everything seemed to operate and promote political knowledge (55). The principles of civil liberties became the prevailing sentiments of the whole body of American citizens (55). Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer prize winner for history in 1992 for his book titled The American Revolution1, called the analysis of the Revolutionary principles and characteristics as the “American science of politics.” Founding Fathers had a distrust in human nature. Human beings were imperfect and shaped by passion, prejudice, vanity, and interest which made it difficult to resist …show more content…
By discovering what Douglass Adair called the “constant and universal principles of government in regard to liberty, justice, and stability,” Americans would be able to “begin the world over again,” as stated by Thomas Paine yet they did not have an entirely blank slate to work with (56). Americans had plenty of knowledge with which to use and draw upon, all of which came from philosophers, sages, and legislators from past years. The most helpful having been their personal experience of over a decade of interchange with