This course focuses on three topics: political developments in North America and the British empire and the arguments for and against independence, culminating in the Declaration of Independence; the Revolutionary War as a military, social, and cultural event in the development of the American nation and state; and the United States under the Articles of Confederation.
Instructors: Robert M.S. McDonald is Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the author of Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy: Founding West Point. Richard A. Samuelson is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. He has published widely on John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Otis.