Rare Antique American Revolution Books

Men and Times of the Revolution; or Memoirs of Elkanah Watson, Including Journal of Travels in Europe and America, from 1777 to 1849, with his correspondence with public men and reminiscences and incidents of the revolution, edited by his son Winslow C. Watson. New York: Dana and Company, 1856. 8vo. Hard cover brown embossed cloth, gilt lettered spine and ruled edges, 460 pages. Very good condition, corners bumped. Elkanah Watson at 15 years was apprenticed to John Brown a prominent Boston merchant. When the Revolutionary War began, young Elkanah became Brown's delivery man providing gunpowder to the Continental army, "delivered my letter in person to General Washington." He was sent on two extended trips to the South and on these hazardous war-time journeys he kept a journal, critical and wide ranging on practically everything he encountered. Watson was in Europe (c. 1778-1783) on business, and associated with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Paris, and acted as diplomatic courier between Paris and London regarding peace negotiations. Agriculture was his main interest. He founded the Berkshire Agricultural Society in 1811. The History of the American Revolution, by David Ramsay, M.D. Philadelphia: Aitken & Son: 1789. First edition. 12mo. 2 vols. Full brown leather with red leather insert on spine with gilt lettering, ruled edges, 359 pages vol.1, 360 pages vol. 2. Good condition with corners bumped, heat damage to spines, interiors very good. Mr. Ramsay (1749-1815) was an American physician, public official, and historian from Charleston, South Carolina. He was one of the first major historians of the American Revolutionary War. During the Revolution he served in the South Carolina legislature until he was captured by the British. After his release he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782–1783 and again in 1785–1786. Afterwards he served in the state House and Senate until retiring from public service. Ramsay's History of the American Revolution was one of the first and most accomplished histories to appear in the aftermath of that event, according to Karen O'Brien in 1994. O'Brien wrote that Ramsay's history challenges American exceptionalist literary frameworks by presenting itself within the European Enlightenment historical tradition, reflecting Ramsay's belief that the United States would have no historical destiny beyond typical patterns of European political and cultural development. Epic portrayals of American history in the 19th century were more the product of New England's historiographic traditions coupled with German historical thought, treating national character as a historical agent, rather than a historical result, as Ramsay suggests. Ramsay's history, then, is better considered the last of the European Enlightenment tradition than the first of American historical epics. Historian Peter C. Messer, in 2002, examined the transition in Ramsay's republican perspective from his History of the American Revolution (1789) to his more conservative History of the United States (1816–17). His works went from a call for active citizens to reform and improve societal institutions to a warning of the dangers of an overzealous population and the need to preserve existing institutions. In his discussion of the treatment of Indians and African American slaves he became less critical of whites and changed to reflect the views of society at large. Ramsay's increasing involvement in South Carolina's economic and political institutions and the need for stability that defined early-19th-century nationalism influenced this transformation.