But Do Americans Really Understand Their Revolution?
By Nancy Spannaus
Nov. 14, 2025–My book From Subject to Citizen: What Americans Need to Know about Their Revolution was written as a challenge to my fellow American citizens.
The author at a book fair last spring, soon after the book’s publication.Our republic is in crisis, wracked by bitter political divides. Yet most partisans on all sides are, from my experience, woefully ignorant of many of our basic founding principles.
Cultural wedge issues from today are used by some to reject the sincerity of our founding principles, while for others, our Constitutional commitments have become discretionary if they interfere with the so-called will of the majority.
Film director Ken Burns has produced a 12 hour documentary to try to set the record straight. My contribution is a 250-page book featuring 22 articles about the process of the Revolution from approximately 1760 to 1787. Together, they serve as a badly needed refresher course on our Revolution.
Here are some of the challenging ideas in my book:
- The fight against the slave trade and slavery was an integral part of the Revolution, and the American colonists were way ahead of the British in this battle for human rights,
- As many Founding Fathers said, the Revolution neither started with the Boston Tea Party nor stopped with the end of the Revolutionary War. In fact, the Revolution was primarily a battle of ideas.
- Promoting the General Welfare included establishing American manufactures and economic independence. The achievement of Liberty requires government promotion of the public good, not just freedom from arbitrary government.
- As Abraham Lincoln warned, the passing of the generation that made the Revolution, meant that the Great American Experiment could only be sustained by substituting reason and the rule of law, for the previously held passions. Without educating our citizenry to the level of reason, America would be in danger of succumbing to the mob.
(For a full table of contents, see the Nancy’s Books section of this blog.)
It’s time Americans delve in depth into the principles that inspired our forefathers, to reject being subjects, and to become true citizens of a republic, with the responsibilities that go with that status. The alternative, as Benjamin Franklin said, is to Lose It.
Read From Subject to Citizen: What Americans Need to Know about Their Republic. Buy a copy for a friend or your local library. It can all be done by clicking the QR code below.
Tags: American Revolution, From Subject to Citizen, Ken Burns, Nancy Spannaus