These poems tell the story of American Independence, through the radicals who fought for it, and the Crown officials who tried to stop it. Moderates, loyalists, and fellow travelers also have their say. We begin in 1765, when the Stamp Act provoked cries of taxation without representation, and end in 1776, with the war just begun, and the new nation facing a hopeful if uncertain future.
Each poem is based on a real speech, letter, pamphlet, or declaration, sometimes hewing closely to the source, sometimes making good use of poetic license. Many of them take up abstract questions of freedom, authority, and legitimate government, but there are also reports of mob violence, and a city groaning under military occupation; don’t worry, there will be blood. John Adams once complained that history would sacrifice all other heroes of the Revolution on the altar of George Washington. One aim of these poems is to make vivid and visceral the people and events that paved the way for that great man’s grand entrance.
Table of Contents (to be updated as poems are published):
Prologue: Join, or Die (Benjamin Franklin, 1754)
Part 1: Taxation Without Representation
The Administration of the Colonies (Thomas Pownall, 1764)
The Stamp Act (Parliament, 1765)
Resolves Against the Stamp Act (Patrick Henry, 1765)
“I am but governor in name” (Francis Bernard, 1765)
Declarations and Petitions of the Continental Congress (1765)
“I’m charged with giving birth to sedition in America” (William Pitt, 1766)
“The motive for repeal was prudence not principle” (Silas Downer, 1766)
Part 2: Occupation, Massacre, War and Independence
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (John Dickinson, 1768-69)
“The time has come to show our strengthened hand” (Earl of Hillsborough, 1768)
“If the Devil were himself their scribe” (1768-69).
“Nature held him with an upright dignity” (John Adams, 1818).
An Oration Commemorating the Boston Massacre (Joseph Warren, 1772).
Memorandum on Events of April 18 (Paul Revere, 1775).
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