American Enlightenment, 1750–1820

Robert A. Ferguson was George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism at Columbia University.

• Preface 1. Finding the Revolution 2. What Is Enlightenment? Some American Answers 3. Religious Voices 4. Writing the Revolution 5. The Literature of Public Documents 6. The Limits of Enlightenment Bibliography Index

[A] learned, highly intelligent study of American revolutionary writing… Ferguson’s chapters on the intellectual and social sources of the revolution, on how the rhetoric of revolutionary writing works now and worked then, politically, and on aspects of the American enlightenment, are masterful: original, challenging, immensely informative.