Contested Commonwealths: Essays in American History

United States historian William Pencak here collects thirteen of his essays, written beginning in 1976. Some deal with colonial and revolutionary crowds and communities in Massachusetts—the impressment riot of 1747, the popular uprisings of the 1760s and 1770s, and Shays' Rebellion. Others discuss the popular ideology of the American Revolution as expressed in songs and almanacs, while several revisit revolutionary era statesmen George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and loyalist P…