The Historical Significance of American Revolution

　　The ways of history are so intricate and the motivations of human actions

　　so complex that it is always hazardous to attempt to represent events

　　covering a number of years, a multiplicity of persons, and distant

　　localities as the expression of one intellectual or social movement; yet

　　the historical process which culminated in the ascent of Thomas Jefferson

　　to the presidency can be regarded as the outstanding example not only of

　　the birth of a new way of life but of nationalism as a new way of life. The

　　American Revolution represents the link between the seventeenth century,

　　in which modern England became conscious of itself, and the awakening of

　　modern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. It may seem strange

　　that the march of history should have had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but

　　only in the North American colonies could a struggle for civic liberty lead

　　also to the foundation of a new nation.

　　Here, in the popular rising against a "tyrannical" government, the fruits

　　were more than the securing of a freer constitution. They included the

　　growth of a nation born in liberty by the will of the people, not from the

　　roots of common descent, a geographic entity, or the ambitions of king or

　　dynasty. With the American nation, for the first time, a nation was born,

　　not in the dim past of history but before the eyes of the whole world.