Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776
Like his account of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Plain, Honest Men (2009), Beeman’s depiction of political events culminating in the Declaration of Independence features the main characters in the historical drama, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Dickinson. Using the Continental Congress as his narrative vehicle, Beeman strives to recover its members’ proceedings in Philadelphia, not a simple task, considering the author’s condemnation of the assembly’s secretary, Charles Thomson, as “an abysmal record keeper.” But Beeman succeeds in showing readers the intricacies of the Congress’ activities. If history knows Congress traveled from petitioning the British king to denouncing him, Beeman counters assumptions of inevitability with the debates and political maneuvers of radicals and moderates. Showing how, during a two-year period, 1774–76, the position of reconciliation with Britain evaporated, Beeman as perceptively portrays the dilemmas of moderates like Dickinson as he does the drift of sentiment toward independence within each colony’s delegation. Capped by the editing of Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration, Beeman’s is an engaging history of the Founders of 1776. --Gilbert Taylor