"T.H. Breen’s well-documented book offers a different perspective on the American Revolution. According to Breen, the celebrated men of the Continental Congress are rightly revered for having founded the American nation. However, wise and well schooled in the philosophies of governance as they were, there is more to the story than has been told. Breen does not suggest that such men as Adams, Franklin and Washington should be honored less. Rather, his thesis is that the ordinary men, who took up arms before the Declaration of Independence was written, should be honored more.
These are the people who chose not to submit to a government they perceived as unjust and a threat to their constitutional rights as Englishmen. Without those people, Breen asserts, there would have been no Revolution and no independent nation.
Today, we call those ordinary people patriots. Their contemporaries called colonists who defied parliamentary rule, insurgents; thus, the book’s title."
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