Livingston Lecture featuring Edward J. Larson

At the beginning of 1776 virtually no one in the colonies was advocating independence: Americans based their grievances against Parliament on their rights as British subjects. But the end of 1776 independence was on every patriot’s lips. The many tyrannies of a king had made an independent republic necessary.

In Declaring Independence, Larson gives us a compact, insightful history of that pivotal year. He traces a narrative arc that runs form the inspiring appeals of Paine’s Common Sense in January, through the soaring ideals of midsummer – a Declaration grounding independence in principles of human equality, individual rights, and the rule of law – to Paine’s urgent pleas of December amidst ‘the times that try men’s souls.’ Dramatic military clashes also punctuate the year: form the British evacuation of Boston to a costly defeat on Long Island to the desperate year-end victory of a threadbare American army at Trenton.

The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.

Edward J. Larson is the author of many acclaimed works of history, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, and the recent study of liberty and slavery at the founding, American Inheritance. A chaired professor of history and law at Pepperdine University, Larson lives with his family near Los Angeles.