In The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, Edmund S. Morgan shows how the
challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for
constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led
to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the founding fathers' political
philosophy was not grounded in theory, but rather grew out of their own
immediate needs, Morgan paints a vivid portrait of how the founders' own
experiences shaped their passionate convictions, and these in turn were
incorporated into the Constitution and other governmental documents.
The Birth of the Republic is the classic account of the beginnings of
the American government, and in this fourth edition the original text is
supplemented with a new foreword by Joseph J. Ellis and a
historiographic essay by Rosemarie Zagarri.