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Bailyn finds deeper roots. Without denigrating the catalytic effect of events upon colonial thought that began in the mid- 1760s and ended with the creation of the Constitution, an important thesis in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution maintains that the "Sources and Traditions," indeed, "The Logic of Rebellion" were firmly established by those critical years. Such a key difference in starting points might be attributed to issues of scope and ambition, micro versus macro views on the subject, were it not for the fact that Countryman in his Bibliographical Essay acknowledges Bailyn's direction of thought - as only one of many that he considered in his own thesis. At this point, then, examination of the two historians' methodology must come to the fore. Bailyn's Ideological Origins draws almost exclusively on original source materials. Letter |
