Paul Douglas Newman
Author of Fries's Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution
About the Author
Paul Douglas Newman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.
Works by Paul Douglas Newman
Associated Works
Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 67:1 (Winter 2000), Special Issue: Fries Rebellion — Book Review Editor — 1 copy
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- Newman, Paul Douglas
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- male
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- 3.8
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In examining the twists and turns of how this event came to pass, the author is most interested in teasing out the interests, values, and self-image of the German-American community at the center of this incident. What the author finds is a group of people who, while superficially prosperous, were under a fair amount of economic and cultural pressure and who took 1776's promise of popular sovereignty seriously in the face of the Federalist call to centralize power to cope with a dangerous world. It would be easy to write these people off as merely suffering from a bad case of localism, but the author depicts a well-informed group of individuals who knew when they were being disrepected and who were prepared to respond in a disciplined fashion. This is at time when the American society was only beginning to understand what practical party politics and public dissent would look like. That this lesson has to be relearned over time is also a tacit theme of this book.
Finally, while I found this to be a useful little monograph, there are times when it seemed that the author was getting a little bogged down in the details of his study; that is why I don't rate it a bit higher.… (more)