When In the Course of Human Events: 1776 at Home, Abroad, and in American Memory

When in the Course of Human Events includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2016 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the ninth annual conference sponsored by Mercer University’s Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles. 1776 was a momentous year. The revolutionary events in America are well known: the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the creation of the first revolutionary flag, the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence, the formal naming of the United States of America, and the dispiriting series of military setbacks checked only by Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night and subsequent victory at the Battle of Trenton. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, 1776 saw the publication of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and the death of Scottish philosopher David Hume. Given Hume and Smith’s contributions to the theoretical development of large and free commercial republics, 1776 looks to be a watershed moment, a year when the Americans would begin putting in practice what the Scots had largely developed in theory. Of course, 1776 has also loomed large in American memory, as succeeding generations appeal to its principles and contest its significance. This book brings together some of these diverse ideas and events into one volume. Contributors include W.B. Allen, Jane E. Calvert, Adam Potkay, Dennis C. Rasmussen, James H. Read, Diana Schaub, Scott Philip Segrest, and Brian Steele.