![]() Americans uprooted often (sometimes six or seven times, reports Wood) and routinely occupied land they didn’t own. Before the Revolution, the Kentucky territory had few settlers by 1800, the state of Kentucky (1792) had 220,000. They were moving west at a prodigious pace. There’s a lesson here, though perhaps not the one you suspect.ĭynamic change? In 1800, the 5.3 million Americans (nearly a fifth were slaves) had increased by more than a third since 1790. Dynamic social and economic change, concern for the middle class, poisonous politics, bad policies, flawed leaders - they were all there two centuries ago, just as now. ![]() I am reading historian Gordon Wood’s splendid “ Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.” It is an ideal companion for this July 4 weekend because it reminds us of the great continuities in our politics and national condition. ![]()
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