The ways of history are so intricate and the motivations of human actions
so complex that it is always hazardous to attempt to represent events cover (1)
a number of years, a multiplicity of persons, and distant localities as the
expression of one intellectual and social movement; yet the historical process (2)
which culminates in the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency (3)
can be regarded as the outstanding example not only of the birth of a new
way of life but also nationalism as a new way of life. The American Revolution (4)
represents the link between the seventeenth century, in which modem England
became conscious of itself, and the awakening of modern Europe in the (5)
end of the eighteenth century. It may seem strange that the march of history
should have to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but only in the North American (6)
colonies a struggle for civic liberty lead also to the foundation of a new (7)
nation. Here, in the popular rising for a "tyrannical" government, the fruits (8)
were more than the securing of a free constitution. They included the growth (9)
of a nation born in liberty by the will of the people, not from the roots
of common descent, a geographic entity, or the ambitions of king or dynasty.
With the American nation, in the first time, a nation was born, not in the (10)
dim past of history but before the eyes of the whole world.