ABSTRACT
The changes in the thinking of western Europe which sparked the planting of colonies in North America ignited a powder train that exploded in a revolution during the second half of the eighteenth century. In the words of an eminent American historian, ‘the revolt against monarchy, aristocracy, and authority that we call modem times’ reached far beyond the American continent and had repercussions in every segment of Atlantic civilisation. To this revolt no one group contributed more than the young cities of the rebelling thirteen British colonies. Over a span of years they and the Virginia planters together organised the resistance that burst into war with ‘the shot that was heard round the world’. And when peace came, the rebuilding of a stable society in an insecure new nation fell largely to leaders in the towns and Virginia statesmen.
