This chapter shows how the American Revolution and its attendant debates affected and altered society as evidenced in Cecilia as an account of feelings, thoughts, and behaviour. The debate illustrates what Kathleen Wilson refers to as the family romance of the American Revolution. The chapter demonstrates, the new era, with its concerns about independence, virtue, gender difference, and political corruption, begins with the American Revolution. The American Revolution debate, in which civic humanist republican ideals were pitted against the autocratic tendencies of an increasingly corrupt imperial power, is reproduced in the contemporary crisis of masculine virtue. Exploring Cecilia in the context of political and military history is a departure from traditional Frances Burney scholarship. While Great Britain was enacting a family romance with its American colonies, Burney was experiencing one of her own. The debates sparked by Britain's imperial endeavours are also of prime importance in considerations of masculinity.