By Benjamin H. Irvin.  ISBN 978-0-19-973199-2.  Copyright 2011.  Hardcover with 378 pages including 35 black and white illustrations, notes, and index.   

Finalist for the 2012 George Washington Book Prize.

In 1776, when the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain, it immediately began to fashion new objects and ceremonies of state with which to proclaim the sovereignty of the infant republic.  “The people out of doors”, broadly defined all persons unrepresented in the Continental Congress including working poor, women, loyalists, and Native Americans, vigorously contested Congress’s trappings of nationhood.  This narration of the progress of the Revolution in Philadelphia and the experiences of its inhabitants sharpens our understanding of the relationship between political elites and crowds of workaday protesters while illuminating the ways in which ideologies of gender, class, and race have shaped the civic identity of the Revolutionary United States.

A Mount Vernon bookplate, signed by the author, is included with your purchase.