Drawing on a gold mine of primary documents - including letters, diary entries, personal narratives, political speeches, broadsides, trial transcripts, and contemporary newspaper articles - The Boisterous Sea of Liberty brings the past to life in a way few histories ever do.

Here is a panoramic look at American history from the voyages of Columbus through the bloody Civil War, as captured in the words of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and many other historical figures, both famous and obscure.

In these pieces, the living voices of the past speak to us from opposing viewpoints - from the vantage point of loyalists as well as patriots, slaves as well as masters - providing a more sophisticated understanding of the forces that have shaped our society, from the power of public opinion to the nearly absolute power of the slaveholder.

The Boisterous Sea of Liberty is a documentary history of America, which uses the first-person testimony to reconstruct the basic forces, events, ideas, and struggles that shaped American society during its formative era. It places the defining documents of American history in their proper context and presents a lively and innovative interpretation of our history from earliest colonization through the Civil War.