From Oratory to Scholarship

When the Revolutionary Army disbanded in 1783, a group of officers who had served in the Continental Line under George Washington formed the nation's first patriotic organization - the Society of the Cincinnati. Named for Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, the Society today has fourteen semi-independent constituent societies - one in each of the thirteen original American states and one in France, our nation's great ally in its time of crisis.This collection is drawn from talks given to the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey. The selections range in focus from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. In form, they vary from ceremonious orations, packed with classical references and scriptural allusions, to genealogical studies, independent research on little-known military clashes, and scholarly considerations of the stresses that played themselves out in the forming of our Constitution. The wide-ranging lectures, papers, addresses, and studies collected in this volume appear in chronological order and offer a unique view of the way our knowledge about and understanding of the American Revolution and its aftermath have evolved over more than two centuries.