 |
 |
|
Biography of David Ramsay
Name: David Ramsay
Birth Date: April 2, 1749
Death Date: May 8, 1815
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: legislator, historian
David Ramsay
David Ramsay (1749-1815) was a second-line political figure of the American Revolution but a first-rate and most important contemporary historian of that epoch.David Ramsay was born in Pennsylvania on April 2, 1749, of substantial landowning parents. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and, after teaching for a while, took a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1772.Ramsay settled in Charleston, S.C., and made it his home for the remainder of his life. The beginning of his political career coincided with the outbreak of the American Revolution. Much of that career was spent in the legislature of his adopted state, but he also served for 2 years in the 1780s in the Continental Congress, where he emerged as an early supporter of a strong federal government. After the ratification of the Constitution, Ramsay served in the upper house of South Carolina and on three occasions was …showed first 150 words…
You are viewing only a small portion of the biography.
Please login or register to access the full copy.
|
|
…showed last 150 words…the first--and for a century the only--historian to suggest that a variety of motives had induced men and governments to support independence first and the Constitution later.Ramsay emphasized the key role of "independent men" in motivating American nationalism, creating changes in the social structure, and capitalizing on expanding economic opportunity in the young republic. In approaching his assessment of the era in this sophisticated way, Ramsay, as one historian has suggested, may have "penetrated further into the essential meaning of the Revolution than the more arduous researches of twentieth-century historians have done." Further Reading There is no book-length biography of Ramsay. For a brief biographical sketch and an excerpt from Ramsay's writings see Edmund S. Morgan, The American Revolution: Two Centuries of Interpretation (1965).Shaffer, Arthur H. To be an American: David Ramsay and the making of the American consciousness, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
Need a custom written paper?
|
|
 |
|
