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the program. Hello in 1774 a wheat farmer from Virginia with refined manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself

forward as a military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered.

George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo,

regularly lending money to his Nardewell neighbor simply

in order to keep him in the plantation to which he'd become accustomed.

He even wrote himself a book on how to behave properly in polite society.

What drove him to revolution?

Washington may have been a moral man but by anyone's account he was a scholar, yet the American

Constitution is one of the great Enlightenment documents who provided its intellectual

inspiration, and where does that come from?

With me to discuss George Washington and the American Revolution is Carol Birkin, professor of History at the City University of New York,

and author of A Brilliant Solution, inventing the American Constitution.

Colin Bonwick, Professor Emeritus in American History at Keele University and Simon Middleton

lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia.

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