The Conversation - What patriotism meant, 250 years ago

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The meaning of the word “patriotism” can vary, depending on whom you ask. But at a crucial point in the lead-up to the American Revolution, the American Colonists had a very specific idea of what it meant.

They were among the first people to define themselves as American patriots – and not British patriots who lived in the North American Colonies. When 56 delegates met in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, they forged a sweeping cross-Colony alliance in what would become the United States.

Barbara Clark Smith, a political history curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, studies early U.S. history, including the Colonial period. She details the document that spelled out the alliance, and how people across all the Colonies interpreted it, followed it and enforced it. And she explains how it built a shared American identity among the inhabitants of the 13 Colonies, and how that paved the way for American independence.

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Jeff Inglis

Politics + Society Editor

A 1782 engraving depicts the First Continental Congress, held in 1774. François Godefroy engraving from Library of Congress

To American revolutionaries, patriotism meant fair dealing with one another

Barbara Clark Smith, Smithsonian Institution

The first widespread agreement across the American Colonies dealt with economic independence from British trade and taxation.

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