chevalier de Chastellux

chevalier de Chastellux, c. 1782

Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1782

QUICK FACTS
BORN:
1734 in Paris, France
  DIED:
28 October 1788 in Paris, France

AUTHOR OF
  • Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans l'Amérique septentrionale, dans les années 1780, 1781 et 1782, (Travels in North America; 2 volumes), 1788
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Francois-Jean Beauvoir. Portrait to come. See entry in Wikipedia.

 

Categories
General
Philosopher
Writer

The Americans ... revolted not to create but to maintain their freedom. American society had developed differently from that of the Old World. From the time of the first settlements in the seventeenth century, wrote Samuel Williams in 1794, every thing tended to produce, and to establish the spirit of freedom. While the speculative philosophers of Europe were laboriously searching their minds in an effort to decide the first principles of liberty, the Americans had come to experience vividly that liberty in their everyday lives.

— Gordon S. Wood
The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (2011)