• Acknowledgments-- Introduction-- Part I. The Ideological Inheritance:
• 1. Educational theory and moral independence--
• 2. The transmission of ideology and the bestsellers of 1775--
• 3. The familial politics of the Fortunate Fall-- Part II. Forms of Filial Freedom:
• 4. The debt of nature reconsidered--
• 5. Affectionate unions and the new voluntarism--
• 6. Filial freedom and American Protestantism-- Part III. The Character of the National Family:
• 7. George Washington and the reconstituted family--
• 8. The sealing of the garden, Or the world well lost-- Notes-- Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The author traces a constellation of intimately related ideas - about the nature of parental authority and filial rights, of moral obligation of Scripture, of the growth of the mind and the nature of historical progress - from their most important English and continental expressions in a variety of literary and theological texts, to their transmission, reception and application in Revolutionary America and in the early national period of American culture.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)