Kirkus Reviews QR Code
PATRIOT FOR LIBERTY by Leon Solomon White

PATRIOT FOR LIBERTY

By

Pub Date: March 17th, 1975
Publisher: Lippincott

White delivers a fair-sized chunk of history and very little else in this account of how Jamie Hardy -- a Sam Adams style libertarian and major in the militia -- sees his pro-independence views win out over the appeasement policies of New York's Tory merchants. Jamie is on hand to take part in the Committee of Inspection's debates, to lead the Sons of Liberty in confiscating New York's cannon, and to watch the statue of George the Third toppled. He even gets to meet Sam Adams and George Washington and hear General Charles Lee predict that he will not be able to hold New York. Throughout Jamie himself is little more than a spokesman for the working class, radical Sons of Liberty while his true love Elisabeth represents the ideas of the more cautious merchants. Their engagement is celebrated on the day the Declaration of Independence is first read in New York, symbolizing the victory. Though it's too easy here to suppose that the democrats have won once and for all, so even as history the lesson is limited. As a hero, Jamie is simply too perfunctory to make any impression at all.