Morgan's book "The Birth of the Republic 1763-89- is an interpretation of the American Revolution and an analysis of the causes that triggered it. Professor Morgan sees the revolution as a consistent "search for principles- and views the twenty-five year revolutionary period as a quest of the colonists to seek answers to their questions of rights and liberty. .
The author begins his analysis of the American Revolution from Lexington Green, the event that is marked by historians as the fountain-head of the revolution. According to the author, the men who fought at Lexington were nave to revolutionary ideas that were to hit the continent in the subsequent years. The Parliament's excessive exercise of authority over the colonies had circulated amongst them a realization to protect their rights but the beginning of a radical revolution was yet far from consideration. The author qualifies the encounter at Lexington as the "transition between thought and action."" It was thus the point whereon Americans set out on their twenty-five year old quest for principles. Security of personal property, coupling of taxation and representation, equality among men and nationality were the headlines of the Revolution. On the basis of these principles, the American Revolution forged out of thirteen disparate colonies "a nation dedicated to principles of liberty and equality."" The first tentative statements of these principles found expression in the resistance to Parliamentary taxation in the Revenue Act of 1764 and Stamp Act of 1765 and a definitive institutionalization of them took place in the Constitution of 1787.
The American Revolution was founded on the underlining theme of "liberty."" The author asserts that it was this liberty that was voiced in the colonists' defense of property against Parliamentary taxation. The conception of land-ownership in the eighteenth century, well illustrated by Morgan, strongly supports his thesis.