Professor Breen discusses the role of ideas in the achievement of American independence. This topic has engaged leading American historians - Bernard Bailyn of Harvard University and Gordon Wood of Brown University for example - for a long time, and their work generally has divorced considerations of popular mobilization from the formal history of ideas. He raises fresh questions about the relation between ideas and politics, suggesting why the current interpretive literature has tended to undervalue the force of 'rights talk' in creating new and powerful solidarities in late colonial America.