liberty.

Inspired by Bancroft, Bernard Bailyn and a cohort of mid-twentieth-century historians challenged the dichotomy between "national self-awareness" and the study of history. Although they had found "limitations" in Bancroft's works, mid-twentieth-century "instrumentalist" historians wished to reexamine the "image of colonial origins" of the American Revolution. By 1956, this subset of scholars had tentatively determined that, "toward the end of