Ellis credits the early-20th-century English author Lytton Strachey with giving him the idea for his book. Strachey wrote a title called Eminent Victorians, a biography of four prominent nineteenth-century figures. Rather than merely narrating the facts of a person’s life in the order they happened, Strachey’s approach is to “‘attack his subject in unexpected places […] shoot a sudden revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined’’’ and tug a ‘“characteristic specimen’” from those far depths up for curious examination (ix). Ellis wants to apply a similar exploratory approach to America’s revolutionary generation. His resources in this endeavor are the revolutionary generation’s published letters and documents. 

Ellis describes how “[n]o event in American history which was so improbable at the time seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution” (3). The republican experiment launched by the American revolutionary generation is important on a global scale because it sets a precedent for the dissolution of other European monarchical colonies.

However, despite providential statements from members of the revolutionary generation, “the conclusions that look so foregone to us had to yet to congeal for them” (4). While it is not clear that the Revolution will succeed and lead to America becoming a world leader and influencer, there are intimations of a great future at the beginning.