The Story of Liberty

For much of history humankind has been oppressed. We have suffered religious persecution, the tyranny of cruel monarchs, and suffered untold horrors due to war and famine. Yet, the modern world now has greater freedom than ever before. So how did this rise of liberty occur? Charles Carleton Coffins fascinating work The Story of Liberty charts this remarkable progress. The history begins with King John of England and the civil war that developed during his reign when many barons refused to suffer anymore of his tyranny and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. From this starting point Coffin explains how various countries across Europe developed religious and political freedom in the subsequent centuries. He explains how Martin Luther questioned the hierarchy of the church and his powerful ideas were spread across the continent through the invention of the printing press. The quest from freedom and liberty is recorded from the turbulent medieval period right through the Reformation to the point when the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the eastern seaboard of America and began a new society based on liberty. This book is a remarkable history of the rise of Protestantism and political freedom in Europe and America and deserves to be read by every person who values the liberty that they hold. Charles Carleton Coffin was an American journalist, American Civil War correspondent, author and politician. He was one of the most famous newspaper correspondents of the American Civil War and has been called the Ernie Pyle of his era. His book The Story of Liberty was first published in 1878. Coffin passed away in 1896.