Part I: The Ideological Inheritance. 1. Educational theory and moral independence -- 2. The transmission of ideology and the bestsellers of 1775 -- 3. The familial politics of the Fortunate Fall -- Part II: Forms of Filial Freedom. 4. The debt of nature reconsidered -- 5. Affectionate unions and the new voluntarism -- 6. Filial freedom and American Protestantism -- Part III: The Character of the National Family. 7. George Washington and the reconstituted family -- 8. The sealing of the garden, Or the world well lost.