To the conservative M. E. Bradford, the American Revolution was “conservative” in that sense. Bradford agreed with historians who argued that “the purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve (or restore) a known felicity, not to create a new one.” He believed that, unlike the French and Russian Revolutions, America’s was a conservative revolution. For Murray Rothbard, the Revolution was “radical,” a revolt by the American people “against the world’s greatest naval and military power.” Hence our conclusion that a mass movement such as the American Revolution must have been centrally motivated by a commonly shared ideology.