american revolutionary war essay

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Revolutionary War

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.

Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence.

France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting did not formally end until 1783.

Causes of the Revolutionary War

For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.

The French and Indian War , or Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), brought new territories under the power of the crown, but the expensive conflict lead to new and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects. 

Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre . After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party , an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts ) designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts .

Did you know? Now most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes, helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.

In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia , John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York ) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent. It issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out. 

On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the “shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War. 

HISTORY Vault: The Revolution

From the roots of the rebellion to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, explore this pivotal era in American history through sweeping cinematic recreations.

Declaring Independence (1775-76)

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates—including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson —voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill , ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause. 

Throughout that fall and winter, Washington’s forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.

By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4 , the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence , drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River , Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey , on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels’ flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.

Saratoga: Revolutionary War Turning Point (1777-78)

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River . Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania , on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge .

Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga . After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.

Stalemate in the North, Battle in the South (1778-81)

During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington’s troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette . On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington’s army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.

The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates’ American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King’s Mountain in early October. Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that December. Under Green’s command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.

Revolutionary War Draws to a Close (1781-83)

By the fall of 1781, Greene’s American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O’Hara, to surrender; after O’Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted it.

Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown , contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris . At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years.

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Was the american revolution a just war.

By: Eric Patterson

July 4, 2013

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The Tremendous Battle at Germantown

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The Second American Revolution: Its Impact and Legacy

The problems the united states had with paying debts after the revolutionary war, the boston siege: american revolution war, the context of the american revolutionary war from a historical perspective, the features that contribute to the unique character of the american revolutionary war, the difference between american and french revolutions, the battle of saratoga, insurgency and asymmetric warfare in the american revolutionary war  , joseph plumb martin and his role in the revolutionary war, war on the colonies: french, indian war and american revolution, what influenced the patriots' win in the revolutionary war, causes of the american revolution: political, economic and ideolodical, an analytical dive into the battle of yorktown, women's participation in the american revolutionary war, rhetorical devices in patrick henry's speech, the pros and cons of the articles of confederation.

April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783

Eastern North America, North Atlantic Ocean, the West Indies

Battle of Brandywine, Battle of Bunker Hill, Battle of Monmouth, Battles of Saratoga, Battle of Bemis Heights

United States War of Independence, Revolutionary War

Before the flare-up of the American Revolutionary War, there had been growing tensions and conflicts between the British crown and its thirteen colonies. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies met with heated protest among many colonists. The Stamp Act and Townshend Acts provoked colonial opposition and unrest, leading to the 1770 Boston Massacre and 1773 Boston Tea Party.

By June 1776, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson.

In March 1776, the British led by General William Howe retreated to Canada to prepare for a major invasion of New York. A large British fleet was sent to New York with the aim to crush the rebellion. Routed by Howe’s Redcoats on Long Island, Washington’s troops were forced to evacuate from New York City. However, the surprise attack in Trenton and the battle near Princeton, New Jersey after that, marked another small victory for the colonials and revived the flagging hopes of the rebels.

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England from the other colonies. Following the American victory in Battle of Saratoga, France and America signed treaties of alliance on February 6, 1778, in which France provided America with troops and warships.

On September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by Great Britain and by the United States of America, officially ended the American Revolutionary War.

Britain recognized the United States of America as an independent country. The Constitution was written in 1787 to amend the weak Articles of Confederation and it organized the basic political institutions and formed the three branches of government: judicial, executive, and legislative.

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HoW to Write an Essay on the REvolutionary War

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American Revolution as a People’s War: A Bibliographical Essay by William Marina

Source: This essay first appeared in the journal Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought , vol. 1, no. 2 April/June 1978, published by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio. It is republished with thanks to the original copyright holders.

William Marina is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University.

William Marina, "Revolution and Social Change: The American Revolution as a People's War"

Table of contents.

The Problems Facing a Paradigm of Social Change

A Paradigm for Understanding Revolution

Why? Ideology and Legitimacy in Revolutions

Who? Dynamics of Revolutionary Society

How? People's War and Revolution

What? Political and Constitutional Aftermath of Revolution

Equality in Human Action and Social Change

The Bailyn Interpretation: Ideology or Social Conflict?

Equality and the Historical Roots of Social Conflict

Equality and the Seventeenth Century English Revolutions

Equality, Social Structure, and Social Change in Eighteenth Century America

Pseudofeudal Inequalities and Social Unrest

Inequality, Archaic Communalism, and the Yeoman Freeholder

Equality: From Early Social Protest to Armed Defense

Social Dynamics of the Coalition for Independence

Common Sense: Social Equality, and Popular Justice

Equality: Social Divisions behind the Declaration of Independence

Equality: Individualist vs. Corporatist World Views

Revolutionary Warfare as a Social-Political Activity

British Failure to Understand Counterinsurgency

Militia vs. Standing Army and Empire

People's Militia, Guerrilla War, and Victory

Relevance of the Revolution's Military History

Ambiguities in Social-Political Groups: Agrarian Federalists vs. Commercial Nationalists?

Social Tensions and the Ambiguities of Republican Equality

Social Equality vs. the Inequalities of the Imperial System

Framework of Equality Behind Ratification

Bibliography

History's great tradition is to help us understand ourselves and our world so that each of us, individually and in conjunction with our fellow men, can formulate relevant and reasoned alternatives and become meaningful actors in making history . William Appleman Williams 1

Toward a Theory of Revolution

Just as "no man is an island," no historical event is isolated from its context of space and time. The American Revolution drew upon diverse ideas stretching back to the ancient world, was influenced by numerous social conditions each with its own past development, and involved the actions of millions of individuals over a span of years within a transatlantic area.

In examining a "symbolic" event such as the Revolution, however, we often overlook how our whole conceptualization of the boundaries of that "extended" event is largely based upon a sense of comparison. 2 In this regard, the key word is not "American," but "Revolution." Thus our perception of when the Revolution began and ended follows from our beliefs around the class of events we designate "revolutions."

Perez Zagorin defines three distinct lines of inquiry for studying revolution. The first is a detailed or general account of one specific revolution. The second presents a formal comparison of two or more revolutions to uncover any significant relationships between them. And, "finally, the third kind of inquiry is theoretical; its purpose is to establish a theory of revolution capable of explaining causes, processes, and effects as a type of change." 3 But, as Perez Zagorin observes, it is the third theoretical study of revolutions which is most impoverished:

[N]othing has appeared that qualifies as a general theory of revolution. Furthermore, among theorists there has been little progressive accumulation of ideas. The general theory of revolution remains subject to confusion, doubt, and disagreement. Even elementary questions of definition, terminology, and delimitation of the field to be explained are not settled. 4

Recent historiography of the American Revolution (with a few notable exceptions) has been preoccupied with the particular. But the most striking feature of the writings celebrating the Bicentennial has been the absence of any new, fresh interpretation explaining the broader meaning of that historic occurrence.

In addition, too much of historical scholarship is fragmented and overspecialized, and adrift without theoretical moorings or a unifying vision. 5

Our essay seeks to set the mass of recent scholarship of the American Revolution within the unifying paradigm of the sociology of revolution—of revolution as a people's war. This paradigm will permit a better understanding of the nature and meaning of the American Revolution. It will invoke as a leitmotif the tensions among inequality, equality, and egalitarianism which both inspired and divided the human actors of the Revolution.

This unifying paradigm and these issues concerned with equality will emerge as we answer four difficult questions about the era of the American Revolution:

(1) Why did a revolution occur in a society viewed as free and prosperous?

(2) Who formed the components of the changing revolutionary coalition?

(3) How did the American revolutionary coalition win its conflict with the leading imperial power?

(4) What was the nature of the society which emerged in the struggle of war and revolution?

Before answering these four questions at length in the major sections of our essay, we will first briefly define some preliminary issues relating both to a paradigm of revolutionary social change and to the role of equality in such change.

Robert Nisbet in Social Change and History traces the effort to understand and explain social change back to the pre-Socratic Greeks (in the West at least). Heraclitus saw all of life as involving change and he emphasized war as the ultimate activity stimulating social upheaval. 6 In developing a cosmology, Adam Smith, as a typical Enlightenment thinker, drew heavily upon concepts first articulated by the Greek Sophists. 7 Since the classical world view profoundly influenced the Renaissance and Enlightenment, it is not surprising that patterns of cyclical thought appear continuously from Machiavelli to John Adams.

Machiavelli, as J.G.A. Pocock shows in The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition , had an enormous impact upon English revolutionaries such as James Harrington, and hence on the later Whigs, and finally on the Americans who shared that outlook. A cyclical metaphor was at the core of the Americans' paradigm or framework for analyzing social change and revolution. 8

The emphasis on "modernization" in the sociology of revolution has stimulated the study of social change and has called into question the "inertia" or "tradition" paradigm for revolution. Perhaps the most influential recent contribution has been Barrington Moore, Jr.'s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy . 9 One of Moore's most important contributions to an analysis of change was questioning the "inertia" paradigm, one of the unexamined assumptions about change. Borrowing from physics, the inertia paradigm assumed the existence of a traditional, natural order of things in society; only change away from this "norm" need be explained. Quite apart from the conservative bias, inertia overlooks the enormous educational effort required if that "tradition" is to be passed on from one generation to another. This does not happen automatically. The lack of social change in a society is equally as important to explain as any significant change. 10

Those who have lived through the last decade of change in America can appreciate the situation facing British officials after 1763. What sort of "tradition" could be emphasized in an Empire which (1) was still feeling the effects of a revolution less than a century before, (2) was already entering a series of changes collectively labeled "the Industrial Revolution," and (3) recently had acquired a vast overseas empire? Assuming it could be articulated, what meaning would that tradition have for colonists whose average age was roughly sixteen? Complicating the unity of a tradition was the soaring colonial population. A high birth rate and an influx of immigrants (many not from England) would virtually double that population during the years of the "revolutionary generation," over a third of whom would leave the seaboard areas for land in the interior.

From this viewpoint it is evident that we must consider revolution and social change on both a theoretical level and a global basis. Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System , 11 attempts to utilize such an approach, covering roughly the two hundred years after 1450. Wallerstein's approach reminds us how important is an analytical framework covering a vast historical landscape if we are to fashion more coherent theories of social change and revolution.

Strangely enough, in stressing this broad panorama, modern scholarship has just recently caught up with the popular social unrest which was perceived by many at the time. 12 This will serve as a theme of our essay: the nature of popular social unrest in the epoch of the American Revolution.

Our best perspective for examining the American Revolution is to sketch briefly the general agreement about the revolutionary process: the Why, Who, How, and What of revolution.

In reading through all the jargon of modern social science dealing with revolution and change (e.g., "J curves," "relative deprivation," and "rising expectations") we are forcefully impressed that these concepts, if not the terminology, were understood by the ancients, as well as many of the revolutionary generation in America.

As might be expected, much ink and paper have been expended simply on trying to define revolution. 13 We need not get bogged down in attempting to offer an all-inclusive definition. For our purposes, a useful, straightforward definition is that of Lyford P. Edwards in The Natural History of Revolution: "A change brought about not necessarily by force and violence, whereby one system of legality is terminated and another originated." 14

Assessing the necessary preconditions for revolution leads us to examine the composition of the potential revolutionary group. The important role of ideology is evidence in Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution , where he emphasizes "the desertion of the intellectuals" as a key phase in the prerevolutionary developments. 15 This involves more than desertion, however, for the intellectuals do not simply withdraw support from the "Old Regime" as Brinton termed those in power. Beyond merely deserting, a growing number of intellectuals mount an increasingly vigorous attack upon the very philosophical underpinnings of the Old Regime; even more importantly, they advance an alternative paradigm, or world view, about how the society ought to be organized. 16

The sociology of revolution demands much greater exploration of the whole question of legitimacy and how a new legitimacy comes to transplant the old. 17 In this regard, a very useful idea is the "paradigm" derived from the historian of science, Thomas S. Kuhn. 18 Our tendency to conceptualize reality in terms of a model, or paradigm, is closely related to the older tradition in the study of the sociology of knowledge which used the term Weltanschauung , or world view, to describe that idea. 19 If we see the paradigms as subsets within a world view, an individual might hold a number of separate or overlapping paradigms. The totality of these paradigms constitute his world view and seldom conflict with each other. 20

Kuhn's normal science—the dominant, accepted, legitimate paradigm—bears a similarity to the "Old Regime" in the study of the sociology of revolution. 21 A current belief in America holds that the authorities need to use force to restore law and order. That outlook seems to be a misreading of the dynamics of social change; real authority always rests upon legitimacy, not force. 22 Legitimacy is, in fact, the very antithesis of force. Large protests within a society usually decry some objective inequities, which fuel dissent.

Revolutions, whether in science or society as a whole, are preceded by what could be called "a crisis in legitimacy." Authority must ultimately rest on a belief, held by virtually the entire society, that the social order is legitimate, that it corresponds with the way things "ought" to be in a just and equitable society. Operationally, men seek solutions to social problems within this legitimate world view. Until a competing revolutionary world view arrives, no one suspects that a solution might be framed outside of this dominant world view.

The concept of legitimacy leads us into another important aspect of the revolutionary process: that is the societal dynamics in revolution, involving the relationship of the leadership to the larger population and the internal workings of the revolutionary coalition. The idea persists that the American Revolution was a minority affair. Walter Lippmann once observed: "Revolutions are always the work of a conscious minority." 23 Since revolutions always have leaders, it tells us little to observe that, say, the American Revolution was led by a small minority. This elite concept fosters the innuendo that such a minority simply manipulates the majority to do its bidding.

Against the view that a minority manipulates revolutions, a general postulate holds that at the level of legitimacy the great social revolutions have always involved the bulk of the population. If a dialogue between leaders and their supporters ceases, or if the leadership exceeds the limits of their legitimacy, then the revolutionary movement hesitates, loses momentum, and may fail altogether. The minority may then resort to force, a treacherous course, for the leadership then begins to lose the legitimacy which animated it, and is no longer very revolutionary.

In "Ideology and an Economic Interpretation of the Revolution" Joseph Ernst has distinguished mentality, ideology, and world view. 24 Briefly defined, a "mentality" is a vague but usually broadly held attitude; the dynamic concept of equality that was increasingly held by Americans of the revolutionary generation is an example of such a mentality. Next, a more formal "ideology" characterizes the leadership in any sort of movement: an effort to explain and more fully understand the relationship "between ideas and social circumstances." At its most general level, the American ideology came to encompass republicanism. Finally, a "world view" is an even more detailed theoretical analysis developed only by a few, usually among the wider leadership. In the American Revolution, those who sought to comprehend the larger role of the British mercantile system, or Empire, were thereby propounding a world view that integrated social, economic, and political events.

Revolutions are shifting coalitions over time—among both the leadership and the larger population. Revolutionary coalitions embody all three of the levels of awareness and so contain overlapping areas of consensus and disagreement. Consequently, there will be basic "fault lines" that create internal divisions within those groups comprising the coalition. Over time, the dynamics of any revolution are shaped by the interaction of specific groups of interests within the coalition, as well as the interaction between them.

As an example, one of the basic fault lines in the American Revolution example divided those who wanted only independence from England from those who wished to seize the opportunity to work more extensive changes in the structure of American society. Was the American Revolution merely a colonial rebellion or was it a true social revolution? The answer is, of course, both. 25 Any future interpretation of the nature of the American Revolution must begin by making clear the internal divisions among the revolutionaries, and ways in which the evolving factions and coalitions shaped the direction of change. (This same debate has occupied historians of the Revolution since at least the time of J. Franklin Jameson's The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement and Carl Becker's The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York .)

Explicating the relationship between the leadership and their supporters leads to another aspect of revolution: in what way does the military means employed affect the whole post-revolutionary society. Whether in an internal civil war or in a colonial war for independence, if one side is able to wage a "people's war," such a world view and organizational structure will have repercussions throughout the society. One of the major divisions in the American revolutionary coalition—between advocates of a traditional war as opposed to a people's war—reflected a fundamental difference in paradigms, if not world views, among different revolutionary factions.

Revolutionary coalitions cannot be maintained indefinitely. As a revolutionary era reaches its final stages, its radical actions are replaced by an effort to conserve the essentials of the revolutionary program. In the American case this is exemplified in the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation. Despite the heated debate over the Constitution, what is significant is that the opposition, with the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, did not conclude that the Constitution was a violation of what they conceived as a legitimate social order.

Our discussion of the sociology of revolution has highlighted the conditions and groups which make revolution a possibility and then a reality. Such an analysis may ignore the fact that individuals (rather than classes or coalitions) feel, think, and act. In short, there is a psychology as well as a sociology of revolution. (It is impossible to miss the Founding Fathers' constant references to ambition, fame, envy, power, or greed as significant factors.) Often lacking in contemporary theories of revolution and social change is an understanding that one must begin with a view of human action or nature which links the individual to the social groups of which he may become a part. 26

The drive for equality, broadly understood, can be viewed as the central motivating factor in all revolutionary action. Equality serves as the organizing principle for constructing a social interpretation of the revolutionary era. 27 The issue of equality follows from the fact that human beings as social animals demonstrate a tendency toward hierarchical attitudes.

There is a constant tension among three concepts: inequality, equality, and egalitarianism. First inequalitarians tend to be those at the top of a given social order; with their privileges usually based upon birth or wealth, they conceive of a rather rigid hierarchy with little mobility. A number of inequalitarians do feel some paternalistic concern for those beneath them, which may well be reciprocated from a few below.

By contrast, the egalitarian agitates for the destruction of this status system by redistributing property, wealth, and income. The egalitarian program necessitates the creation of an elite group of guardians whose task it will be to administer the new order. In reality, therefore, a fully egalitarian society is a logical impossibility: the small elite is always necessary. The equalitarian society is characterized by the idea of equality before the law. For the equalitarian the chance to compete does not imply the equal chance to win. In such a circumstance of individual differences, hierarchy—or ideally a plurality of hierarchies, offering each person an opportunity to find some field in which he can excel—continues to exist, permitting enormous mobility. The equalitarian society is a contract society, rather than a status society, and is based essentially upon achievement. J.R. Pole's The Pursuit of Equality in America is a reminder of how formative equality has been to the American experience, especially to the revolutionary era. 28

Why Did the Revolution Occur?

What I call virtue in the republic is the love of the patrie, that is to say, the love of equality . Montesquieu 29

The question of why the American Revolution occurred requires us to distinguish between long and short range factors. Further, in so far as these pertain to the changing structure of American society, were these such as to have created a loss of legitimacy by the government of the Mother Country, apart from actions initiated by the British authorities themselves?

The study most closely resembling an interpretation of the coming of the Revolution during the last decade is Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution . Bailyn wrote that as he studied the pamphlets and other writings of the revolutionary generation, he was "surprised" as he "discovered" that (even more than by the work of John Locke) the Americans had been influenced by the freedom oriented writings of Whig pamphleteers such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters and The Independent Whig . 30

But Bailyn's discovery of these "Old Whig" pamphleteers was anticipated by others. As early as 1789 David Ramsay's History of the American Revolution mentioned "those fashionable authors, who have defended the cause of liberty. Cato's Letters, The Independent Whig , and such were common…" Reminiscing in 1816 about the era of the 1770s John Adams observed, " Cato's Letters and The Independent Whig , and all the writings of Trenchard and Gordon,…all the writings relative to the revolutions in England became fashionable reading." 31

Bailyn's approach to ideas and historical causation fit comfortably with the dominant outlook which tends to downplay social and economic conflict—that is the struggle over power—in the American past, present, and indirectly, the future. But is it possible to separate ideology (as a cluster of ideas about reality and what ought to be) and political and constitutional issues from a social and economic context? Ideas cannot exist independent of some subject, content, and context.

In enforcing the importance of the writings of Whigs such as Trenchard and Gordon, Bailyn has rendered an important twofold service. First, it becomes apparent how far back beyond 1776 we must go to understand the ideas that were influencing Americans. Secondly, reading through the works of Trenchard and Gordon reveals the extent to which equality was the fundamental issue interwoven into the various specific issues with which they dealt. 32

With respect to both of Bailyn's points, J.G.A. Pocock's Machiavellian Moment takes us back to the efforts of Florentine thinkers to sustain a republican form of government. These thinkers (of which Machiavelli was the most profound) were deeply influenced by Aristotle's works and by their reading of the degeneration of the Roman Republic into Empire. One clue to Machiavelli's republicanism is his work as a militia organizer during the period of the Republic in Florence.

Two of the dominating concepts for these republican theorists were virtue and corruption, both essential to understanding the republican paradigm which culminated in the American Revolution. Montesquieu fully understood the republican bearing of virtue in his remark, quoted above, that virtue fundamentally depended upon the existence of equality. 33 Conversely, the corruption and decay which undermined republics were closely related to inequality. 34 Interwoven through Machiavelli's analysis is his deep concern with the whole question of legitimacy. 35

In Pocock's analysis, seventeenth-century England underwent many of the changes the Italian city states had experienced a century before, complicated by the Protestant Reformation. The English debate drew upon Machiavelli and the republican historians of the ancient world. Both Pocock's Machiavellian Moment and Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution 36 offer an abundance of evidence to link the debate to inequality/equality/egalitarian divisions.

Drawing upon the ancients, Machiavelli, and Harrington, the "Opposition," such as Trenchard and Gordon, stretched across a wide political spectrum. Caroline Robbins's The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman indicates many Whigs thought of themselves as in the tradition of the Levellers of the English Revolution, and those views, stressing equality and liberty, were transmitted across the ocean to the New World. 37 In assessing the "Opposition," Kramnick's Bolingbroke and His Circle has focused some attention on the importance of Lord Bolingbroke. 38 Forrest McDonald in The Phaeton Ride has dealt with Bolingbroke's influence on later American leaders such as Thomas Jefferson. 39 Roger Durrell Parker has explored "The Gospel of Opposition" both in England and America. 40

There were enormous changes occurring in the areas of commerce, banking, and even in manufacturing. Even though the State had often been involved in the process, there was certainly no reason to believe that this had to be the case. 41 Indeed, a major issue separated the Court view (those who sought to use government in this economic development, and incidentally help themselves in the process) and the Country Party view (those who felt government intervention was not only unnecessary, but detrimental). The term Financial Revolution has been used by historians to suggest that this State interventionism was the only natural and necessary way to realize this process. This analysis tends to place opponents of the State's intervention in the economy as opponents of market developments, when that simply was not true. 42

The Country Party included men so wedded to a world view of agrarian independence that they wanted nothing to do with a financial, commercial, market revolution, with or without State interventionism. In its most rigid form, their's was an egalitarian program modeled on ancient Sparta. 43

Many of the Country Party, on the other hand, were committed to equality of opportunity before the law. They believed they could best achieve such equality by limiting the State to a very negative role. This view united them in their opposition to the statism of the Court Party and its evident inequalitarianism. They fully accepted the implications of the emerging urban-market revolution. They were in no way philosophically wedded to agrarian life. Farmlands were simply another area where market and technological techniques would yield important improvements. State interventionism was the enemy. 44

A final group was, perhaps, the most important and representative of all. Their rhetoric was usually agrarian. They understood the virtue of the agrarian life: the apparent political stability of a nation of independent yeomen. But they realized the potential benefits from an urban-market sector within society. They were also disenchanted with the long-range corruption of a state financial system based upon great extremes of wealth and the creation of an urban proletariat without property. 45 Whatever their ambivalences, they opposed the Court's alliance of State and private interests.

The ideology flowing from the English Revolution needs to be linked to the social change in the American colonies during the eighteenth century. In this reassessment the most important is Rowland Berthoff and John M. Murrin's "Feudalism, Communalism, and the Yeoman Freeholder: The American Revolution Considered as a Social Accident." 46 Berthoff and Murrin point out that "Until very recently few historians argued that the causes of the Revolution lay in the structure of colonial society." And "[n]either J. Franklin Jameson, when in 1925 he broached the question of the Revolution as a social movement, nor Frederick B. Tolles, in reassessing the matter in 1954, paid any attention to the possibility that social causes impelled the political events of the years 1763 to 1775." 47

One recent example is Gordon S. Wood's observation in "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution," that " Something profoundly unsettling was going on in (their) society." 48 In going back to the half century before the Revolution, however, Berthoff and Murrin suggest that "[i]n certain ways economic growth and greater social maturity were making the New World resemble the Old more closely." In such a society "becoming both more like and more unlike that of Europe, more and more unsettled, more complex and less homogeneous, a revolutionary war—even one conducted for the most narrowly political ends—could hardly fail to stimulate certain kinds of change and inhibit others." 49

Berthoff and Murrin suggest that in American society a

recurrent tension between this conservative, even reactionary, ideal and the practical liberty and individuality that their new circumstances stimulated is a familiar theme of colonial history—Puritanism against secularism, communalism eroded by economic progress, hierarchic authority challenged by antinomianism. 50

Berthoff and Murrin disagree with those historians who believe "that feudalism was too anachronistic to survive in the free air of a new world." On the contrary:

The opposite explanation is more compelling. Feudal projects collapsed in the seventeenth century, not because America was too progressive to endure them, but because it was too primitive to sustain them. A feudal order necessarily implies a differentiation of function far beyond the capacity of new societies to create. In every colony the demographic base was much too narrow…. By 1730 the older colonies had become populous enough to make the old feudal claims incredibly lucrative. 51

On the shifting social pattern imposed by the State Berthoff and Murrin are worth quoting at length:

exploitation of legal privilege became the single greatest source of personal wealth in the colonies in the generation before Independence. By the 1760s the largest proprietors—and no one else in all of English America—were receiving colonial revenues comparable to the incomes of the greatest English noblemen and larger than those of the richest London merchants. Indeed the Penn claim was rapidly becoming the most valuable single holding in the Western world. 52

A number of historians such as Richard Maxwell Brown in "Violence and the American Revolution" have commented upon the rising level of internal social disorder and violence that preceded the American Revolution, and which mounted with growing intensity. 53 This protest needs to be linked to the pseudofeudal revival, for as Berthoff and Murrin observe, it "was as divisive as it was profitable, provoking more social violence after 1745 than perhaps any other problem."

Even prior to the Revolution the most violent protests against the pseudofeudal revival, as Berthoff and Murrin note, came from areas where the settlers were transplanted from New England. New England "resisted the feudal revival because in several important respects it was rather less modern than the rest of English America." The early New England town conducting its affairs through a general meeting of the freeholders, a large majority of the inhabitants, may seem modern, but "it embodied an archaic English tradition." 54 Kenneth Lockridge has called it a "Utopian Closed Corporate Community." 55 "Because it distilled the communal side of the medieval peasant experience—with lordship quite deliberately excluded—it could resist feudal claims with furious energy during the middle third of the eighteenth century." 56 But as Berthoff and Murrin point out, this communalism had been breaking down from other causes: "the population grew denser, less homogenous, more individualistic, and more European."

In the face of an attempted pseudofeudal revival, on the one hand, and the breakdown of the vestiges of communalism on the other, "the new democratic individualism harked back to yet a third English model that had survived more successfully in eighteenth-century America than in England itself—the yeoman freeholder." Here we are brought in contact again with the appeal of the "Country" ideology. In touching on the growing inequalities in prerevolutionary American society, Berthoff and Murrin observe that "the image of a golden age of republican equality, of a society of yeoman freeholders (abstracted from their place among the various interrelated classes of English social tradition and colonial reality), had its greatest appeal at a time when there was solid reason to feel things were going too far the other way." 57

The growth of cities and the development of a market economy are blamed for differences while the continued inequalities engendered by the statism of the political system itself are ignored. 58 To what extent did differences occur within the overall development of a rapidly expanding economy in which many were moving upward, though some more rapidly than others?

In addressing these long-run social trends, Jack P. Greene points out that one has to be careful not to ascribe social tensions too great a role in causing the Revolution. 59 However, the role of the British government's statist interventionism, which precipitated the social turmoil of the feudal revival, is inseparable from the extension of imperial policymaking, which led directly to the Revolution.

Who Formed the Revolutionary Coalition?

The leading men of America, we may believe, wish to continue to be the principal people in their own country . Adam Smith 60

Revolutions, of course, are not begotten by abstract social changes extending over a century, but by living individuals who come to feel social repercussions over relatively short periods of time. To survey this accelerating human drama of the American Revolution, we need to describe the shifting composition of the protest coalition as the issues moved toward self-defense and later independence.

Two distinct and dissatisfied groups launched protests against the elites who dominated a colonial society marked by inequalities. Both breathed inspiration from the Country-Whig tradition and its stress on equality. The first group, representing the mechanics and artisans of the burgeoning colonial urban centers, resented being cut off from full participation in the political system and its expanding social differentiation. As in Europe, where such unequal disfranchisement was even more extensive, organized rioting became a carefully orchestrated symptom of politics. 61

The second group comprised the townspeople and farmers in the western segments of several colonies, who chafed at the inequities of their underrepresentation in the assemblies. Serious protests erupted in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas during the same period as the developing quarrel with British imperial authorities. 62

The early social protests during the years 1759 to 1765 are well documented in Bernard Knollenberg's Origins of the American Revolution: 1759–1765 . Knollenberg observed, "in reading some accounts of the American Revolution, one gets the impression that until the very eve of the outbreak of war, active colonial opposition was limited to a relatively few propagandists and hotheads, which is far from true."

But the most unifying action of all was the Stamp Act of 1765. 63 Nothing better demonstrates the British notions of inequality and subordination. Thomas Whately, the official who drafted the Act, commented upon the higher tax on university and law degrees in America by saying that these were raised, "in order to keep mean persons out of those situations in life which they disgrace." 64 Clearly American equalitarian ideas of mobility, especially through education, were out of step with imperial thinking!

In The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 , Merrill Jensen has observed that the Stamp Act "transformed" the nature of "American opposition to British policies." The real engine of protest was the riots which disturbed the more conservative of the American leaders. 65 But the most lasting result of the Stamp Act protest was institutional: a communication network among the Americans grew out of the numerous protest organizations ranging from the Stamp Act Congress to the Sons of Liberty.

What provoked the final crisis, of course, was the Tea Act. Designed to aid that government chartered monopoly, the East India Company, the Act culminated in the famous Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773). This defiance was a brilliant stroke to polarize the issue and undermine British legitimacy. The British, as is well-known, retaliated by passing the "Coercive," or "Intolerable Acts."

In the context of the crisis of legitimacy, the Intolerable Acts form a sort of watershed of revolution. David Ammerman's In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 indicates the new direction of revolutionary protest. The Americans responded by calling a Continental Congress.

It is noteworthy that the internal dynamics of the protest coalition were also changing, especially in Massachusetts, the heart of protest. Urban firebrands such as Samuel Adams now found themselves out-flanked, and even "out-radicaled," by the western agrarians 66 These militiamen were prepared to fight, if necessary, to protect their rights. As J.R. Pole observes in The Decision of American Independence , "The progressive breakdown of the formal structure of power threw unprecedented opportunities into the hands of the local militants." From early 1775 onward into the War itself, it was not unusual for local Committees of Safety to exert enormous pressure—a procedure known as Recantation—upon those suspected of Loyalist sympathies. Here was a People's War in action! The first fighting, of course, occurred when the British sought to march to Lexington and Concord, literally into the teeth of this armed countryside of agrarian militia.

Time, itself, is something of a legitimizer. Each day that American institutions ruled the country solidified the notion of their legitimacy. What Adam Smith realized in his memorandum (quoted earlier) to the British government was that local American leaders, having come to rule themselves and their communities for some period of time, would not easily surrender that role. 67 More than a military effort by the British would be needed to undo the organic development and growing legitimacy of such a revolutionary society.

In this interim, American thinking increasingly recognized that independence was the only solution to the problem. The catalyst of that final shift was Thomas Paine's little pamphlet "Common Sense."

Equality, as noted, had been a conspicuous thrust of the Whig tradition. In 1721, for example, in Cato's Letters number 45, "Of the Equality and Inequality of Men," Trenchard and Gordon had noted, "It is evident to common Sense, that there ought to be no Inequality in Society,…" Paine raised the same equalitarian concern in the quotation he chose for the cover of his own pamphlet: "Man knows no Master save creaking Heaven, Or those whom choice and common good ordain."

Paine opened "Common Sense" by distinguishing between "society," which "in every state is a blessing," and "government," which, "even in its best state, is but a necessary evil." Because of "the inability of moral virtue to govern the world," government, whose purpose was "security," was necessary. The best form of government was one which insured security "with the least expense and the greatest benefit."

Paine denied that independence would inaugurate a civil war among the colonies. "Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation," Paine argued. "If there is any true cause of fear respecting independence, it is because no plan is yet laid down."

As John M. Head notes in A Time to Rend: An Essay on the Decision for American Independence , "As late as the fourth week of June, what the members of Congress would do about…independence was not irrevocably established." Certainly, the advocates of independence were concerned not only to vote it through, but that it win more than a slight majority. Popular pressures, rising up through the state governments especially after mid-May, changed the picture.

The Declaration of Independence was not, of course, in any sense a blueprint for a revolutionary society. At the same time, its emphasis on equality voiced something more than just a declaration of freedom from British rule. In recent years it has become fashionable to talk about the American Revolution as simply a conservative, colonial rebellion. These tensions swirling around the issue of equality would seem to belie that image. 68 We need to define precisely what criteria are being employed in making such an assessment. Many years ago R.R. Palmer noted the large percentage of Loyalists who left America, never to return. 69 Since this percentage of disenchanted emigrés was larger than that of other so-called more radical revolutions, it appears an unlikely yardstick to measure the radicalness of any revolution. And in a recent study, Men in Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution , James Kirby Martin has estimated that elite turnover averaged 77 percent, but ranged as high as 100 percent in several colonies. Compared with the 50 percent in Russia after 1917, this seems very radical indeed! As we shall see, it was this vast turnover and appearance of "new" men which sociologically explains the movement culminating in the adoption of the Constitution. 70

Finally, a word is in order about the Tories, or Loyalists. Despite some errors, William H. Nelson's little volume, The American Tory , remains the best. The occupations and social classes of the Loyalists cut across American society even if they were more highly represented among the old oligarchy. Thus, of the 300 people banished from Massachusetts in 1778, about a third were merchants and professional men, another third were farmers, and a final third were artisans, shopkeepers, and laborers. Nelson identifies two areas where Loyalists concentrated: the extreme western frontier from Georgia up into New York, and the maritime regions of the Middle Colonies. Religion also played a part, especially among minorities:

Almost all the Loyalists were, in one way or another, more afraid of America than they were of Britain. Almost all of them had interests that they felt needed protection from an American majority…. Not many Loyalists were as explicit in their distrust of individualism as, say, Jonathan Boucher, but most of them shared his suspicion of a political order based on the 'common good' if the common good was to be defined by a numerical majority.

There existed a conflict of fundamental world views. Loyalists and Patriots "differ not only about the Revolution itself, and revolutions in general: even more deeply, they differ about the essential functions of government, about the proper role of the State, and about the nature of society itself." It was in essence a confrontation between a corporatist and an individualist world view. 71

How Was the Revolution Fought Militarily?

"War is ten percent fighting, ten percent waiting, and eighty percent self-improvement." 72 Mao Tse-tung

The question of how the Americans won the Revolution has for the most part been treated essentially as a military problem usually in terms of conventional armies confronting each other in a series of set battles and campaigns. Some theorists on guerrilla warfare such as Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History , for example, have seen the American Revolution as of little relevance to understanding that mode of warfare:

Regarding revolutions in general, nothing can be more dangerous to insurrectionary planners than the romantic notion that virtuous peoples—rightly struggling to be free—must necessarily win in their struggles against tyrants. This interpretation is based on a misconceived idea of revolutionary wars that many textbooks help to perpetuate. According to the old version, the Americans won the War of Independence because the British Redcoats were no match against liberty-loving farmers sniping from behind cover against over-disciplined regulars…. But the American War of Independence was not mainly won by guerrillas but by regular soldiers and sailors. British soldiers were perfectly capable of becoming as skilled in skirmishing as their American opponents. 73

Gann's observations are indicative of the misunderstanding of some writers on guerrilla or counterinsurgency warfare. While guerrilla warfare is a part, a tactic, of revolutionary warfare; the two are not the same. Certainly, neither virtue nor mass support of a population can guarantee victory—a superior foe willing to employ a pacification program involving mass genocide may win—but the support and involvement of the people is a necessary prerequisite to victory in revolutionary warfare, and it is significant that this aspect is now in the process of rediscovery. However, it is peripheral to the essence of revolutionary warfare whether the regular soldiers of an occupying force can develop counterinsurgency techniques. For revolutionary warfare is essentially a political activity, as the quote from Mao above clearly implies. "Self-improvement" means not only as a fighting force, but also in raising the level of consciousness both of the soldiers and of the people as a whole, from a "mentality" toward an "ideology" (in Joseph Ernst's terms).

As James W. Pohl has observed, perhaps the most astute American analyst of people's revolutionary war was Thomas Paine. His Crisis papers, written between 1776 and 1783, are literally filled with observations such as the following: "It is distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can beat them" for such a campaign placed the enemy "where he is cut off from all supplies, and must sooner or later inevitably fall into our hands." 74

Since the Americans controlled the country, except where there were British troops—and several times during the war when British armies were in transport at sea none of their forces were on American soil—the British had to devise a strategy to regain North America. For most of the war the British imagined this as an essentially military problem. But from the standpoint of revolutionary warfare and legitimacy, much more was involved. 75

George Washington had to devise a strategy to counter that of the British. In his recent study The Way of the Fox: American Strategy in the War for America, 1775–1783 , Dave Richard Palmer has traced this through several phases. A great deal has been made of the idea that several times, after American defeats, the British were near victory. A corollary is that American victory was possible only through an alliance with France. In the light of what we know about revolutionary warfare and the tactics of counterinsurgency, both of these assumptions appear wide of the mark.

The tactics of counterinsurgency may be summarized briefly (without mentioning the ideological dimension): first the enemy's regular army is broken up, then the irregular units, and, finally, as the remaining guerrillas are isolated from the population, the insurgency begins to dry up. It is also necessary to deny the enemy the use of any sanctuary into which he can retreat or from which he can secure supplies.

Viewed in this light, it is evident that the British never took the first step toward victory. The Americans understood fully the principles of "protracted" conflict. 76 British commanders acknowledged they controlled nothing except where their armies encamped. Lacking that first step, pacification became impossible.

New England, staunchly Patriot—94 percent in Connecticut, for example—was the sanctuary of American forces. From this source supplies and troops flowed, on an irregular basis to be sure, to the American army. In a fine account Page Smith has explained why Washington's army varied so greatly in size, sometimes from one week to the next, as men went back to farm. 77 Every fall these farmers went back to plant, but in the spring, year after year, they returned to fight again.

The above suggests that a sociological analysis of the American army would be of value. Here again, the inequalitarian-equalitarian-egalitarian tension played an important part.

From a sociological perspective, the courageous army that struggled through that memorable winter at Valley Forge was hardly representative of either the army or the population supporting it. It was noted above that the backbone of the fighting army of the spring and summer—whether militia or Continentals—often returned to their farms during the fall and especially the winter. Apart from the officers, a high percentage of the winter soldiers were what might otherwise be called displaced men. With few roots in the society, they had nowhere else to go. Years ago Allen Bowman in The Morale of the American Revolutionary Army explored the number of foreigners, convicts, 'former' Loyalists, and British deserters who formed the ranks of the army.

The ambitions of much of the officer corps, and the sense of inequality in some of them, must also be related to the function of the regular army as a military instrument. 78 It also reveals one of the major fault lines within the revolutionary coalition. A tenet of radical Whiggism detailed in Lois Schwoerer, "No Standing Armies!" The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth Century England grew out of the "Standing Army" controversy in England. 79 Men such as John Trenchard fully understood, from the English Revolution and after, that the King's power rested on his control of a regular, standing army. Bernard Knollenberg's Origins of the American Revolution and Growth of the American Revolution suggest that radical success was a factor in the decision by British policymakers to garrison a force in North America, which might be used there or brought back home to quell domestic dissent.

Radical Whiggism leaned, therefore, toward the idea of a people's militia, as was to be reflected later in the Second Amendment to the American Constitution. Such a force tends to be essentially defensive, as we shall see. It fights best when the enemy invades its community. It has neither the organization, training, weaponry, nor motivation for an offensive action, let alone a sustained one. Its very decentralization mitigates against very effective hierarchical command from above.

On the other hand, Richard Kohn in "The Murder of the Militia System" and Eagle and Sword describes how the less radical members of the American revolutionary coalition tended to think along more conventional military lines. 80 Unlike the militia, an organized army is capable of a sustained, offensive campaign. It can initiate an assault, capture, and hold extensive territory.

Beginning with a mentality of equality, a few Americans did not stop with an ideology of republicanism, but carried the analysis a step further, toward a world view of empire. Even young John Adams, who was less drawn toward empire than some other leaders and could write about its contradictions in the 1775 Novanglus letters, was capable of such an imperial vision. 81 The most immediate example of the focus of this kind of world view was Canada. Can it be accidental that in 1775, with the British army bottled up in Boston, the American leadership took the opportunity to launch a nearly successful, and then ultimately disastrous, attack on Canada? Assuming the Americans thought the Canadians wanted liberation, which soon appeared an illusion, how can we explain the continued appeal of a Canadian expedition except in terms of empire? As the war drew to a close, Washington and others were still envisioning such a campaign, despite their scant resources. The dreams of empire died hard.

The question of Canada, however, leads to another facet of the war, the French Alliance. Richard B. Morris in The American Revolution Reconsidered , is one of the few historians who suggests, with plausibility, that victory would have been possible without the Alliance, and that the Alliance probably created as many problems as it solved. The opportunity to acquire Canada was also a factor in the alliance with the French. The continued American desire for Canada and the French coolness toward this imperial thrust is described in William C. Stinchcombe, The American Revolution and the French Alliance . Some Americans wanted not only independence, but independence and empire. To understand better that goal and its relationship with the Alliance, the situation in late 1777 and early 1778 must be recalled.

Late in 1777 the British had not only suffered a significant defeat at Germantown, but had also lost their first army at Saratoga. The losses to militia forces, such as John Stark's Green Mountain Boys, which Burgoyne suffered on route, weakened the British army. At the first battle of Saratoga (September 19, 1777), Burgoyne took heavy casualties from Daniel Morgan's sharpshooters, on which see Don Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman , and North Callahan, Daniel Morgan: Ranger of the Revolution . Horatio Gates effectively used the American militia and applied guerrilla strategy in forcing Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga (October 17, 1777).

The peace feelers that resulted in the Carlisle Commission were superceded by the news of the French Alliance. What is most interesting is the shrill tone with which the American leadership greeted these efforts at negotiation. Surely at that date, this was not a question of undercutting the legitimacy of the American leadership. The more hawkish British leaders correctly indicated that the very negotiations with the Congress added to its legitimacy. What the Congress seemed most intent on doing was cutting off any dialogue between the members of the Carlisle Commission and the larger American population. 82 It does not seem unfair to suggest that the great fear might have been that negotiations, once under way, might culminate in independence without empire. The alternative of independence without empire might satisfy the great majority of the people; it was certainly less acceptable to a segment of the leadership concerned with empire. The most complete study is Weldon A. Brown, Empire or Independence: A Study in the Failure of Reconciliation, 1774–1783 . 83 Franklin, in demanding Florida and Canada, plus an indemnity, was not offering conditions upon which to open negotiations but rather to abort them, and that is the way the British interpreted his actions. The failure of these negotiations protracted the war for over three more years with great suffering on both sides. In a peace two years after that, the Americans finally settled for independence without empire.

What, then, did the Americans gain from the Alliance? Little more than might have been negotiated in 1778. It is true that a French army and naval force made possible Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, but that event cannot be dealt with in isolation. The exhaustion of his army in its weaving campaign through the South had been very much the work of regular, partisan, and guerrilla American units.

Nathanael Greene's strategy of dispersal of forces created the basis for the partisan warfare campaign in the South. John Shy's "The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War," Don Higginbotham's The War of American Independence; Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practices, 1763–1789 , and Russell F. Weigley's The Partisan War: The South Carolina Campaign of 1780–1782 provide important new analyses of the role of militia and guerrilla warfare. Hugh F. Rankin's Francis Marion: The Swamp Fox discusses the guerrilla volunteer marksmen who formed "Marion Brigade" which played a crucial part at battles such as Georgetown, Eutaw Springs, and Parker's Ferry. Don Higginbotham's "Daniel Morgan: Guerrilla Fighter" analyzes Daniel Morgan's guerrilla tactics (e.g., Cornwallis and Tarleton at the battles of Cowpens, South Carolina and in North Carolina) for which Morgan has been considered the greatest guerrilla commander of the Revolution.

The British called the area around Charlotte, North Carolina, the "Hornets' Nest," and later they were forced to abandon much of their equipment in evading engagements with American units. That every successful insurgency culminates in regular army forces accepting the surrender of their counterparts should never obscure the role of the irregulars. By that time, many of the irregulars remained in the countryside to administer order, or had returned to their work.

After 1778, British strategy moved toward the possibility of developing a pacification program. As Shy's A People Numerous and Armed makes clear, the fundamental problem was always the American militia:

The British and their allies were fascinated by the rebel militia. Poorly trained and badly led, often without bayonets, seldom comprised of the deadly marksmen dear to American legend, the Revolutionary militia was much more than a military joke, and perhaps the British came to understand that better than did many Americans themselves. The militia enforced law and maintained order wherever the British army did not, and its presence made the movement of smaller British formations dangerous. Washington never ceased complaining about his militia—about their undependability, their indiscipline, their cowardice under fire—but from the British viewpoint, rebel militia was one of the most troublesome and predictable elements in a confusing war. The militia nullified every British attempt to impose royal authority short of using massive armed force. The militia regularly made British light infantry, German Jager, and Tory raiders pay a price, whatever the cost to the militia itself, for their constant probing, foraging, and marauding. The militia never failed in a real emergency to provide reinforcements and even reluctant draftees for the State and Continental regular forces. From the British viewpoint, the militia was the virtually inexhaustible reservoir of rebel military manpower, and it was also the sand in the gears of the pacification machine. 84

We have only one intensive case study of the American militia operating in a given locale, Adrian Leiby's insightful The American Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley . 85 What is significant is that here we are dealing not with an area where the British penetrated only once or twice during the course of the Revolution. On the contrary, one area—Bergen County across the Hudson from New York City—was under the guns of the British and thereby contested for during virtually the entire course of the War. It was thus almost a classic laboratory case for examining the development of an American guerrilla unit. Under the direction of Major John M. Goetschius, the Dutch farmers built a guerrilla unit that from hesitant beginnings by the end of the War matured into a more effective fighting group than the regular army. His correspondence with Washington makes plain that the Dutchman commanded a better understanding of the essentials of revolutionary guerrilla warfare than did his Commander-in-Chief. 86

What relevance, if any, is the military history of the American Revolution to an age when liberty seems threatened from within and without? In their study of history the radical Whigs had concluded that the internal threat of a standing, professional, volunteer army far outweighed its potential utility against a foreign threat. Today we know that the irregular, people's army functioned far more effectively than was formerly imagined. There are those, of course, who say that times have changed: that even the "lesson" of Vietnam, of what a guerrilla force can do (provided the larger power does not resort to genocide or nuclear weapons) is irrelevant to a confrontation between the superpowers. While other Communist leaders in the Russian Revolution often criticized the effectiveness of the peasant militia, Leon Trotsky appreciated how truly effective was their fighting capacity against the regular army. He understood that the Party must later smash their "individualism," and virtually "anarchic" desire to hold their own "individual plots" of land: "Today, free, he for the first feels himself to be someone, and he starts to think that he is the centre of the universe." 87

What Was the Revolution's Political and Constitutional Resolution?

It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinction of right and wrong, virtue and vice . John Adams, 1786 88

A major question for historians is: What changes occurred in American society as a result of the War and the drive for equality? These developments provide a framework for understanding the equalitarian forces that pushed for replacing the Articles of Confederation and ratifying the Constitution.

Recent assessments of the motivations supporting the Constitution go back to Charles Beard's famous economic interpretation. Without entering into a discussion of Beard's interpretation, some of his economic data may be incorporated into a valid social interpretation of the Constitution.

The American revolutionary leadership studied the past, in part, to build ideologies and world views for shaping the future. "Given the social and cultural structure of the United States during the 1780s, we can deduce that men differed radically over what constitutes the Good Society." 89

Lee Benson, together with other writers, "assume[s] that the characteristics that predisposed men to agrarianism tended also to predispose them to distrust the State." And, "it follows, therefore, that the new nation should be a decentralized, loose confederation of the several independent states." On the other hand, "within a liberal republic, the logical corollary of 'commercialism' was a system derived from the proposition that the State could function as a creative, powerful instrument for realizing the Good Society…[T]hey believed the State must be strong and centralized." 90

While Benson acknowledged that not "all agrarians were federalists" or "all Commercialists nationalists," nonetheless, "a marked tendency existed for agrarians to be federalists and commercialists to be nationalists." Caution is demanded in doing justice to the relationships between agrarianism/commercialism and distrust of the State, as well as between the decentralized State/Centralized State. 91 The critical factor, therefore, was that the perceived political crisis had caused some agrarians—who would otherwise have preferred small government, focused at the state level—to accept a nationalist solution. But that strange union of agrarianism and nationalism is difficult to sustain without the ultimate use of force to retain what are conceived of as the agrarian virtues. 92

The most thorough recent study of the period during and after the Revolution, culminating in the adoption of the Constitution, is Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 . The first part, "Ideology of the Revolution," discusses the Whig world view. Wood underlines the important concepts of Virtue and Equality in the Whig Republican paradigm. Thus, the Revolution, they believed, would be "ultimately sustained by a basic transformation of their social structure." Obviously, that ideal could hardly be considered a conservative Revolution. While there were "sporadic suggestions for leveling legislation,"…"Equality was…not directly conceived of by most Americans in 1776, including such a devout republican like Samual Adams, as a social leveling." 93 Thus while the Americans recognized all sorts of natural distinctions in society, it was believed these would never become extreme:

It was widely believed that equality of opportunity would necessarily result in a rough equality of station, that as long as the social channels of ascent and descent were kept open, it would be impossible for any artificial aristocrats or overgrown rich men to maintain themselves for long. With social movement founded only on merit, no distinctions could have time to harden. 94

However, Wood notes the paradox in the American's belief that the ideal of equality would banish envy.

In an earlier article Wood had discussed the rising social tensions in much the same direction as Berthoff and Murrin. 95 "Politics, within the British imperial system, was highly personal and factionalized, involving bitter rivalry among small elite groups for the rewards of State authority, wealth, power, and prestige.

On the other hand, American Whigs had come to feel that removing the imperial system would cure the ills and disorders within the society. If extreme, their perceptions were not without some foundation: And the grievance which "particularly rankled" the Americans "was the abuse of royal authority in creating political and hence social distinctions," and "the manipulation of official appointments." 96 Any effort to close off a possibility of advancement and greater equality would, and did, lead to confrontation.

Studies more sympathetic than Wood's to the Articles of Confederation are Elisha P. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats: The Struggle for Equal Political Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution , and Merrill Jensen, The American Revolution Within America , 97 which covers more succinctly many of the points made by Wood. A useful interpretative survey of the issues and the literature culminating in the Constitution is Robert E. Shalhope, "Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography." 98 One cannot overlook the militia as a political institution (whatever one's view of the effectiveness of these essentially defense-minded warriors) as described in David Curtis Skaggs's, "Flaming Patriots and Inflaming Demagogues: The Role of the Maryland Militia in Revolutionary Society and Politics." 99

The fact that government was decentralized under the Articles did not mean that its role at the state level would necessarily be small. 100 In most states the "new" men moved to implement a rather extensive program of state interventionism. This included extensive taxation and a monetary inflation which certainly must be regarded as egalitarian in its consequences. 101

In limiting the powers of both the executive and the courts, the general thrust of the American Revolution had been toward "popular sovereignty," placing major political power, with a few, if any, restraints, in the hands of the legislatures. This opened the door for extensive government interventionism, at the local and state levels to be sure, but with few protections for the individual outside the majority. 102

Something had happened after 1776 to convince many that the Republican experiment was not working as it should. The solution was to check the arbitrary powers of the populist, state legislatures, and the overly rapid rise of less than well educated "new" men, by raising the central focus of government to the national level. In a sense, it was a gamble to check egalitarianism, at least for a time, by institutionally moving toward the centralization that might hasten empire. Both empire and egalitarianism, of course, were the twin nemeses of republicanism; but there seemed no easy way to halt both. 103

Introduction

1. William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History, 19.

2. The idea of a conceptualized, or "symbolic," event such as the Industrial Revolution, as compared to an actual, or "existential," event such as the death of Charles I, is taken from Page Smith, Historians and History, 202.

3. Perez Zagorin, "Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography," Political Science Quarterly 88 (1973): 28–29.

4. Zagorin, "Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography."

5. Merrill Jensen, The American Revolution Within America . Also see Melvin Richter, "The Uses of Theory: Tocqueville's Adaptation of Montesquieu," in Richter, ed., Essays in Theory and History , 75; Gene Wise, American Historical Explanations: A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry , 76. A good discussion of the rise of imperial authoritarianism, the decline of historical objectivity, and the intellectuals' scramble for financial support as described by Lucian of Samosata is Chester G. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars: The Intellectual Revolution in the Roman Empire , 259–261.

6. See Robert S. Nisbet, Social Change and History .

7. See Vernard Foley, The Social Physics of Adam Smith .

8. This is discussed in J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition , which also lists other of his important writings on the intellectual currents that influenced the American Revolution.

9. A good critique of this is Theda Skocpol, "A Critical Review of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Politics and Society 4 (Fall 1973): 1–34.

10. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Cf. John A. Moorhouse, "The Mechanistic Foundations of Economic Analysis," Reason Papers 4 (Winter 1978): 49–67.

11. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century , the first of a projected four-volume series. Despite the socialist bias, and the propensity to reify the concept of capitalism, there is much of value in his work to certainly justify the ferment it created in sociology. Wallerstein devotes great attention to the institution of the State. But in the end his Marxian outlook prevents him from acknowledging the State as the most significant variable.

12. Jensen, Within America , 2.

13. See, for example, Dale Yoder, "Current Definitions of Revolution," American Journal of Sociology 32 (November 1926): 433–441.

14. A number of writers agree that certain preliminary circumstances are preconditions before any revolution can occur. Revolutions have tended to occur not in impoverished and retrogressive societies, but rather in those societies where significant advances had been under way. If the following terminology is different, the concepts are similar. Edwards refers to the "balked disposition;" Crane Brinton describes those who felt their situation "cramped;" James C. Davies posits a "J-curve"—a growing gap between expectations and results; and Ted Gurr's idea of relative deprivation. All derive from social psychology concepts of frustration-aggression. J.C. Davies, "Toward a Theory of Revolution," American Sociological Review 27 (February 1962): 5–19; Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel . The ancients were also aware that rapid change caused instability. In this regard, Aristotle made clear that a widely-based middle class was the greatest impediment to revolution. Despite all the "modern" theorizing, Aristotle's Politics , Part V, wherein he discusses revolution, is still well worth reading. Yet, however insightful the thesis of frustration-aggression seems, by itself this concept is too broad and general to be useful in understanding revolution.

15. Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution , 44–52.

16. Edwards' understanding of the revolutionary process appears more subtle than that of the more famous work by Brinton. Brinton lost an important idea when he changed one of Edwards' key points, the "transfer of the allegiance of the intellectuals" to the "desertion of the intellectuals." "Transfer of allegiance," however, implies a sense of a loss of legitimacy or legality which far transcends the notion of mere support as a kind of cooperation.

17. Karl Deutsch indicated some years ago he had a study of legitimacy in progress. See also Claus Mueller, The Politics of Communication: A Study in the Political Sociology of Language, Socialization, and Legitimation ; and Ronald Rogowski, Rational Legitimacy: Theory of Political Support .

18. Kuhn, Structure .

19. See, especially, Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge .

20. William Marina, Egalitarianism and Empire , suggests three sources of values: supernaturalism, natural law, and statist, positive law.

21. Kuhn, Structure , 10. Kuhn began with a discussion of "normal science," which he defined as "research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice." This "body of accepted theory…served for a time implicitly to define the legitimate [emphasis added] problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners." He concluded that "Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition." Cf. Murray Rothbard, "Ludwig von Mises and the Paradigm for our Age," Modern Age (Fall 1971).

22. One is reminded of the marvelous symbol of authority, the conch shell, in William Golding's forceful study, The Lord of the Flies .

23. Washington Post , April 12, 1966.

24. "'Ideology' and an Economic Interpretation of The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism ,' 159–185. See also T.F. Carney, The Shape of the Past: Models and Antiquity .

25. Thomas C. Barrow, "The American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence," William and Mary Quarterly , 3d series, 25 (1968): 452–464.

26 . This outlook which permeates so many of the writings and correspondence of the revolutionary generation is captured in the title of John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 .

27. J.R. Pole's "Loyalists, Whigs, and the Idea of Equality," in Esmond Wright, ed., A Tug of Loyalities: Anglo-American Relations, 1765–1785 , 66–92; and Pole's B.K. Smith Lecture in Social Radicalism and the Idea of Equality in the American Revolution . Of the recent writings on the idea of equality, perhaps the most important, certainly with the most complete bibliography, is Herbert J. Gans, More Equality , though my own model and the direction of my thought is quite different from Gans's.

28. My essay can profitably be read in conjunction with the bibliographical essay of Professor Murray Rothbard published in the first issue of the Literature of Liberty . I hope soon to publish an expanded version of these observations on revolution and change in relation to the American Revolution, to be entitled, The American Revolution as a People's War: A Refutation of the Widely-Held Minority Myth, and Some Reflections on the Revolution from the Perspective of the Sociology of Revolution and a Theory of Social Change in an Age of Continuing Upheaval .

Why did the Revolution Occur?

29. Quoted in Alfred Cobban, New Cambridge Modern History . Vol. 7, 102.

30. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution .

31. David Jacobson, The English Libertarian Heritage , Introduction; Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic ; Carl Degler, Out of Our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America ; Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America .

32. See, for example, Trenchard and Gordon's essay, "Of the Equality and Inequality of Men," written in 1721, and reprinted in Jacobson, Heritage , 101–106.

33. Discussed in Robert G. Wesson, State Systems: International Pluralism in History , forthcoming.

34. Pocock, Machiavellian , 156, 191.

35. Pocock, 194, 208.

36. See especially his discussions of social tensions in Chapter 2, "The Parchment and the Fire"; of mobility and freedom in Chapter 3, "Masterless Men," as well as that of the relationship between the Levellers and the Army; the distinction between "Levellers and True Levellers" in Chapter 7; the reaction in Chapter 17, "The World Restored"; the conclusion, Chapter 18; and Appendices 1 and 2: "Hobbes and Winstanly: Reason and Politics"; and Melton and Bunyan: Dialogue with the Radicals." Given these parallels with the English Revolution, it was perceptive and appropriate that the English military band at the Yorktown surrender in 1781 should play "The World Turned Upside Down." Also see Perez Zagorin, The Court and the Country .

37. Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman, Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies . Also see J.P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles, 1689–1720 , especially 102–127.

38. Cf. Pocock, Machiavellian , 424, 426.

39. Forrest McDonald, The Phaeton Ride: The Crisis of American Success , especially the first part of Chapter 2, "The Populists and the Predators."

40. Rodger Durrell Parker, "The Gospel of Opposition: A Study in Eighteenth Century Anglo-American Ideology," doctoral dissertation, Wayne State University, 1975, University Microfilm publication 76–10, 990.

41. See, for example, Carroll Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations ; and, on China, Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Post: A Social and Economic Interpretation .

42. The most obvious example is, of course, Adam Smith. Another is Tom Paine. Both favored the Financial Revolution but not State interference.

43. Pocock, Machiavellian , 210–211, 391–399, 468–469. The less extreme version of this idea in Harrington and in Trenchard and Gordon "had in mind not so much a leveling of property as 'an agrarian law, or something like it' to ensure that no individual or group became so rich as to reduce the others to dependence." Pocock, Machiavellian , 468, and quoting from Cato's Letters . The "something" indicates how far were the Commonwealthmen from any worked out plan or agreement about how to deal with extremes of wealth in their republican conceptualization, whether agrarian or commercial.

44. As Pocock observes:

"We have already seen that neither [Andrew] Fletcher nor [Daniel] Defoe operated in terms of a simple opposition between land and trade—which should warn us against expecting Augustan politics to look like a simple confrontation between gentleman and merchant—but that each indicates in opposite ways the difficulties of constructing a fully legitimized history out of the movement from one principle to the other."

Unlike McDonald or Parker, who place Charles Davenant in the Country camp, Pocock appreciates the subtlety of shifting positions and the relationship of all of this to statism and war: "Davenant, more than Fletcher, [John] Toland, or (at this time) Trenchard, was engrossed in the problem of war's ability to generate corrupting forms of finance; and while a major significance of his thought to us is that he looked beyond the problem of trade to that of credit, he did so in the context provided by war." Pocock, Machiavellian , 436–437.

45. See, again, Pocock, Machiavellian , especially Chapter 12, "The Anglicization of the Republic: B) Court, Country and Standing Army"; Chapter 13, "Neo-Machiavellian Political Economy: The Augustan Debate over Land, Trade and Credit"; and Chapter 14, "The Eighteenth Century Debate: Virtue, Passion and Commerce." One is reminded of W.A. Williams's comment that Charles A. Beard was "almost" a socialist—a very wide gap indeed.

46. In Kurtz and Hutson, Essays on the American Revolution , 256–288.

47 . Berthoff and Murrin, "Feudalism," 257. The reference is to Jameson, Social Movement , and Frederick B. Tolles, "The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Reevaluation," American Historical Review 60 (1954–1955): 1–12. Also see Thomas C. Barrow, "The American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 25 (1968): 464, quoted in Berthoff and Murrin, "Feudalism," 259.

48. Berthoff and Murrin, 258, quoting Gordon S. Wood, "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 23 (1966): 31.

49. Berthoff and Murrin, 261.

50. Berthoff and Murrin, 262–263.

51. Berthoff and Murrin, 264–265. Another who takes this view of the importance of feudalism in the coming of the Revolution is Robert A. Nisbet, The Social Impact of the Revolution . If I had to recommend a single selection about the meaning of the American Revolution, I believe I would choose Nisbet's perceptive little twenty-three page pamphlet. He advocates a comparative approach, and in arguing it was a real social revolution against feudalism, makes the following points:

"More than any other type of social organization, feudalism seems not only to invite but to succumb to revolution…. because it virtually consecrates inequality—the prime cause of revolution everywhere, as Tocqueville pointed out—and…succumbs rather easily because of its seeming inability to command wide loyalties…. [A]ll the revolutions of modern history have been those launched against systems more nearly feudal than capitalist." (p. 3).

Nisbet suggests there might have been no social revolution "without a precipitating war in which ideological values were strong." War has accompanied each of the great revolutions, and "[t]he link between war and revolution is both existentially and historically close" (p. 9). Among the revolutionary changes he sees are: relation between land and the family (primogeniture and entail) over thirteen separate colonies, confiscation of estates, religious freedom, and some change in attitudes toward slavery (pp. 10–16).

In proclaiming the American Revolution in every way a true social revolution, Nisbet thinks we err in making terror the "touchstone of revolution": for "[t]o deny the status of revolution because of the absence of these qualities is like denying the status of war because of the absence of atrocities." It was hardly a local affair, and again we err if we "ignore the libertarian currents that the event set off throughout the world" (p. 23).

52. Berthoff and Murrin, 266–267. Herbert Aptheker's The American Revolution , some years ago, mentioned the rapidly growing sums of quit-rents in the years just prior to the Revolution. Tocqueville was the first to point to this relationship of what might really be called a pseudofeudalism. This kind of reactionary statism has almost nothing to do with market capitalism, and as Berthoff and Murrin note, "After 50 years of attempts to interpret the French Revolution in terms of a clash between a feudal and capitalistic order, many historians are now moving quite decisively back toward Tocqueville."

53. "Violence and the American Revolution" in Kurtz and Hutson, Essays , 81–120, and Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763 –1797.

54. Berthoff and Murrin, 274.

55. Berthoff and Murrin, 274.

56. Berthoff and Murrin, 274–275. A recent, excellent study on the period after 1775 is Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World , a careful analysis of Concord during the War.

57. Berthoff and Murrin, 281.

58. The Social Structure of Revolutionary America , 286, cited in Berthoff and Murrin, 280.

59. "The Social Origins of the American Revolution: An Evaluation and an Interpretation," Political Science Quarterly 87 (1973): 1–22; Kenneth A. Lockridge, "Social Change and the Meaning of the American Revolution," Journal of Social History 6 (1973): 403–439, which outlines a number of points similar to Berthoff and Murrin.

60. In G.H. Guttridge, "Adam Smith on the American Revolution: an Unpublished Memorial," American Historical Review 38 (1933): 714–720.

61. See Richard Maxwell Brown, "Violence and the American Revolution," in Kurtz and Hutson, Essays , 81–120, and the numerous bibliographical items noted therein. Also awaited is publication of Alfred Young's study of the radical political uses of traditional Boston carnivals and parades.

62. See Gary B. Nash, "Social Change and the Growth of Prerevolutionary Urban Radicalism"; Edward Countryman, "'Out of the Bounds of the Law': Northern Land Rioters in the Eighteenth Century"; Marvin L. Michael Kay, "The North Carolina Regulation, 1766–1776: A Class Conflict"; Dirk Hoerder, "Boston Leaders and Boston Crowds, 1765–1776"; and Ronald Hoffman, "The 'Disaffected' in the Revolutionary South," all in Alfred F. Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism .

63. Edmund and Helen Moragn, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution .

64. In Murray N. Rothbard, Advance to Revolution, 1760–1775 , Vol. III of Conceived in Liberty , 90.

65. See, for example, Lawrence H. Gipson, Jared Ingersoll ; Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763 ; Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 ; and Jensen, Founding .

66. Jensen, Founding ; Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 ; and J.R. Pole, Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic .

67. Guttridge, "Smith."

68. Pole, Equality , Chapter 2.

69. The Age of Democratic Revolution , Vol. I, 185–190.

70. The best interpretation of this process over the whole revolutionary era is Merrill Jensen, The American Revolution Within America . See also Library of Congress, Leadership in the American Revolution , papers presented at a Symposium.

71. There has been of late considerable literature on the Loyalists, perhaps the best (with a very complete bibliographical essay) is Robert McClure Calhoon, The Loyalist in Revolutionary America 1760–1781 .

How Was The Revolution Fought Militarily

72. Quoted in Ferdinand E. Banks, Scarcity, Energy, and Economic Progress , xvii.

73. Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History , 92.

74. James W. Pohl, "The American Revolution and the Vietnamese War: Pertinent Military Analogies," The History Teacher 7 (February 1974): 259.

75. See, for example, David V.I. Bell and Allan E. Goodman, "Vietnam and the American Revolution," Yale Review 61 (Fall 1971): 26–34; Roy K. Flint, "The Web of Victory: Revolutionary Warfare in Eighteenth Century America, (West Point: mimeograph, 1976); and the following by John Shy: "The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War," in Kurtz and Hutson, Essays , 121–156, also reprinted in Shy's A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence , in which several essays reflect the influence of Vietnam; Shy, "The American Revolution Today," in Stanley J. Unterdal, ed., Military History of the American Revolution , 18–32, especially 21; and Shy, "Charles Lee: The Soldier as Radical," in George Athan Billias, George Washington's Generals , 22–53.

76. Washington, himself, used the term "protract," and Hamilton understood the same tactic of keeping an army in the field, avoiding a direct confrontation except on one's own terms, and harassing the enemy piecemeal. This is discussed in William Marina, "The American Revolution and the Minority Myth," Modern Age 20 (Summer 1976): 298–309; and William Marina, "The American Revolution as a People's War," Reason 8 (July 1976): 28–38.

77. Smith, New Age , passim.

78. Jonathan Gregory Rossie, The Politics of Command in the American Revolution . Rossie mentions that his interest in the subject was inspired by Bernard Knollenberg's Washington and the Revolution: A Reappraisal , published some 35 years earlier. Bernhard A. Uhlendorf, translator and annotator, Revolution in America: Confidential Letters and Journals, 1776–1784, of Adjutant General Major Baurmeister of the Hessian Forces , especially 146. Marion Balderston and David Syrett, The Lost War: Letters from British Officers During the American Revolution . John Shy, "Hearts and Minds in the American Revolution: The Case of 'Long Bill' Scott and Peterborough, New Hampshire," in Shy, People , 168. On this motive in Vietnam, going back to the French period and the breakup of the integrity of village life, see the works of the French sociologist Paul Mus, Frances Fitzgerald, and also John T. McAlister, Jr., Vietnam: Origins of the Revolution . See also Larry G. Bowman, Captive Americans: Prisoners during the American Revolution .

79. See also Lois F. Schwoerer, "The Literature of the Standing Army Controversy," Huntington Library Quarterly 28 (1964–1965): 187–212.

80. Richard H. Kohn, "The Murder of the Militia System in the Aftermath of the American Revolution," in Unterdal, Military History , 110–126; and Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 . As noted earlier, that fear of standing armies as in herently opposed to republicanism went back through Harrington and Machiavelli (himself a militia organizer) to Roman historians such as Tacitus. See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment , passim.

81. Smith, New Age, I, 131–132.

82. Solomon Lutnick, The American Revolution and the British Press, 1775–1783 , 124–125, and Smith, New Age , II 1068–1074.

83. The episode of the Carlisle Peace Commission might, in some ways, be considered the first "credibility gap" in American history. Up to that point, one cannot but be struck by the extent to which action any dialogue in the American revolutionary coalition—despite the fact that it is, after all, the function of leaders to lead—had an enormously grass roots quality. As writers such as Knollenberg and Jensen note, the radicalness of the populace sometimes outran the leadership. In a sense, 1778 was a turning point, for, having established the legitimacy of the Revolutionary consensus around independence, the leadership now demonstrated less willingness to discuss specific alternatives which would require sacrifice for goals beyond this basic consensus.

84. Shy, "Military Conflict," in People , 216–217.

85. Despite a rather cool assessment by Shy, I find the Leiby volume a gold mine of information about the dynamics of revolutionary war in a contested area. A twenty page case study-summary is in William Marina, The American Revolution as a People's War , forthcoming.

86. Goetschius understood that such irregular forces fought best in defending their home area.

87. John Ellis, Armies in Revolution , 170; and Carroll Quigley notes:

The hope of the future does not rest, as commonly believed, in winning the peoples of the "buffer fringe" to one superpower or the other, but rather in the invention of new weapons and new tactics that will be so cheap to obtain and so easy to use that they will increase the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare so greatly that the employment of our present weapons of mass destruction will become futile and, on this basis, there can be a revival of democracy and of political decentralization in all three parts of our present world.

The Evolution of Civilizations , 259.

88. Quoted in Herbert Aptheker, Early Years of the Republic: From the End of the Revolution to the First Administration of Washington, (1783–1793) , Vol. III of A History of the American People , 14.

89. Lee Benson, Turner & Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered , 215; Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States .

90. Benson, 219–220, 221, 217.

91. Benson, 227.

92. See Moore, Social Origins , for a good discussion of Catonism.

93. Wood, Creation , 70.

94 . Wood, Creation , 70–71.

95. Wood, Creation , 72. Wood comments further: "By the middle of the eighteenth century the peculiarities of social development in the New World had created an extraordinary society, remarkably equal yet simultaneously unequal, a society so contradictory in its nature that it left contemporaries puzzled and later historians divided. [Wood cites, for example, Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America ; and Robert E. and B. Katherine Brown, Virginia, 1705–1786; Democracy or Aristocracy? It was, as many observers noted, a society strangely in conflict with itself. On one hand, social distinctions and symbols of status were highly respected and intensely coveted, indeed, said one witness, even more greedily than by the English themselves. Americans, it seemed, were in 'one continued Race: in which everyone is endeavoring to distance all behind him; and to overtake or pass by, all before him.' Yet, on the other hand, Americans found all these displays of superiority of status particularly detestable, in fact 'more odious than in any other country.'" Had Wood studied comparative civilizations, he would not have found this such an "extraordinary" phenomenon. It is characteristic of the expansionistic phase of any civilization, especially with respect to frontier areas.

96. Gordon S. Wood, "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution, William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser. 23 (1966), which discusses especially Virginia, and Berthoff and Murrin, "Feudalism," examined at length above.

97. Wood, Creation , 79. The efforts of several "neo-conservatives" to eliminate the social tensions and ambiguities of equality/egalitarianism, and to create a consensus view of the American past, are implausible. Irving Kristol or Martin Diamond give the impression that egalitarianism was not present in the era of the Founding Fathers, who are portrayed as having a virtual agreement around a conservative Lockean view of political equality. See, for example, Martin Diamond, "The Idea of Equality: The View from the Founding," in Walter Nicgorski and Ronald Weber, eds., An Almost Chosen People: The Moral Aspirations of Americans , 19–37.

98. For a critique of some of Jensen's earlier views, see Richard Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered , especially the chapter on "Confederation and Constitution."

99. William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 29 (January 1972): 49–80.

100. In Burton J. Williams, ed., Essays in Honor of James C. Malin , 192–220.

101. I hope to deal with this interpretation in much greater detail in The American Revolution as a People's War , forthcoming.

102. Jensen, Within America , 193.

103. Pole, Equality , 112–113, points out that under the Articles, retaining of "local preferences" meant that there was not equality for all citizens of the United States. Only a Constitution would guarantee the search for national institutions and identity. It is interesting that the areas of the coast and frontier that went heavily for the Constitution as described in Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 , were the same areas that Nelson, Tory , notes as the bastions of Loyalist strength. One suspects a large number of votes for the Constitution came from those formerly of Tory sympathy.

A model, useful for developing further the distinction between Locals and Cosmopolitans, is Jackson Turner Main, Political Parties Before the Constitution . Just one piece of evidence can be cited to show that Locals were not necessarily for small government: they tended to favor increasing the salaries of officials. This fits in with the notion of "new" men who saw expanding local and state government as a means for advancement.

Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 . Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974.

Aptheker, Herbert. The American Revolution 1763–1783 . New York: International Publishing Service, 1960.

——— A History of the American People. Vol. 3: The Early Years of the Republic: From the End of the Revolution to the First Administration of Washington (1783–1793) . New York: International Publishing Service, 1976.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution . Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1967.

Balderston, Marion and Syrett, David. The Lost War: Letters from British Officers During the American Revolution . New York: Horizon Publishing, 1975.

Barrow, Thomas C. "The American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence." William and Mary Quarterly , 3d ser., 25 (1968): 452–464.

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• American Revolution and Constitution

Military Records

The American Revolution

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The National Archives holds records relating to military service during the Revolutionary War, including both Continental troops and state troops that served as Continental troops.  You may want to start by searching for a person's Military Service Records and Pension and Bounty Land records.  See an An Overview of Records at the National Archives Relating to Military Service .

Bounty Land Records - Rev. War

Many of the bounty land application files relating to Revolutionary War and War of 1812 service have been combined with the pension files. There is also a series of unindexed bounty land warrant applications based on service between 1812 and 1855, which includes disapproved applications based on Revolutionary War service. This series is arranged alphabetically by name of veteran.

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Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files (Microfilm Roll # M804, Record Group 15)

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U.S. Revolutionary War Bounty Land Warrants Used in the U.S. Military District of Ohio and Relating Papers (Acts of 1788, 1803, and 1806), 1788-1806 (Microfilm Roll #M829, Record Group 49)

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Continental Congress

Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress (Microfilm Roll #M332, Record Group 360)

Papers of the Continental Congress   (Microfilm Roll # M247, Record Group 360)

Foreign Letters of the Continental Congress and the Department of State, 1785-1790 (Microfilm Roll # M61, Record Group 59)

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The Revolutionary War Prize Cases: Records of the Court of Appeal in Cases of Capture, 1776-1787 (Microfilm Roll # M162, Record Group 267)

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Compiled Military Service Records

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Revolutionary War Service, 1775–1783 , a reference report

Regular and Volunteer United States Military Service Between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 , a reference report

Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783  (Microfilm Roll #M246 , Record Group 93)

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Compiled Service Records of American Naval Personnel and Members of the Departments of the Quartermaster General and the Commissary General of Military Stores Who Served During the Revolutionary War  (Microfilm Roll #M880, Record Group 93)

• National Archives Catalog (NAID: 572134)
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Compiled Service Records of Soldiers who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War (Microfilm Roll #M881, Record Group 93)

• National Archives Catalog (NAID: 570910)

Carded Records Showing Military Service of Soldiers Who Served in Volunteer Units During the Post-Revolutionary War Period , Compiled 1899 - 1927, documenting the period 1784 - 1811 (Microfilm Roll #M905, Record Group 94)

Numbered Records Books Concerning Military Operations and Service, Pay and Settlement of Accounts, and Supplies in the War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Record s (Microfilm Roll #M853, Record Group 93)

Miscellaneous Numbered Records (The Manuscript File) in the War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, 1775-1790 's (Microfilm Roll #M859, Record Group 93)

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Pension Records - Rev. War

The Revolutionary War pension files, numbering around eighty thousand, consist of applications the federal government received in response to pension legislation enacted in various laws between 1818 and 1878. The pension's amount depended on the serviceman's military rank and length of service. Widows of men who provided service received the right to apply for pensions beginning in 1836.

Related Resources

• Using Revolutionary War Pension Files to Find Family Information , a Prologue article, by Jean Nudd.
• " Remember Me, Six Samplers , a Prologue article, by Jennifer Davis Heaps 
• Final Pension Payment Records at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Final Revolutionary War Pension Payment Vouchers: Delaware (Microfilm Roll # 2079, Record Group 217)

• National Archives Catalog (NAID: 605894)

Final Revolutionary War Pension Payment Vouchers: Georgia    (Microfilm Roll # M1746, Record Group 217)

Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files   (Microfilm Roll #M804, Record Group15)

• National Archives Catalog (NAID: 300022)
• Ancestry.com (free from NARA computers) |  Ancestry.com ($ by subscription)

Virginia Half Pay and Other Related Revolutionary War Pension Application Files   (Microfilm Roll #M910, Record Group 15)

U.S. Revolutionary War Bounty Land Warrants Used in the U.S. Military District of Ohio and Relating Papers (Acts of 1788, 1803, and 1806), 1788-1806

• Ancestry.com (subscription)

Prisoners - Rev. War

Prisoners during the Revolutionary War, 1776–1783 , a reference report

Revolutionary War Service and Imprisonment Cards (Digitized from original records, Record Group 45)

Pictures - American Revolution

Images of the American Revolution , lesson plan

  Pictures of the Revolutionary War , selected pictures among the audiovisual holdings of the National Archives.

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The American Revolutionary War, Essay Example

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The American Revolutionary War, also referred to as the American War of Independence, was commenced by the thirteen American protectorates’ delegates in opposition to Great Britain. The thirteen colonies objected to the congress’s taxation guidelines and the absence of colonial representatives. The conflicts between expatriate militiamen and British multitudes started in April 1775 in Lexington. Before beginning the preceding summer, the protesters had instigated an all-out war to gain their liberation. The French offered their support to the Continental militia and compelled the British to capitulate in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia. Although the Americans successfully achieved their liberation, the War did not officially conclude till 1783. The War was deemed an internal battle within the Great Britain Empire until 1778, after which it advanced to a global war and involved other nations[1]. The initial objective of the American colonists was to gain control of their affairs, particularly tax regulations. The Britain Empire had the most control over the thirteen colonies’ affairs until 1776 when the American colonies attained independence[2]. However, the War lasted until 1783 and turned out with British multitudes losing influence on the colonies due to their incompetence. This paper looks at the reasons as to why the American War of Independence turned out the way it did.

The American colonies believed that the British administration’s role was to safeguard their liberties and freedoms. However, after the Indian and French War, the colonists began experiencing several occasions of violation of their sovereignty and privileges by the British government. The lack of colonist representatives within the parliament made them believe that they were not eligible for taxation. This was because British citizens were granted the liberty to choose their parliamentary representatives who had the power to vote on suggested taxes. The revolution’s progression resulted in a government’s formation by the Americans founded on the Confederation Articles’ provisions, which received ratification in 1781. The formulated government provided for individual states’ creation since most Americans did not believe in a robust centralized authority as they were fighting for liberation from Great Britain. The notion established by this provision was to retain power and prevent their subjection to effective controls separate from their states. However, this governmental regime proved to be incompetent and resulted in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia.

During the onset of the War, the British had more militiamen in their troops. The armed forces’ growth was slow initially. After the Prime Minister, Lord North, received information on French troops’ augmentation, more individuals were recruited and added to existing units. However, the effort made by the British military changed drastically after the French involvement in the War[3]. A common belief on why Britain lost to the American colonies is due to their overconfidence and arrogance. However, the British army knew how tough it would be to conquer the rebellion. They had no particular hope of overcoming America due to the territory’s largeness and the meager nature of attainable resources. Given this, they established a tactic that they anticipated would produce disproportionate outcomes due to diligent efforts. This plan was referred to as the Hudson strategy since it integrated activities across the Hudson River, which runs up to Canada from New York. The British army anticipated to separate New England rebels from the southern and Middle colonies that were moderate. Britain was of the view that such isolation would strangle the American rebels’ right to submission[4]. The main setback was the poor execution of the plan and not the strategy itself. The outstanding leadership skills portrayed by George Washington and the British leader’s strategic errors promoted the conquest of the American colonies.

The British tactic aimed at destroying the Northern rebellion, and they came close to defeating the Continental militiamen several times. However, the triumphs at Princeton and Trenton in 1776 and the beginning of 1777 reestablished patriotic expectations. Further, the Saratoga triumph, which stopped the British from advancing from Canada, resulted in a French intervention in the colonies’ support[5]. The beginning of the War saw the absence of an expert army for the American colonies. The militiamen were casually armed, underwent slight training, and lacked uniforms. The militia units occasionally served and did not go through adequate training nor learn the discipline expected from skilled soldiers. Furthermore, native militias were hesitant to leave their homes, thus making them unreachable for comprehensive operations. The continental army endured drastically due to the absence of efficient training schedules and inexperienced sergeants and officers.

The British army had successfully operated in America before the Revolutionary War. It was tempting for the British to assume that similar logistics would apply during the American Revolution. There were differences in the British structure of logistical management[6]. The logistics during the eighteenth century were accountable to several executive sectors, including the Navy Board, the War Office, and the Board of Ordnance. However, the most considerable portion of accountability rested on the treasury. The revolution onset collapsed this system drastically. An example of patriotic boards’ action was cutting off the provisions intended for the Boston army. This significantly impacted their involvement in the War. The situation made it necessary for the British military to seek Europe’s assistance since preserving massive armed forces over great distances was largely difficult. It would take three months for ships to convey across the Atlantic Ocean; thus, briefings emanating from London were mostly nonoperational when they arrived. Before the War, American colonies were autonomous political and socio-economic entities and lacked a distinct region of definitive strategic significance. This illustrates that a city’s collapse in America did not stop wars all the more so after the forfeiture of main commune areas such as New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia.

The British influence relied on the Noble Navy, whose supremacy allowed for their resupply of expeditionary powers while averting admittance to adversary ports. However, most of the American populace was agricultural, received France’s support, and barricade runners grounded within the Dutch Caribbean, hence protecting their economy. The American colonies’ terrestrial extent and inadequate human resources indicated the British incompetence to concurrently carry out military processes and inhabit the region while lacking local maintenance. The campaign held in 1775 portrayed how Britain overrated their troops’ capabilities and undervalued the colonial militiamen, making it necessary to reassess their strategies and tactics. However, it guaranteed the Patriots an opportunity to undertake resourcefulness, which led to the rapid loss of British influence over most colonies.

Several intercontinental contexts of the American Revolution contributed to its outcomes. The first context was Britain’s political agenda[7]. The British avoided the intervention of foreign states during the War since it would lower their chances of conquering the battle. They isolated themselves from other allies since they could not afford to reimburse them[8]. Additionally, Britain was becoming extremely powerful and failed to locate partners who would threaten the Spanish or French Home Front. The second aspect was France’s plan to reduce British influence and avenge them. The French also offered their support to the American colonies in numerous ways. They provided material backing in May 1776, established a treaty of Commerce and Amity in February 1778, which resulted in recognition and trade, and formed an alliance treaty in 1778 for a military agreement[9]. There was martial intervention between the French and American colonies. The third international aspect of the War was Spain’s plan, which integrated numerous tactics. Their main objectives were to bring back Gibraltar and lower British influence and authority. Spain formed a military intervention in 1779 and joined the War, not as America’s allies, but France’s supporters.

The fourth aspect was the circumstances in Holland. The Anglo-Dutch associations turned sour as the Dutch were not in support of Britain due to their trade relations with France and America. This resulted in War raging between Britain and Holland. The British anticipated doing away with Holland’s support to the French and the rebels, which was unsuccessful[10]. The enlightenment notions also promoted the turn of events during the War. The enlightenment was a scientific and cultural movement initiated in Europe that emphasized aspects of rationality and reason over misconception. Thomas Hobbes, an English theorist, developed the social contract idea. Additionally, John Locke, another theorist, established that individuals have the liberty to the preservation of life, property, and other additional attributes from the governing administration. These notions influenced the American Revolution’s outcomes as the colonists were dedicated to achieving the right to liberty, life, and the search for contentment.

The primary revolution outcome was the liberty of the thirteen once British protectorates in North America. Additionally, the revolution served as a philosophical refinement of monarchists in the thirteen former British protectorates. Most of these royalists were forced to move to Canada after the War, and among them were several slaves who fought as British allies in the War. The Revolutionary War had several consequences, including the death of approximately 7,200 Americans due to the War. An additional 10,000 succumbed to disease and similar exposure while roughly 8,500 perished in the British jails[11]. Another consequence was the escape of some slaves in Georgia and South Carolina. The nations also implemented transcribed constitutions that ensured religious liberty, heightened the powers and form of the legislature, transformed inheritance regulations, and advanced the tax system.

[1] Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J Albert. 1981. “France and the American Revolution Seen as Tragedy”. In Diplomacy And Revolution , 73-105. Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia.

[2] Spring, Matthew H. 2014. “The Army’s Task”. In With Zeal And With Bayonets Only, 3-23. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

[3] Resch, John, and Walter Sargent. 2007. “Incompatible Allies”. In  War & Society In The American Revolution , 191-214. Northern Illinois University Press.

[4] Moyer, Paul, History 309. “The International Dimensions Of The Revolutionary War”. Presentation.

[5] Resch, John, and Walter Sargent. 2007. “Incompatible Allies”. In  War & Society In The American Revolution , 191-214. Northern Illinois University Press.

[6] Bowler, Arthur. n.d. “Logistics and Operations in the American Revolution”. In Logistics And The Failure Of The British Army In America, 1775-1783, 55-71.

[7] Moyer, Paul, History 309. “The International Dimensions Of The Revolutionary War”. Presentation.

[8] Resch, John, and Walter Sargent. 2007. “Incompatible Allies”. In  War & Society In The American Revolution , 191-214. Northern Illinois University Press.

[9] Tiedemann, Joseph S, Eugene R Fingerhut, and Robert W Venables. 2009. “Loyalty is Now Bleeding in New Jersey, Motivations and Mentalities of the Disaffected”. In The Other Loyalists , 45-77. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

[10] Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J Albert. 1981. “France and the American Revolution Seen as Tragedy”. In Diplomacy And Revolution , 73-105. Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia.

[11] Spring, Matthew H. 2014. “The Army’s Task”. In With Zeal And With Bayonets Only, 3-23. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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How Americans Won the Revolutionary War? Research Paper

The American War for Independence is the key event in the American history because of its significance for the nation’s development and for forming the nation’s identity. The victory of the American colonists in the conflict with the British Empire is also significant because the Revolutionary War was won in spite of the British obvious military superiority. From this point, a lot of researchers are inclined to focus on the causes of the colonists’ victory as the example of the people’s struggle for their liberty and rights as an independent nation.

Thus, the Revolutionary War resulted in the victory of the American colonists because the experienced British army was defeated with the help of the new military techniques, approaches, and strategies, the Americans had the territory advantage, and the help of the French military and officers was significant to oppose the British attacks.

The American colonies took considerable risks while planning the rebellion against the British rule because the British military was famous for its equipment, for the usage of the most successful strategies, and for the experience of officers. Moreover, the Royal Navy was the most developed and influential navy in Europe.

On the contrary, the American colonies did no have the single army. The colonists fought in the first battles basing on the united army formed with the help of the colonies’ militia, and the Continental Army was created in order to fight for the interests of the Americans as the nation (Henretta and Brody). From this point, the opposition of the American colonists could be perceived as the insignificant conflict in which the British military could win the obvious victory.

Nevertheless, the American colonists achieved the major goal of their revolution and ended the rule of the British Empire in the colonies. The British army was defeated, and historians determine several significant aspects to explain this phenomenon.

The first important aspect is the fact that the British army could not orient successfully at the territories of the American colonies. Thus, the colonists had the advantage of knowing the landscape. The figure of George Washington is necessary to be discussed with references to the questions of the colonists’ advantages and strategies.

Knowing the colonies’ landscape well, Washington and officers could develop the effective plans of attacking the British military, and they chose the most advantageous positions to set their forces. As a result, the advantage of home-field contributed to the effective realization of Washington’s strategies (Dziennik). From this perspective, the next important feature of the American military is the non-traditional approach to fighting.

The power of the British army was in the traditional approach to planning strategies and developing battles. In contrast, Washington focused on the unexpected approach to fighting, making the enemy be confused with the American army’s strategy. The lack of the military experience became insignificant because of the new methods to develop the war actions.

The risks taken by Washington in realization of the definite war operations resulted in the British army’s losses because of the operations’ unexpectedness. Furthermore, the strategies used by the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War determined the main aspects of the military history of the Americans.

Thus, Knott pays attention to the fact that “it is a military history that explains, in turn, some of the distinctive features of American, French, and British political cultures immediately after that revolutionary war” (Knott 20). The military history is important for the development of any nation, and it is especially important when the history of the country is associated with the struggle of the nation for independence.

One more advantage of the colonists which is stated by many researchers was the French support of the American army and the help of the French officers in developing the strategies. The French army was the well-known enemy of the British military in many war conflicts.

Thus, the French officers knew the particular features of the British officers’ approaches (Knott 22). The first victories assured the American colonists in the fact that the right direction was chosen to achieve the nation’s independence. The American colonists’ patriotism and the enormous desire to achieve the independence were the decisive aspects to encourage soldiers to continue their fight.

According to Knott, “approved or disapproved by the future conservative, the changes effected by this war encompassed notions of liberty and authority, patriotism and the nation, representation and the role of the ‘people’ in politics” (Knott 19). The American War for Independence played the significant role in the further development of the country as the union of the colonies.

The American colonists won the Revolutionary War because it was the war for independence and against the discriminative laws imposed by the British Empire.

The American colonists saw the real goal of their fight, and the Continental Army’s officers did not fear to take risks and use the new approaches to defeat the enemy. The superiority of the British military became mythical when the British soldiers had to fight at the unfamiliar territories, and the home-field advantage along with the French support contributed to the victory of the American colonists.

Works Cited

Dziennik, Matthew. “Through an Imperial Prism: Land, Liberty, and Highland Loyalism in the War of American Independence”. Journal of British Studies 50.2 (2011): 332-358. Print.

Henretta, James, and David Brody. America: A Concise History, Volume I: To 1877 . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. Print.

Knott, Sarah. “Sensibility and the American War for Independence”. American Historical Review 109.1 (2004): 19-40. Print.

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Revolutionary War Essay

The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the thirteen colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary war with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the United States of America. The American Revolution did not have sudden changes in structure and nature of society but represented social change in addition to political change influenced by George Washington and Ben Franklin who helped lead to overthrow British authority.

There were not many social effects to the American Revolution. The American Revolution didn’t produce a total upheaval of the previously existing social and institutional structures. It was responsible for popularizing concepts of the Enlightenment, including the rule of law, liberty, equality, and a government of the people. The colonists in America did not have those privileges and therefore uprising for freedom against England. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence about the natural rights of Americans to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’Such ideas came from the Enlightenment, which soon afterwards led to the American Revolution. Many British traditions such as land inheritance laws were almost inevitable and were removed quickly. There were attempts to promote the role of women in society, headed by Abigail Adams, who whispered more than a few ideas to her husband, John, that may have influenced the early American papers more than a small one.

The American Revolution was more revolutionary because of political changes. The first leaders were faced with the unenviable task of trying to build a new nation, to rebuild a working government after the war, to establish peace with foreigners, to restore trade, and to do so without money. It was based on the concept of replacing older forms of feudal-type relationships with a social structure based on republicanism and democracy. The power was changed to a democracy instead of a direct lineage (or heritage) or even being overthrown by war. They established a republican government out of what had been a monarchical one. They were later able to vote instead of just a small handful of wealthy white men. It became more of the people’s voice. This helped uplift many minorities in society. They wanted to include more men in the political process including farmers and urban artisans.

The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the thirteen colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary war with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the United States of America. The American Revolution did not have sudden changes in structure and nature of society but represented social change in addition to political change influenced by George Washington and Ben Franklin who helped lead to overthrow British authority. The American Revolution endured many things. If it wasn’t for people like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson we would still be apart of England today.Many people partook in the American Revolution to give us Americans the freedom and rights we have today.

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