American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political and military action of the American colonists who overthrew British control, and created a new nation in 1776, the "United States of America."

This article deals with political issues. For the military history see American revolution: Military history

Tensions rise after 1763

After the Seven Years War the French threat ended. London decided to start taxing the colonies to pay for past and future wars, and imposed new controls on the colonial economy and on westward expansion. London insisted that the colonists pay a share of the cost of empire through new taxes, but refused to allow representation in Parliament. The Americans rallied around the idea that no Englishman could be taxed without his consent, that is, "No taxation without representation."

Ominously London sent thousands of regular army troops--was this to protect the colonists from nonexistent threats, or to protect the Royal officials from the anger of the people? Nothing seemed more dangerous to the precious political liberties of the Americans than the sort of standing army Britain was forcing upon them. The colonists responded by setting up their own shadow government, including local committees and (beginning in 1774) a Continental Congress. The Empire thought it knew how to suppress rebellions--in 1715 and 1745 it had ruthlessly crushed the Highlanders in Scotland; in the 17th century it had taken control of Ireland in campaigns that killed thousands of Catholic rebels and left the Protestants in total domination.

In Search of Independence: 1774-1776

The revolution occurred in the hearts and minds of Americans in 1774-1776 as they realized that continued subservience to the British Empire was impossible. Tensions came to a head in Massachusetts. In late 1773 the Boston radicals disguised as Indians dumped a shipment of tea into the harbor in protest. This Boston Tea Party angered the British leadership and next spring Parliament passed the Coercive Acts that imposed near martial law and suspended traditional civil liberties and economic freedom. Congress denounced the Acts, called for boycotts of British goods, and recommended that the militias ready their weapons. Georgia became the 13th colony represented in the Congress.

Canada and 16 smaller British colonies in North America remained loyal. The French Catholics in Canada much preferred the tolerance of London to the anti-Catholic Yankees; they stayed loyal, as did the wealthy sugar planters who controlled the numerous West Indian colonies. East Florida, West Florida and Newfoundland were so small, so new, and so dominated by the British army and navy that they stayed loyal. Nova Scotia (just north of Maine) was the curious case. It had been settled largely by New Englanders, who favored Congress. Yet it was an isolated island, easily controlled by the Royal Navy from its powerful base in Halifax. Protests were put down, and the people stayed neutral, pouring their emotions into religious revival rather than revolution.

The 13 revolting colonies were the largest, richest, and most developed in the Empire. London had no intention of letting them go free. General Thomas Gage fortified Boston and raided nearby towns where rebels had stored munitions. The people of Massachusetts responded by setting up a provisional government, training militia units, and detecting and suppressing Loyalists and spies. A system of "minute men" was established, so that any alarm would be answered immediately.

The Americans had sympathizers in Britain, but not enough. Parliament rejected conciliation by a 3 to 1 margin, and Gage was ordered to aggressively enforce the Coercion laws. More troops arrived, along with the generals who would later replace Gage and command the main British armies during the war, Sir William Howe (fall 1775 to spring 1778), Sir Henry Clinton (1778 to 1782) and John Burgoyne. All of them failed at their mission--perhaps because political considerations in London made it impossible to remove careless generals who repeatedly lost tactical opportunities, quarreled or failed to coordinate with one another, and muffled the strategic designs that London drew up.

Washington took charge of the siege of Boston, June 1775-March 1776, and as Ellis (2005) shows this was the formative event in his development as a military and political leader. The siege revealed the enormous logistical problems the army had to overcome. Washington met the challenge with his trademark determination, leadership ability, and sound decisionmaking. He also, however, exhibited a stubborn, aloof, severe personality that "virtually precluded intimacy." Washington, dubbed "His Excellency" by the adoring American public, also came to know and evaluate many of his future staff members and lieutenants during the siege.

Gender, race, class

Pybus (2005) estimates that about 20,000 slaves defected to the British, of whom about 8,000 died from disease or wounds or were recaptured by the Patriots, and 12,000 left the country at the end of the war, for freedom in Canada or slavery in the West Indies.

Baller (2006) xxamines family dynamics and mobilization for the Revolution in central Massachusetts. He reports that warfare and the farming culture were sometimes incompatible. Some militiamen found that farming life failed to prepare them for wartime stresses and the rigors of camp life. Rugged individualism and military regimentation did not always mesh. Birth order shaped military recruitment, reagring older and younger sons. Family responsibilities and a suffocating patriarchy sometimes impeded mobilization. Harvesting duties and family emergencies forced some to have to choose between home and the Patriot cause. Family ties sometimes involved tensions between patriots and their loyalist relatives. The Revolution's impact on patriarchy and inheritance patterns was toward more equalitarianism.

McDonnell, (2006) shows the major complicating factor in Virginia's efforts to raise forces for the war, the conflicting interests of several distinct social classes among whites in the colony more strongly militated against a "unified" commitment to military service. The Assembly had to weight and balance the competing demands of elite slaveowning planters, slaveholding and nonslaveholding "middling sorts," yeoman farmers, and indentured servants, among others. Its solution involved deferments, taxes, military service substitute, and conscription legislation. Unresolved class conflict, however, rendered these laws ineffective. Violent protests, conscript evasion, and large-scale desertion left Virginia's contributions to the war effort at embarassingly low levels. As late as the 1781 Battle of Yorktown, Virginia continued to be mired in class divisiveness as its native son, George Washington, made desperate appeals for troops.

Bibliography

• Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, eds. A Companion to the American Revolution. (2000). 778pp.
• ABC CLIO encyclopedia
• Boatner encyclopedia

Surveys

• John R. Alden. A History of the American Revolution (1989), general survey; strong on military (ISBN: 0306803666)
• Ferling; John. Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution Oxford University Press, 2002 online edition
• John Ferling, ed., The World Turned Upside Down: The American

Victory in the War of Independence (1988).

• Higginbotham, Don. Revolution in America: Considerations and Comparisons. U. of Virginia Pr., 2005. 230 pp.
• Bruce Lancaster. The American Revolution (American Heritage Library) (ISBN: 0828102813) (1985), heavily illustrated
• William Edward Hartpole Lecky, The American Revolution, 1763-1783 1898 by leading British scholar; online edition
• McCullough, David. 1776. Simon & Schuster, 2005. 386 pp.
• James Kirby Martin. In the Course of Human Events: An Interpretive Exploration of the American Revolution (1979), short survey (ISBN: 0882957953)
• Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (1982) online edition
• Miller, John C.
• Weintraub, Stanley. Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire: 1775-1783. Free Pr., 2005. 375 pp.

Surveys: Military emphasis

• Black, Jeremy. War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1991. British perspective
• Higginbottom, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practices 1763-1789, 1971, wide-ranging survey by leading scholar
• Marston, Daniel. The American Revolution, 1774-1783. Routledge. 2003. 95 pp survey online edition
• Mackesy, Piers. War for America, 2nd edition, 1993. British perspective
• James Kirby Martin and Mark E. Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military Origin of the Republic, 1763–1789 (1982), short
• Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1979.

Coming of Revolution

• Carl Becker. The Eve of the Revolution: A Chronicle of the Breach with England. (1918) online edition short survey by leading scholar
• Gipson, Lawrence Henry; The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (1954) online edition
• Labaree, Benjamin Woods. The Boston Tea Party (1964).
• Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to

Britain, 1765–1776 (1972).

• Miller, John C. Origins of the American Revolution (1943) online edition
• Rossiter, Clinton. The First American Revolution;: The American Colonies on the eve of independence (1966)
• Ray Raphael. The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. (2002) emphasis on rural Massachusetts
• John C. Wahlke; ed. The Causes of the American Revolution 1967 short excerpts. online edition

Atlantic and Empire

• Flavell, Julie and Conway, Stephen, eds. Britain and America Go to War: The Impact of War and Warfare in Anglo-America, 1754-1815. U. Press of Florida, 2004. 284 pp.
• Gould, Eliga H. and Onuf, Peter S., eds. Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World. Johns Hopkins U. Pr., 2005. 381 pp.
• Carla H. Hay. "Catharine Macaulay and the American Revolution." The Historian. 56#2 1994. pp 301+. online edition; she was an English writer and friend of America
• P. J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 of Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. William Roger Louis

(1998)

• Marshall, Peter and Glyn Williams; The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution (1980) onine edition
• Morrison, Michael A. and Zook, Melinda S., eds. Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World. 2004. 224 pp.
• George M. Wrong; Canada and the American Revolution: The Disruption of the First British Empire. 1935. online edition

Ideology and Republicanism

• T. H. Breen, "Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising," Journal of American History 84 (1997), 13–39. in JSTOR
• Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. 2d ed. (original publ. 1976). Oxford U. Pr., 2005. 326 pp.
• James T. Kloppenberg, "The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse," Journal of American History 74 (1987), 9–33. in JSTOR
• Larkin, Edward. Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution. Cambridge U. Pr., 2005. 215 pp.
• Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997)
• Moses Coit Tyler; The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (1897) online edition
• Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992).
• Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969), a dense but highly influential study

Race, Class, Gender

• Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. Knopf, 2005. 197 pp.
• Kaplan, Emma Nogrady and Sidney Kaplan. The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution. (1989) online edition.
• Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. Viking, 2005. 512 pp.
• Pybus, Cassadra. "Jefferson's Faulty Math: the Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution." William and Mary Quarterly 2005 62(2): 243-264. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: in History Cooperative
• Quarles, Benjamin
• Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier. Knopf, 2004. 417 pp.

Social and economic history

• Baller, William. "Farm Families and the American Revolution." Journal of Family History (2006) 31(1): 28-44. Issn: 0363-1990 Fulltext: online in Ebsco
• T. H. Breen; The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence Oxford U.P. 2004 online edition
• J. Franklin Jameson; The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926) online edition
• McDonnell, Michael A. "Class War: Class Struggles During the American Revolution in Virginia." William and Mary Quarterly 2006 63(2): 305-344. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: online at History Cooperative
• Tiedemann, Joseph S. "Presbyterianism and the American Revolution in the Middle Colonies." Church History 2005 74(2): 306-344. Issn: 0009-6407 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Dorothy Denneen Volo and James M. Volo; Daily Life during the American Revolution Greenwood Press, 2003 online edition

State, regional and local studies

• Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (1981)
• Jeffrey J. Crow, Larry E. Tise, eds; The Southern Experience in the American Revolution (1978) online edition
• Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and their World (1976). re Massachusetts
• David Hawke; In the Midst of a Revolution. (1961) on Philadelphia. online edition
• Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790

(1982);

• Mitnick, Barbara J., ed. New Jersey in the American Revolution. Rutgers U. Pr., 2005. 268 pp.
• Allan Nevins; The American States during and after the Revolution, 1775-1789 (1927) online edition
• Tiedemann, Joseph S. and Fingerhut, Eugene R., eds. The Other New York: The American Revolution beyond New York City, 1763-1787. State U. of New York Pr., 2005. 246 pp.
• Wilson, David K. The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780. U. of South Carolina Pr., 2005. 341 pp.

Soldiers

• Atwood, R. The Hessians, 1980.
• Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and their World (1976). re Massachusetts
• Shy, John. A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, 1976.

British army & Loyalists

• George A. Billias, ed., George Washington's Opponents (1969) essays on the chief British generals
• Smith, P.H. Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy, 1964.
• Claude Halstead Van Tyne; The Loyalists in the American Revolution (1929) online edition

Allies, diplomacy, naval

• Bemis. A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution, 1935.
• Dull, Jonathan. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1775-1787, 1975.
• Dull, Jonathan. A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution, 1985.
• Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds. Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778 (1981)
• Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds. Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of Paris of 1783 (1986).
• Kennett, Lee. French Forces in America, 1977.
• Syrett, David. The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1989.

The Civilian Founders: biographies

• Brodsky, Alyn. Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. 2004. 404 pp.
• Burnard, Trevor. "The Founding Fathers in Early American Historiography: a View from Abroad." William and Mary Quarterly (2005) 62(4): 745-764. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: in History Cooperative
• Benjamin H. Irvin. Sam Adams: Son of Liberty, Father of Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2002. 176pp.
• Ferling, John. John Adams: A Life (1992).
• Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (vol 1 1948),
• Lynn Withey, Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams (1981)
• Gordon S. Wood. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004).

The Military Founders: biographies

• George A. Billias, ed., George Washington's Generals (1964);
• Theodore Thayer; Nathanael Greene: Strategist of the American Revolution (1960) online edition

George Washington

• John Alden, George Washington: A Biography (1984);
• Freeman, Douglas Southall George Washington: A Biography (7 vols., New York, 1948–1957); also one-vol abridged edition
• Ellis, Joseph J. "Washington Takes Charge." Smithsonian 2005 35(10): 92-96, 98-103. Issn: 0037-7333 Fulltext: at Ebsco
• John Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (1988)
• James Thomas Flexner, George Washington (4 vols., 1965–1972).
• Lengel, Edward G. General George Washington: A Military Life. Random House, 2005. 450 pp.
• Palmer, Dave. The Way of the Fox: American Strategy in the War of Independence (1975)
• Garry Wills. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984).

Primary sources

• Cynthia A. Kierner, ed. Southern Women in Revolution, 1776-1800: Personal and Political Narratives, 1998. 253 pp.
• Lib of America edition
• S. E. Morison; Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764-1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (1923) online edition