American Revolutionary War

"The American Revolution," [Garrett] writes, "was a pilot flame that leaped the Atlantic and lighted holocaust in the Old World. But its character was misunderstood ... It was a revolution exemplary." ... [His] account of the tasks facing the victorious American revolutionaries: "The immediate business was to create a national government; and many people demanding to know why that was necessary at all. Why couldn't they just go on being free?" Looking eastward, across the Atlantic, "the second imperative was to isolate the new nation from the malign influence of European politics ...."

John Adams noted in a letter of 1815 to Thomas Jefferson, "What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain [how] public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies."

The traditional view was that the American Revolution was a struggle for liberty. But this interpretation was displaced by "progressive" historians ... How to explain all the pamphlets and newspapers articles ... written about liberty? ... Then in the 1960s, a number of historians claimed that the American Revolution was not about liberty but about a republican effort to promote civic virtue. But Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn affirmed that the American Revolution was primarily about ideas, and Yale historian Robert R. Palmer maintained that the American Revolution was radical.

On December 12th [1776], Congress fled Philadelphia as British forces approached ... After Washington had surprised and routed the Hessians, mercenary soldiers recruited by the British and camped in Trenton, New Jersey, he appealed to Morris for funds with which to buy information about British troop movements ... Congress enacted price controls [and] the result was chronic shortages. Hence, the misery of Washington's 12,000 soldiers at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania where, during the winter of 1777, they huddled in the cold without enough food, shoes or blankets as well as forage for horses.

Franklin had more to do with founding the American republic than anyone else. As American representative in London, he helped persuade Parliament to repeal despised Stamp Act taxes, giving America an additional decade to prepare for armed conflict with Britain. He was on the committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. He went to France and secured military help as well as a formal alliance, without which America probably wouldn’t have won the Revolutionary War. He helped negotiate the peace with Britain.

[T]hat type of fury against writs of assistance ... helped fuel the Revolution, the conflict in which British citizens living in the New World took up arms against their own government. As Alan Barth ... put it in his book ...

Arbitrary arrest and arbitrary searches conducted under the infamous writs of assistance and general warrants were among the bitterest grievances against George III recited in the American Declaration of Independence. When they established their independence Americans were determined that no government of their own creation should ever engage in these forms of despotism.

It is apparent that what Washington is really remembered for is the Washington of the Revolution. He is remembered as the man who crossed the ice-choked Delaware River on Christmas night to attack the Hessian mercenaries, and who shivered with his men at Valley Forge. He is remembered as the man who held the American army together even though many of his soldiers had to function without pay and without shoes. In short, Washington is most loved when he is remembered as a relatively powerless rebel fighting against a powerful and dangerous enemy. The Washington of legend is Washington the underdog ...

Two consequences of the American Revolution are important here: first, debts incurred ... convinced many of the need for a centralized government with taxing power; second, with the British eliminated, there was no effective brake on the formation of a national State. The major competitor had been kicked out, and the field was clear for those who desired [one], provided it was not the British State. But a new State (especially one born in revolution against monarchy) faced the considerable problem of legitimacy. A solution was readily found in a written Constitution authorized by "the people."

In order to keep the country out of senseless and unjust wars, the Framers wrote provisions ... that would make it difficult to enter into any but the most necessary of wars ... The men who drafted the Constitution knew war well ... [T]hey had just recently engaged in warfare themselves. Fighting the American Revolution against their own government over the course of eight years had a direct impact on many of them. Of course George Washington had led the American forces against the British, and many of the constitutional delegates had lost friends and property throughout the course of war.

The upshot is that the contending groups—the "radicals" and the "conservatives"—had different economic and political interests and thus different views about independence from Great Britain. When British usurpations made independence an imperative even for many conservatives, these groups disagreed about how the new nation should be governed ... Jensen writes,

The interpretation of the Revolution is often confused by the insistence that all revolutionists were radicals. Probably most radicals were revolutionists, but a large number of revolutionists were not radicals ...

School kids are taught that the basis of the American Revolution was the desire of the colonies not to be ruled by a King. But this is a superficial view. It is also misleading to say that the colonists were driven to revolution by taxes or trade monopolies. These were both symptoms of a larger reality that had begun to dawn on them, namely that they were capable of self-government and that therefore the empire was imposing a wholly unnecessary despotism on them. They didn't need to be ruled by some far-flung government on the other side of the world. They could rule themselves ...

[A]t the tender age of seven, ... I fell madly in love with Walt Disney's rendition of General Francis Marion. This legendary Southern freedom fighter harassed the British during the Revolutionary War and became known as the elusive Swamp Fox ... After I had exhausted everything that the library had on the Swamp Fox, I began reading accounts of the American Revolution, just to gain a better understanding of what my hero had been up against. My history classes ... were disappointing, however. They dealt with prominent battles and dates and not with the true meaning of liberty.

By the ... 1760s and 70s, the Lockean ideals of individual liberty and the people's state had crossed the Atlantic to the American colonies, where they became the creed of the founding generation ... [T]hey rose in resistance to an arbitrary tax regime ... King George had broken the terms and conditions of the social contract. So the American people no longer had any obligation to keep him on as their security provider. He was fired, and the Declaration of Independence was his pink slip. George didn't take his firing well, so it took the Revolutionary War to escort him off the premises.

Americans seem to have forgotten why the Founding Fathers prohibited government from spying on them. ... Judge Gerhard Gesell, in a 1974 ruling on illegal Nixon administration searches, observed, "The American Revolution was sparked in part by the complaints of the colonists against the issuance of writs of assistance, pursuant to which the king's revenue officers conducted unrestricted, indiscriminate searches of persons and homes to uncover contraband." Unfortunately, the revolutionary spirit now animating Washington is fighting to replace the right to privacy with the right to intrude.

[W]e might recall what John Adams, writing in 1818, said about the revolution. It was effected, he declared, "before the war commenced. The revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people." It was exactly what was in the hearts and minds of the people, their character, that constituted the opposition to nationalism in 1787 and explains why the Constitution put so many restrictions on the powers ... Above all things these Americans cherished freedom. They had come to it by way of hardship and it stuck to their ribs. Many of them were but a generation away from indentured servitude ...

It is tools—not politicians—that have improved the world. Consider some historical examples ... [S]core a big one for the power of ideas in 1776: The American Revolution—and its concept of individual liberty—brought forth a social-political idea that matched the world-changing ideas of science and technology. For it created the environment for free people to develop the scientific and technological breakthroughs that ultimately benefitted mankind in such enormous ways ... [F]ortunately for mankind, the human race has been characterized by practical, visionary men with new insights.

There is a heroic side to the American Revolution, and surely no U.S. war since has been nearly as just in its cause. But the political shenanigans that led to war, the war itself, and its aftermath all deserve more criticism. Sadly enough, those who support the federal government ... are only as hypocritical as the colonists who tarred and feathered their antiwar countrymen in the name of liberty, ... the rebels who destroyed privately owned tea in the name of property rights, the Founders who waged a war against tyranny only to create a regime as formidable as King George's ...

[T]he American Revolution did not end in 1776; in fact, the Revolution began a year before the official Bicentennial, in 1775, and it ended eight grueling years later, in 1783 ... The American revolutionaries set themselves a goal: to transform reality so as to bring the rhetoric of the Declaration into living practice. The American Revolution was the process of struggle by which the revolutionaries pursued their goal and achieved their victory ... The American revolutionaries pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to their struggle for liberty and independence.

Financing for the American War for Independence included loans and subsidies from the French government as well as the modest sums Congress received as a result of its requisitions upon the states. But paper money played a central role in Revolutionary War finance ... Pelatiah Webster, in his history of "Continental Money," tells us that when ... increased taxation for the support of the war was under consideration by the Continental Congress, a member arose and indignantly asked "if he was expected to help tax people, when they could go to the printing-office and get money by the cart load."

No modern revolution was deeper rooted in taxation than the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies ... The American independence movement ... began in 1766 when colonial leaders met to protest British taxes under the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act Congress, as it was called, was the real birthplace of the United States ... In the end the Americans revolted when Parliament adopted the kind of taxation the colonists said they were willing to pay. You could justifiably say that the American Revolution occurred, not because we objected to taxes without representation, but because we objected to taxes, period.

An RMA publication claims Robert Morris was an "American patriot who ... helped finance our Revolutionary War ..." Did he finance [it]? Just the opposite ... Morris was a member of the Secret Committee of Correspondence in ... 1775 [which] was created to procure, pay for, and distribute arms, powder, cannons, clothing and other war needs ... [He] became chairman of the Secret Committee of Trade in 1776 ... One of the benefits [he] enjoyed was the use of the government's money to finance his private operations. If a venture was successful, the money was replaced with his own.

[B]y year-end 1776 [Paine] was with General George Washington. The untrained, poorly paid Americans, typically serving for a year, were routed by well-trained British soldiers and ruthless Hessian mercenaries. Paine wondered how he could boost morale. By evening campfire he began writing a new pamphlet [which was published] as an eight-page essay, American Crisis. On Christmas Day 1776, George Washington read it to his soldiers. ... Within hours, Washington's fired-up soldiers launched a surprise attack on sleeping Hessians in Trenton, giving Americans a much-needed battle victory.

[T]he American Revolution provides an important lesson. Even after the Revolutionary War had begun, most Americans, including many colonial leaders, favored reconciliation with England. Most Americans still considered themselves to be loyal British subjects, and were willing to continue to do so, if only the King would correct his most grievous transgressions. In early 1776—more than eight months after the Battle of Lexington—colonists suddenly began to support the idea of American independence. This dramatic change can be largely attributed to the work of one man: Thomas Paine.

Here's a quote from [Arthur] Ekirch: "Once in the Continental Army the American soldier was often too deeply imbued with revolutionary ideas of individual liberty and equalitarian democracy to take kindly to strict military discipline." Right on. "... An even more serious threat to the maintenance of an army was the prevalence of desertion and mutiny among the soldiers." This is during the Revolution. "The extreme hardships and deprivations suffered by the army ... helped to explain the large number of such incidents which occurred in the years from 1777 to 1783 ..."

In part because of the vast expenses of the French and Indian War, Britain had levied a string of new taxes on the American colonies ... [I]n June 1775, Congress unanimously chose [Washington] as Commander and Chief of the Continental Army ... In November 1776, British General William Howe was successful in driving Washington's forces from New York ... A crucial reversal of fortune came in 1778 when France entered the war ... The French army arrived in 1780 to help Washington secure victory over ... Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown and ensure America's ultimate victory in the war.

The American revolutionaries, in separating themselves from Great Britain and forming their new nation, adopted the Lockean doctrine ... In making their revolution, then, the Americans cast their lot, permanently, with a contractual theory or justification for government ... These 13 separate republics, in order to wage their common war against the British Empire, each sent representatives to the Continental Congress, and then later formed a Confederation, again with severely limited central powers, to help fight the British.

Paine wrote 'Common Sense,' an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany ... In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again ... It is probable that we should have had the Revolution without Tom Paine. Certainly it could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.

Along the Atlantic coast [of this continent], between wilderness and sea, are scattered little English colonies. Not all the colonies rebel against England. Canada remains loyal to the King, and among the others only Virginia and Massachusetts have any real heart for the fight. The war drags along, a little frontier war fought with valor by a few rebels and neglected by England, whose vital interests are elsewhere. An excursion of French gunboats helps decide the issue. Peace is signed, and thirteen colonies without a common interest do not know whether to unite or to be separate nations.

In proportion ... to the Revolutionary War population of the colonies, 25,000 would be equivalent today to two-and-a-half million ... We're being oppressed by England. Let's fight for independence. Two-and-a-half million people will die, but we'll have independence. Would you have second thoughts? You might ... I want to make that 25,000, which seems like an insignificant figure, ... palpable and real and not to be minimized ... Who did the Revolutionary War benefit? Who benefited from independence? It's interesting that we just assume that everybody benefited from independence.