American Revolution Reconsidered
Was it more than what it seemed?
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When is a “revolution” a “civil war,” or vice versa?
I’ve asked this before, and satisfactory answers are still subjective. Years ago, a TV network “agonized” for months (they said) over deciding to call the mess in Iraq a “civil war.” But even the “experts” in the Intergalactic Naming Authority (AKA the internet) have trouble making the distinction. Some in the Southern Confederacy called their 1861-65 conflict a “revolution,” and so do some postwar commentators, both North and South. Some call that conflict a “crusade,” but Eisenhower called the war in Europe a “crusade,” too.
All's well that ends.
Murphy’s Laws of Technology
Americans call the 1772/4/5/6-1783 conflict their “revolution,” but more accurately, it was their “war for independence.” Another issue is when it really “started.” Some say the 14-15 December 1774 attacks on Ft William and Mary, New Hampshire was the first battle of the conflict. The attacks came in partial response to an October Order-in-Council forbidding the import of arms and powder to the American colonies. Americans used some cannons seized there at Bunker Hill the next June. It should be fair to say, then, that, since the traditional beginning of the war was at Lexington in April 1775 to stop British troops from seizing arms, that the conflict really began the previous January. But, then, there’s the Gaspee Affair in June 1772, when Rhode Island Sons of Liberty looted the stranded British revenue schooner which was enforcing hated taxes.
Who cares?
We should, because when and over what matters as to what the conflict was over. What were they really fighting for? No one talked about independence until the spring of 1776, over a year into the war. Even after the war started, the elite Englishmen/proto Americans in the Congress were at odds over what to do. Separation from England seemed drastic, even to those who were doing the fighting. Independence sentiments weren’t universal in the American colonies by any means. Up to July 1776, most Americans had little idea there was even a war going on. Afterwards, the conflict spread itself around until nearly 25% of the American colonists directly took part in the conflict, as in fighting on land or at sea in any capacity, organized or unorganized.
The latter helps define the conflict.
The unorganized nature of not just the state militias, but the privateers before the Declaration of Independence points to something other than a revolution, but not much. The Declaration, therefore, helped define the already ongoing war as one of separation…but that in 1776 was rare. So the colonies declared themselves independent, did they? Don’t mean much if their mother country’s soldiers occupy the largest cities, does it?
Maybe not, but then…
That 25% number represents those who actually fought in the war. But then there’s that teenage girl in Boston who provided a scrap of flannel from her nightgown so her friend could muffle the oars of the boat that carried the message to Paul Revere and his friends. We don’t know her name; no one talks about her much. But she, like thousands of other “civilians,” helped the fighters and messengers in big and small ways. While the troops often starved, marched barefoot in rags in the snow, and often slept in mud with no cover, let alone blankets, there was often just enough of everything to go on for another day because volunteer teamsters brought in another cart of captured bread, meat, blankets, shot and powder. They may have suffered from smallpox throughout the conflict, but volunteer physicians inoculated many soldiers; local volunteers nursed the sick and helpless, and local farmers helped feed them while their privateer compatriots made British shipping unsafe and expensive. Out of a 1780 population of 1.7 million in the American colonies, if 25% fought in the ranks against the British directly, would another 25% helping the fighters be out of line? Given the role of logistics in gunpowder warfare, probably not, and it’s probably short.
Which makes the percentage of Tories even smaller.
If half the colonists fought the British in one way or another, what were the rest doing? Some have made much about the Loyalists who either fought with or supported the Crown in the struggle, but given the above, how many of them were there, really? Yes, the rebels and the loyalists fought each other, but how important was it, militarily? We have to say not very, because there were few known instances of major battles fought between Americans. Many house-burnings by mobs, an irregular cavalry outfit or two, perhaps. However irregulars fighting the British, including Francis Marion and John Paul Jones (yes, technically an irregular) significantly outnumbered them.
Maybe a civil war that became a war for independence?
In fact, it was both, because the Loyalist/Tory versus Patriot conflict, strategically minor though it was, existed. But because the Crown tacitly allowed (as a temporary body) the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, how “revolutionary” was it? Well, if bona fide, agreed-upon revolutions change everything…not so much. But in the last few months of 1777, a bunch of things changed.
October: a British army surrendered after the failed Saratoga campaign left them outnumbered 3 to 1.
November: the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation and sent it to the states for ratification.
December: France recognized the American colonies as an independent country, paving the way for a declaration of war on Britain the next February.
The first led to the third, but in between, the Americans set up their own government with a document not unlike the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Rights that were the foundations of English rule. This alone felt revolutionary because, well, nobody had ever done it before and succeeded.
Now the French were sharpening their flints, too.
French belligerency didn’t simply provide more arms to the Americans. It widened the conflict geographically. Now, not only would they face a land force growing in size and confidence in the Americas, but the French Navy from the Atlantic seaboard to the mouth of the Ganges, and from the Red Sea to the Caribbean. A little tax revolt became another global war, and Britain had yet to fully recover from the last one.
And the Indians were sharpening their tomahawks.
Because Britain relied on auxiliaries and mercenaries to fight their land wars, the British-backed Indians were heavily involved in the conflict on the frontiers. Again, after initial successes, the Americans and their Indians pushed them back and decimated their numbers. And, one more time, the Indians lost numbers well beyond their ability to recover against the far more successful Europeans and their African allies.
In 1777, Spain jumped into the war.
While often forgotten, Spain contributed considerably to American independence, fighting Britain at sea in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and on land in the Americas. Spanish silver kept America afloat. And all along, the Dutch Republic financed many American arms shipments, and joined the League of Armed Neutrality in 1780, leading to a British declaration of war on them. By 1781, there wasn’t much left for Britain to fight with because they were fighting with everyone.
The surrender at Yorktown was almost anticlimactic.
Their bid to hold on in the south, having lost in New England and the middle colonies, came to a crashing end after a French squadron chased a British squadron away from the Virginia Capes, dooming the last substantial British field force already under siege at Yorktown. But it took another two years to wrap up what became a fight for the survival of Britain’s hold on the Caribbean.
The American Revolution/War for Independence was many things.
Some of them all at once. But it evolved as it progressed as few conflicts ever have. From a tax protest to a war for independence because of those taxes to a global war to settle old scores from a decade before, the conflict was many things to many people and states. But one thing it also was to Britain was a testing ground for the next global bloodletting that would last a generation, starting less than a decade after the Treaty of Paris ended this one, and ironically, it too would start in Paris when the French beheaded their king.
But that’s another story…
Steele’s Battalion: The Great War Diaries
And here’s another one, set in 1917 and 1918. When a newly minted American Lieutenant named Steele leads his machine gunners in Flanders and France during World War One, he writes about his experiences in diaries.
A scholar finds the diaries eighty years later and publishes them. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph. Pre-purchase should begin next February with full availability after 6 April…
Coming Up…
Blockade and the American Civil War
Shiloh Reconsidered
And Finally...
On 22 February:
1918: Robert Pershing Wadlow is born in Alton, Illinois. He was taller than his father by age 8 and needed a special desk made for him in school. By the time he graduated from high school in 1936, Wadlow was 8’ 4”. His height at his death in 1940 was 8’ 11.1”, the tallest human ever for which there is evidence. Other than a hyperactive pituitary gland, Wadlow suffered from health issues associated with his size for most of his life.
1942: President Rooseveldt orders Douglas MacArthur out of Philippines. Called out of official retirement just before the Japanese invasion of the islands, a trio of PT boast spirited MacArthur, his family, and a handful of others to Australia. In making his “I shall return” statement on 17 March, he committed the US to a Philippine-oriented campaign contrary to prewar planning.
And today is NATIONAL COOK A SWEET POTATO DAY. Frankly, I don’t care for them, but knock yourself out.
I think it's hugely significant that there was not just one colony seeking independence, but thirteen. When they became independent of England, there was no one central power, thus no "new boss, same as the old boss."
But that was then, this is now. Today's Washington DC makes me wonder if we wouldn't have been better off under George III