The American Revolution(?)

I, as well as many other folk, have watched Ken Burns' latest work, The American Revolution.  As is frequently the case with his documentaries, the new series did not disappoint.  Between stirring stories, moving readings by A-list and B-list actors, and striking imagery, both contemporary cinematography and "Ken Burns' Effect" images, the history of our nation's war of independence from the British was well told.  The balloons of some myths were burst, while others were further burnished in gold, with moving rhetoric and music.

The education of many of us about the war did not emphasize the bloodthirsty aspect of civil war in the struggle, where sometimes no quarter was given on either side, particularly between the revolutionary forces and the loyalist and native American forces.* How the interests of wealthy Americans (like George Washington) in the lands beyond the Appalachians as a significant cause was likewise understated in our education.  Most of the iconography of the war passed down to us show British Redcoats and white American Bluecoats and Minutemen, with sometimes an African-American or Native American on the fringe, though thousands of former slaves, freemen, and Native Americans fought and died in the war, for both sides.  Finally,  Americans are not fully aware of how critical French intervention was in the American victory, particularly in the campaign which led to the surrender at Yorktown.  Without the French fleet and influx of troops, the war could have continued as a stalemate for a number years, a point not fully emphasized in the series.  American economic and military resources were barely sufficient to maintain Washington's army for six years, the challenge and its importance the series did emphasize well.**

The somewhat hypocritical ideal of the war, rendered in the Declaration of Independence, was that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Jefferson's truly magical words resonate and stir people to this day, yet they were not realized by the new nation at the time.  Such inalienable rights were not seen to apply to people of color or, in many cases, people who did not own property.  It would take several decades for white males who did not own property to be given the right to vote.  Over those decades the right to vote of some black freemen would be taken away.  Only a more deadly war eighty years later would end slavery and begin to give rights to African Americans though such rights would require a century of struggle to be fully attained.  Native Americans and women of all races would not gain the right the vote until the twentieth century. 

Outside of the US, the war is not known as the American Revolution but as the American War of Independence.  For that describes what the war truly was.  Before the war the British defended the colonies, taxed the colonies, and dominated the colonies' imports and exports--the quintessential relationship between colonizer and colonizer, repeated across the globe, usually with more brutality, for the next century and a half.  After the war, the thirteen states took over the role of defense, taxation, and trade.

When the "revolution" is used in contexts outside of American history, it usually refers to a dramatic change in the status quo.  The French Revolution toppled the monarchy and much of the aristocracy of France, weakened by its expensive support of the Americans in their war against the British.  The Industrial Revolution refers to the supplanting of the economy centered on agriculture with one centered on manufacturing.  The Russian Revolution replaced the Russian monarchy and nascent capitalistic economy with a state controlled economy and society.  The Chinese Revolution was similarly overwhelming in its changes to China.

What changed in the thirteen colonies that became states in the new United States?  Though there were crown-appointed governors in the states, by the time of the war their powers were curtailed by the colonial legislatures made up of wealthy landowning colonists.  The Continental Congress which usurped the colonial governors during the war was made up mostly of wealthy landowners, over half of whom owned slaves, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. The make up of the legislatures after the war resembled those before the war.  So those who held power after the war were much the same as those who held power before the war.  Three of the first four Presidents of the United States were wealthy and powerful landowners (and slaveowners) before the war.

So there was not a dramatic change in America as would characterize later revolutions.  It was more of a War of Independence from European powers like those of South and Central America in the early nineteenth century and those in Africa and Asia in the later half of the twentieth century.  What was hinted at in the series, by its sustained postscript of the struggle to form a viable national government and create a working constitution, is that the American Revolution is ongoing.  Its ideal, as Abraham Lincoln would describe on a battlefield four score years after the end of the War of Independence, of a "nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" would be as worthy yet elusive a goal during the Civil War as it is in America today.  Its inspiration has stirred people from Concord to Cape Town, from Philadelphia to Peking, to resist and replace the corrupt and powerful.  That, along with the events in France in 1789 and after, make up the true Revolution.

*I learned of the savagery of civil war the war of independence after learning my fifth great grandfather was killed in a battle between a Colonial Militia and a group of Loyalists and Iroquois Indians in the Delaware Valley of New York in 1779 in what is now known as the Battle of Minisink.  Half of the militia was surrounded as the others retreated.  All of the militia surrounded, including Ephraim Middaugh, were killed by the Loyalists and Iroquois led by Joseph Brant (see below).  After learning this I did more research into the struggle between Loyalists and those who wanted to be rid of the British.  Estimates of the numbers of Loyalists run somewhere around 20%.  As with many civil wars, many wanted no part of the struggle and to be left alone, so perhaps the population who supported revolt against the British may not have numbered 80% of the free white population.

**Though Ken Burns had made a number of good documentaries examining aspects of America's history and heritage in his early career, most employing his now well known techniques described above, his reputation and renown exploded with his series about the American Civil War.  His American Revolution series digs into the subject with more depth, more reflection, and more brutal honesty than his previous series'.  

Much of The Civil War chronicled the battles of the war, frankly a common feature of much military history, rather than the economic and social aspect of the war.  Yes, it dug into the preservation of slavery as a root cause of the war, but with some ambiguity, given the mellifluous southern drawl of some of the series' commentators.  Though the voices of individual participants, through images of their exquisite handwriting and renditions of their words by evocative voice actors, was powerful, it sometimes drifted into the sentimentality the war revels in which would sometimes enshrine the Lost Cause of the South, the effects of which linger to this day in politics and power in southern states, and, alas, national politics.

Burns' new series does examine military engagements in some detail but the strength of the series is his investigation of the non-military aspects of the war.   As with many civil wars, the real story of the war of independence was not the battles but the migrations and deprivations of people, the conflict and exploitation of loyalties and racial differences, and the political events apart from the battlefields that determined the war's outcome.  

Because of challenges of eighteenth century transportation, logistics, weather, and distractions of priorities at home, the war of independence was not a steady stream of battles but a series of drawn out, isolated campaigns marked by long pauses to regroup, muster, and supply the opposing armies, with battles between hundreds of combatants instead of thousands.  So a repeat of The Civil War's bloody battle chronicle would not work for the War of Independence.  Thus going beyond the battles of the war, with commentary by a rich variety of historians, some outside the United States, created a chronicle which reflected the breadth of the war.