The American Revolution—Reconsidered

     

        When it comes to the American Revolution, there are many classic histories to choose from,   David McCullough's 1776 for example.  Over the past couple of decades, there have been some well-loved biographies of iconic Revolutionary figures, too many to list here, but Ron Chernow's Hamilton and Washington bios, McCullough's Adams, and Brands' Franklin stand out.  

    And there are a number of notable historians and narrative nonfiction authors who have written excellent books about the Revolution, like Rick Atkinson, Nathaniel Philbrick, John Ferling, and Joseph J. Ellis.

    As one might imagine, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has brought intense interest in the American Revolution, and dozens of new books have hit the shelves within the past couple of years.  Here are a few that really stood out on my reading list because they really introduce new perspectives and original, fresh takes.

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.  Richard Bell.  Riverhead Books, 2025.  416 pages.  

Did the British musicians play “The World Turned Upside Down” when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown?  Probably not—or at least, we have no reliable evidence that they did.

The story first appears in 1828, 47 years after the surrender. The actual surrender terms called for the British to march out to a British or German march, but no contemporary source identifies the music. Whether or not it happened,  the American Revolution did, in fact, turn the world upside down, and historian Richard Bell documents it as a transformative international event. Millions of people on every continent saw their lives affected, trade was disrupted, independence movements and progressive social reforms were inspired, and global refugee crisis was created.  Battles were fought in North America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean.  For two years following Yorktown and the fighting largely ceased in America, the British continued to fight the French and Spanish around the world.  When the Treaty of Paris formally ended hostilities and recognized American independence, American allies France and Spain were arguably worse off than before the war, and the British Empire, despite having lost vast territory, may have emerged stronger than ever.  In this book, Richard Bell tells the full story as it has never been told before.  In a very original twist, Bell grounds his narrative in the stories of roughly a dozen individuals including Prussian drillmaster Baron von Steuben, Mohawk Molly Brant, escaped slaves John Moseley and Harry Washington who became early colonists of Australia and Sierra Leone respectively, the ruler of the Indian state of Mysore, indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru, and Peggy Shippen Arnold, the wife of Benedict.  The result is a new and fresh take on the American Revolution that leaves readers informed, entertained, and contemplative --- a great read for America250.  

A Perfect Frenzy:  A Royal Governor, His Black Allies and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution.  Andrew Lawler.  Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025.  544 pages.   

While the American Revolution officially began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, two major events occurred in January 1776 that were pivotal in fueling the Patriot cause.  Thomas Paine published his pamphlet "Common Sense" laying out the arguments for independence.  The other event is perhaps less known today, but it was perhaps even more effective:  On January 1, 1776, the city of Norfolk, Virginia was burned to the ground.  No other American city in history has been completely and utterly destroyed as Norfolk was.  Twenty years later, visitors were still stunned by the vast ruins and fields of debris.  For 250 years, the Norfolk fire has been blamed on the British, specifically the royal governor Lord Dunmore.  As a result of the fire, Dunmore was vilified on both sides of the Atlantic and labeled a war criminal.  Patriot propaganda painted him as a cruel and witless libertine who hosted huge orgies with enslaved women in the Governor's Palace when he wasn't wantonly destroying the lives of his subjects.  Following the Norfolk fire, Dunmore was even shunned by his peers in the House of Lords who believed that he had gone too far.  Dunmore died in a state of ignominy, and his family was reduced to relative poverty, ostracized by the British upper class.  

The kicker?  Dunmore and the British didn't destroy Norfolk.  THE PATRIOTS INTENTIONALLY BURNED THE CITY TO THE GROUND, and this fact was always known.  The Patriot propaganda machine used the destruction to maximum advantage to stir patriotic fervor. The fact is that Norfolk was a Loyalist stronghold, and British warships did destroy a few dozen structures, mainly warehouses and docks, but 95% of the buildings destroyed were intentionally ignited by Patriot troops under orders from Patriot officers and political figures. Why? They wanted to punish Norfolk for being strongly Loyalist, and Dunmore, once extremely popular and respected governor among the landed gentry and yeoman farmers alike, had crossed the line.  He recruited and armed free and enslaved black Virginians to fight for Britain, promising freedom in return.  This book tells a great, formerly untold, story and illustrates that history is extremely complicated and never just black and white.  In this situation, you have black and white Patriots wearing engraved brass breastplates or embroidered shirts saying "Liberty or Death" going into battle against Dunmore's black Ethiopian Regiment troops wearing breastplates engraved with "Liberty For Slaves."

Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution. H.W. Brands. Doubleday, 2021. 496 pages.

The American Revolution was really a "civil war" in two main respects. First, the colonists were thoroughly British before Lexington and Concord, and very few thought otherwise. Independence was a daunting prospect. Second, the Revolution divided colonies, towns, and families. All revolutions are led by minorities. As John Adams famously estimated, one-third of Americans were for independence, one-third were against, and one-third didn't care one way or the other. Some men and women staked their lives and fortunes on deeply held beliefs and values, while some chose sides based on expediency and prospects of personal betterment. Some chose their side based on ego or peer pressure. Meanwhile, some colonists just wished to be left alone to live their lives.

H.W. Brands is one of my favorite historians, but this book is a little misstep, in my opinion. It's not quite as readable and enjoyable as his other books. It's still packed with great history and primary source documents, but it focused too much on big names like George Washington, Ben Franklin and his son William, Thomas Hutchinson, and Benedict Arnold. I wanted more stories about more rank-and-file Americans on both sides who struggled to decide which side they were on. The book is still a good read, especially if you want to learn more about the Revolution and events leading up to it and don't know much about the men listed above.

Travels With George.  Nathaniel Philbrick, 2021.  Viking, 2021.  400 pages.

During his presidency, George Washington made the effort to visit each of the thirteen states, both to educate himself about his country and also to reinforce the young country's unity.  The new country was still somewhat of a loose collection of often quarrelsome states.  There was absolutely no certainty that this wild, new, and unprecedented experiment was going to work.  Washington wanted to talk to ordinary citizens, thank them for their support, and to imbue them with the idea of being American first, rather than a New Yorker or Virginian or Georgian.  It was a major success, a great example of Washington's innate political genius.  He was an expert at imagery and setting the stage, and he used various techniques throughout his journeys to reinforce his message.  Nathaniel Philbrick, one of my favorite narrative nonfiction writers, decided to pack up his wife and dog (a la John Steinbeck in Travels With Charley) and follow Washington's routes.  This was a great read, and I highly recommend it.  

 

Who's Your Founding Father? One Man's Quest to Uncover the First True Declaration of Independence.  David Fleming. Hachette Books, 2023. 320 pages. 

Wow! Never, ever have I thought that I would enjoy a book written by a sports guy, an ESPN guy no less. David Fleming has proven me wrong.  This book is up there with Shakespeare Was A Woman as one of my favorite reads of 2023. Like that book, Who's Your Founding Father? takes an iconoclastic swing at a cherished and honored institution and totally backs it up. As a teacher, I loved challenging students' long held misconceptions and "elementary school teacher lies."

The challenged institution here is Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. No, not the truth that we should be celebrating July 2nd instead of July 4th (as John Adams felt). Whaaattttt?! Yes, the D of I was approved on July 2. The signers took the next two months to sign it, and some of the men who voted for it never signed it, and some of the signers never voted for it.  July 4th is just considered the day that it was made public. The question here is, was there an earlier Declaration of Independence that Jefferson plagiarized? Fleming presents a solid case that there was.

This is something that Americans don't know, and, in fact, various people have actively engaged in suppression and destruction of evidence over the last two hundred years in order to protect Jefferson's reputation. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Jefferson once existed at the summit of the American pantheon: thinker, architect, author, statesman. Today, his rampant hypocrisy and petty nature have chipped away at his reputation. He railed against the evils of slavery, but his whole life and fortune were made possible by slavery. He preached against race-mixing and how it would destroy society, but he had a decades-long relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings, his dead wife's half-sister. Even during his lifetime, however, he was frequently attacked. Critics called his architecture style imitative and derivative. Fellow Congressmen remembered him as being dull, uninterested, and uninvolved, contributing nothing to Congressional debates and discussions. During the Revolution, he was accused of cowardice while other founders bravely served. 

So, what did he plagiarize? On May 20, 1775, a group of 27 Scots-Irish Presbyterian leaders met at the county courthouse in Charlotte North Carolina to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain, severing all ties. The document was then sent to Philadelphia where the congressmen assembled replied that it was too early and ignored it. Or did they? Whole passages appear verbatim in Jefferson's D of I. Unfortunately, fire destroyed some of the evidence of the Mecklenburg D of I in 1800, and, despite overwhelming credible evidence of its existence, it has been intentionally erased from history, except in North Carolina. John Adams was even unaware until about 1819 when he questioned Jefferson in letters and wrote about it to others. Jefferson, of course, deflected or ignored the questions, but he did say that he was always tasked with "synthesizing" and "harmonizing" numerous inspirations and never tasked with writing an "original" document.

Who's presents a compelling and interesting case for  the "Meck Deck," and it is an incredibly fun and entertaining book as well.