political realities. However, the rebels of 1775 had the better reason for confidence. Provincial boundaries of that era being imprecise, disputed, or vague, no researcher can hope to calculate the ratio of the thirteen-colony domain—from Maine (then a district of Massachusetts) south through Georgia—still effectively occupied by British soldiers or administered by functioning officials of His Majesty’s government at year’s end. Whatever the maps in Whitehall or St. James purported to show, the reality on the ground was stark: practically nothing.
Consider: in Virginia and both Carolinas, the summer of 1775 saw Crown-appointed governors ignominiously flee their unfriendly capitals for cramped but seizure-proof accommodations on nearby British warships. In February 1776, the governor of Georgia, all but powerless, finally decamped to a convenient frigate. In most places, the king’s writ no longer ran. In all four southern colonies, Patriot-led provincial congresses and committees of safety had taken extralegal but effective control of government. Forts had been captured, munitions seized, sea actions fought, towns burned, and regiment after regiment mustered into the new Continental Army.
An ocean away, the punitive intentions of King George III also kept growing—from his late-1774 comment about looking forward to putting down rebellion in Massachusetts to his mid-1775 hope of hiring Russian mercenaries, only to settle by year end for Hessians and Brunswickers. Henry Howard, twelfth Earl of Suffolk and a principal secretary of state, had agreed that the Russians would make “charming visitors at New-Yorke, and civilize that part of America wonderfully.” 4 A year before July 4, 1776, the die was all but cast. In fact, participants from King George to John Adams used precisely that phrase, first employed by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C.
The reader can learn about these events and escalations in the history books, just not conveniently or in very much detail. Over two centuries, as the Revolutionary War became all but sanctified as “the single most important source for our national sense of tradition,” public attention was diverted from the struggle’s more complicated, less-inspiring realities. 5 Disregarding the necessities of munitions smuggling and using militiamen to suppress political dissidence, the origins of the republic became ever more romanticized around the assertion of 1776 as a moral and ideological watershed not just for North America but for the world. Events were also confected into neat celebratory symbols like Paul Revere’s ride, George Washington’s greatness, Benjamin Franklin’s genius, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Betsy Ross’s flag, and the seriously misrepresented Liberty Bell. Boston, Lexington-Concord, Philadelphia, and Valley Forge became the hallowed venues, with legend-building side excursions to Mount Vernon and Monticello. This adulation has served to minimize comprehension of what actually happened—not least how a
rage militaire
helped put down deep enough early foundations for American nationhood to withstand the disillusionments that mounted in the second half of 1776.
Behind the bunting, reality is not merely a corrective but a more gripping tale. Much of it is scarcely known. Massachusetts and Virginia did play central roles, just as schoolchildren properly learn. However, the sprawling canvas of 1775, beyond even the other eleven insurgent North American colonies, stretches to include events in Bermuda, the Bahamas and the West Indies, Canada, Ireland and the Irish Sea, London, Glasgow, England’s Isle of Wight, the sea lanes off Holland and the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), Paris, Nantes, the smuggler-ridden Channel ports of Dunkirk and Ostend, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (Europe’s principal independent weapons contractor), and Hesse-Cassel and a half dozen otherminor principalities in northern Germany,
Consider: in Virginia and both Carolinas, the summer of 1775 saw Crown-appointed governors ignominiously flee their unfriendly capitals for cramped but seizure-proof accommodations on nearby British warships. In February 1776, the governor of Georgia, all but powerless, finally decamped to a convenient frigate. In most places, the king’s writ no longer ran. In all four southern colonies, Patriot-led provincial congresses and committees of safety had taken extralegal but effective control of government. Forts had been captured, munitions seized, sea actions fought, towns burned, and regiment after regiment mustered into the new Continental Army.
An ocean away, the punitive intentions of King George III also kept growing—from his late-1774 comment about looking forward to putting down rebellion in Massachusetts to his mid-1775 hope of hiring Russian mercenaries, only to settle by year end for Hessians and Brunswickers. Henry Howard, twelfth Earl of Suffolk and a principal secretary of state, had agreed that the Russians would make “charming visitors at New-Yorke, and civilize that part of America wonderfully.” 4 A year before July 4, 1776, the die was all but cast. In fact, participants from King George to John Adams used precisely that phrase, first employed by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C.
The reader can learn about these events and escalations in the history books, just not conveniently or in very much detail. Over two centuries, as the Revolutionary War became all but sanctified as “the single most important source for our national sense of tradition,” public attention was diverted from the struggle’s more complicated, less-inspiring realities. 5 Disregarding the necessities of munitions smuggling and using militiamen to suppress political dissidence, the origins of the republic became ever more romanticized around the assertion of 1776 as a moral and ideological watershed not just for North America but for the world. Events were also confected into neat celebratory symbols like Paul Revere’s ride, George Washington’s greatness, Benjamin Franklin’s genius, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Betsy Ross’s flag, and the seriously misrepresented Liberty Bell. Boston, Lexington-Concord, Philadelphia, and Valley Forge became the hallowed venues, with legend-building side excursions to Mount Vernon and Monticello. This adulation has served to minimize comprehension of what actually happened—not least how a
rage militaire
helped put down deep enough early foundations for American nationhood to withstand the disillusionments that mounted in the second half of 1776.
Behind the bunting, reality is not merely a corrective but a more gripping tale. Much of it is scarcely known. Massachusetts and Virginia did play central roles, just as schoolchildren properly learn. However, the sprawling canvas of 1775, beyond even the other eleven insurgent North American colonies, stretches to include events in Bermuda, the Bahamas and the West Indies, Canada, Ireland and the Irish Sea, London, Glasgow, England’s Isle of Wight, the sea lanes off Holland and the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), Paris, Nantes, the smuggler-ridden Channel ports of Dunkirk and Ostend, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (Europe’s principal independent weapons contractor), and Hesse-Cassel and a half dozen otherminor principalities in northern Germany,
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