title page

The American Revolution National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

1 Table of Contents

Setting the Stage 5 by Jimmy Carter

Revolutionary War Timeline 6

In Search of the American Revolution 17 by Charlene Mires “Collection of Memories” 19

The Path Toward Independence 26 by Pauline Maier “Volumes Had Been Written…” 46 “Principles, Opinions, Sentiments, & Affections” 47

The War for Independence 49 by Don Higginbotham “Useful Lessons” 50 “The Die is Now Cast” 65

Forgotten Americans 73 by Gary B. Nash “Silken Slippers…Wooden Shoes” 80 “Discover, Uncover, Rediscover, and Recover” 97

The Revolution’s Legacy 99 by Gordon S. Wood “Moved to a New Resolve” 101 “If Men Were Angels” 116 “E Pluribus Unum?” 117 “A Political Duty of Grave Importance” 118

Related Sites 119

Index 126

Image Sources 128

Acknowledgments 129

2 3 The American Revolution opened a new chapter in human history. For the first time, a nation made two moral and philosophical principles the basis of government and society: that all men are created equal and that all the powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. The decision by three million American colonists to stake their future on the principles of equality and The Revolution was representative government has shaped the nation’s effected before the history over more than two centuries. War commenced. America has not always lived up to the ideals of The Revolution was the Declaration of Independence, but those ideals in the minds and have never been eclipsed. They have served as guiding hearts of the people; beacons, available to backwoods revolutionaries from a change in their Georgia to Massachusetts and later to Abraham religious sentiments Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther of their duties King, Jr., to call upon in extending the benefits of and obligations. liberty and equality to all citizens. Beyond that, This radical change America’s founding principles have captured the in the principles, imagination of freedom-loving people the world over. opinions, sentiments, In this volume, in essays that address the back­ and affections of ground of the Revolution, the war itself, lesser-known the people, was the participants in the struggle, and its legacy, historians real American offer their perspectives on the American Revolution. Revolution. The essays are meant to provide a broad context for the —John Adams stories told by the National Park Service at its many Setting the Stage American Revolution sites. I hope that the material in this handbook will enhance your visits to these irreplaceable historic places. The American Revolution set the stage for the development of the United States. We only can benefit from continuing to study and reflect upon its multiple meanings and lasting legacies.

—Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, 1977-1981 page 4

4 5 Revolutionary War Timeline

British North America, 1775 June 17 At the Battle of Bunker 1775 “Rage Militare” Hill (Breed’s Hill), Massachusetts, On the eve of the Revolution the the British seize their objective, patriots succeeded in organizing but suffer severe casualties. a home defense; militias stood July 3 George Washington mobilized and ready. Fighting assumes command of the broke out at Lexington and Continental Army in Concord, Massachusetts, on Massachusetts. April 19. At the Battle of Bunker Hill in June, the patriots lost, July 5 Continental Congress but learned that they could adopts Olive Branch Petition in stand against British regulars. effort to reconcile differences Soon after, George Washington with Britain. assumed command of the newly Mid-July Continental Army created Continental Army. encamps at Cambridge, April 19 Battles of Lexington Massachusetts. and Concord, Massachusetts, August 28 Hoping to gain a occur. A rallying militia drives fourteenth colony to aid in fight October 1768 British soldiers British back in retreat to Boston. against Britain, patriots begin a arrive in Boston to enforce campaign to capture Quebec, compliance with new regulations. May 10 Second Continental Congress convenes in Canada. March 5, 1770 “Boston Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. October 13 Congress authorizes Massacre.” King’s troops kill five Continental Navy. civilians before British back off Fort Ticonderoga, New York, and troops leave Boston. All captured by Ethan Allen and October 18 British Naval forces Townshend duties removed Benedict Arnold. bombard and burn Falmouth, except for tax on tea. May 11 Battle of Crown Point, Maine. December 16, 1773 Chests of New York. November King George III tea destroyed in protest at June 14 Congress establishes rejects Olive Branch Petition. Boston “Tea Party.” Continental Army. November 7 Lord Dunmore, March-June 1774 Coercive Acts June 15 Congress appoints Royal Governor of Virginia, offers close port of Boston, bring George Washington as freedom to slaves who join Massachusetts’s government commander-in-chief. Crown forces. under crown control, and allow November 10 Congress estab­ Early Americans had made the Increasingly, resistance leaders October 7, 1763 Proclamation for quartering of British troops lishes Continental Marines. on private property. risky Atlantic crossing seeking a banded together. The stage for of 1763 bars settlement west of November 14 General Richard better life, adventure, religious the Revolution was set. the Appalachian Mountains. September-October 1774 Montgomery’s forces occupy freedom and political autonomy. April 5, 1764 Sugar Act imposes First Continental Congress meets Montreal. They built a society in the New stricter trade regulation and in Philadelphia and approves World and for generations ran 1763-1774 December 9 Patriots defeat duties on sugar and molasses. collective strategy to deal with it with little outside meddling. February 10, 1763 The Treaty Coercive Acts. Declare common British at Great Bridge, Virginia. After the French and Indian War, of Paris ends Seven Years’ War March 22, 1765 Stamp Act grievances and adopt compre­ December 30 George Britain initiated policies aimed (French and Indian War). Left in places tax on printed matter and hensive boycotts of British goods. Washington orders recruiting at bringing the colonists under debt from war, Great Britain legal documents. October 1774 “Minute Man” officers to allow free blacks to closer control. Tensions grew. looks to colonies for revenue to June 29, 1767 Townshend companies formed. join the Continental Army. Many Americans stood firm in pay for future colonial protection. Revenue Acts create new import December 31 Battle of Quebec, their belief that the King had duties for the colonists. suspended their natural rights. Canada.

6 7 March 2 Americans fortify May 10 Congress authorizes September Congress appoints December 19 Thomas Paine January 6 Continental Army 1776 Independence? Dorchester Heights, each of the thirteen colonies to Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin publishes The Crisis, which helps enters second winter encamp­ Massachusetts, using cannon form new state governments. to assist Silas Deane in diplomatic rekindle the fires of liberty during ment of the war at Morristown, While pens declared political brought from Fort Ticonderoga mission to France. the darkest hour of the New Jersey. independence on paper, the June 7 Virginia delegate by artillery chief, Henry Knox. Revolution. cause was nearly lost on the Richard Henry Lee offers a formal May After facing defeat by battlefield. Thomas Paine’s March 3 Congress appoints resolution calling for American December 25 With army patriot militia along the southern Common Sense won many over Silas Deane as diplomatic agent independence. enlistment about to expire at frontier, Cherokee Indians are to the cause. Congress took to France, in hopes of securing year’s end, Washington must act. forced from their land in South June 12 Congress appoints a the dramatic step of declaring military aid. Continental Army begins daring Carolina. committee to prepare a draft of a independence from Britain in Christmas night crossing of the March 3–4 Continental Navy working government entitled the May 28 Continental Army leaves July. After being pushed to the Delaware River. and Marines raid on the British Articles of Confederation. Morristown, New Jersey, brink, the Continental Army’s colony of Nassau, Bahamas, December 26 Washington’s encampment. daring Delaware River crossing June 28 Jefferson presents his yields quantities of valuable victory over the Hessians at and victory over the Hessians at draft of the Declaration of June British under General military stores. Trenton, New Jersey, gives new Trenton gave new life to the cause. Independence to Congress. John Burgoyne begin lake-route life to the cause. In the coming March 17 American siege forces invasion from Canada. January 1 British thwart American defenders repulse year, Congress and Washington British to evacuate Boston. Montgomery and Arnold's British attack at Fort Sullivan build an army for the war based July 6 British force Americans to assault on Quebec; invasion of (Fort Moultrie), Charleston, on long-term enlistment. abandon Fort Ticonderoga. September 12 Washington Canada fails. South Carolina. evacuates New York City. July 20 After struggle with January 5 New Hampshire June–July British armada arrives patriot forces along the Carolina September 16 Americans hold At What Price? becomes the first colony to in New York carrying over 30,000 1777 and Georgia frontiers, Cherokee off British at the Battle of Harlem declare full independence. British and Hessian troops In 1777, the Americans cut short give up land in western North intending to crush the rebellion. Heights, New York. a British plan to divide and Carolina. January 19 Thomas Paine conquer the colonies. The British July 2 Continental Congress September 22 British hang July 27 Marquis de Lafayette publishes Common Sense. surrendered a large force to votes in favor of Richard Henry patriot Nathan Hale for spying. arrives in Philadelphia to the Continental Army after the Lee’s resolution for independence. volunteer for the American October 11–12 British overpower battles of Saratoga in New York, cause. July 4 Congress formally adopts Benedict Arnold’s small fleet at but were able to capture the the Declaration of Independence. the Battle of Valcour Island on patriot capital at Philadelphia. August 2–23 Patriots successfully Lake Champlain, New York, but In December, an optimistic, defend Fort Stanwix, New York, August 2 Delegates sign this valiant action halts British but weary Continental Army against intimidating British Declaration of Independence. lake-route invasion of New York. marched into winter quarters assault, halting one prong of March 31 Abigail Adams issues Demonstrating the new nation’s at Valley Forge. planned English offensive. historic plea for women’s rights, potential for religious tolerance, October 13 British occupy urging her husband, John to the list of signers includes one Crown Point, New York. January 3 Washington follows “remember the ladies” as Catholic, Charles Carroll of October 28 Howe’s army up triumph at Trenton with a Congress drafts new laws. Maryland. achieves a costly victory over victory at the Battle of Princeton, New Jersey. April Continental Army leaves its August 27–29 British command­ Washington at the Battle of first winter encampment at ed by William Howe defeat White Plains, New York. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington’s outnumbered army November 16 British capture April 1 Continental Army enters at the Battle of Long Island, Fort Washington, New York, on and begins to erect defenses in New York. Americans evacuate the east side of the Hudson River. to Manhattan. New York City. November 20 Americans forced May 2 The French government to abandon Fort Lee, New Jersey, February 27 Patriots defeat a consents to send secret military on the west side of the Hudson loyalist force at Battle of Moores aid to the colonies, sending River. New York City is now in Creek Bridge near Wilmington, $1 million worth of arms to British hands. North Carolina. America.

8 August 6 In one of the bloodiest September 21 British carry out December 19 Continental Army February 6 French Alliance November 11 Loyalist leaders July-August American attempt actions of the war, Mohawk war victorious nighttime bayonet enters the third winter encamp­ treaties signed in Europe. Walter Butler and Joseph Brant to attack Penobscot (Maine) fails chief Joseph Brant and British- assault on Anthony Wayne’s ment of the war at Valley Forge, lead Tory and Indian attack on miserably. February 23 Former Prussian allied Indians ambush and engage Pennsylvania troops at the Pennsylvania. Cherry Valley, New York. officer Baron von Steuben arrives August 29 In only battle of New York militia outside Fort Battle of Paoli, Pennsylvania. at Valley Forge to begin training December 17 British retake General John Sullivan’s punitive Stanwix at Oriskany, New York. September 22–26 English out­ program. Vincennes. campaign against the Iroquois, August 16 Hessian component maneuver Continental Army and Continental Army defeats Tory December 29 British expedition of General Burgoyne’s offensive capture Philadelphia. and Indian force at Newtown, captures Savannah, Georgia. defeated at Bennington (Vermont). New York. October 4 Washington’s bold August 25 British land at counter attack at the Battle of August 19 Henry “Light Horse Head of Elk (Chesapeake Bay), Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1779 World at War Harry” Lee carries out successful Maryland, and begin campaign falls short. By 1779, the war had spread offensive against Paulus Hook, to capture Philadelphia. across the globe. In spring, Spain New Jersey, a British stronghold on the Hudson River. September 2 Zealous entered the war as an ally of Pennsylvania government arrests France and soon declared war on September–October Allied prominent Philadelphia Quakers Great Britain. As the year closed, forces fail to dislodge British for not supporting patriot causes the Continental Army entered garrison during the disappointing and sends them into exile in into winter camp at Morristown, Siege of Savannah, Georgia. New Jersey, where they would Virginia. May 6 Continental Army formally endure fiercer weather conditions September 23 John Paul Jones celebrates French Alliance at September 11 Washington gives and subsist on fewer supplies defeats frigate Serapis near Valley Forge. ground after losing hard-fought than they had at Valley Forge. English coast. Battle of Brandywine, June 18 British withdraw from January 11 Lafayette returns to September 25 Congress Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. France to plead for additional appoints John Jay minister to September 19 At the first Battle June 19 Continental Army leaves support. Spain. of Saratoga (Freeman’s Farm), Valley Forge in pursuit. December 1 Continental Army New York, Burgoyne’s army is January 29 British occupy comes into the war’s fifth winter shaken by encounter with October 7 At Second Battle of June 28 Steuben-trained Augusta, Georgia. Continentals prove their mettle encampment at Morristown, New Arnold and Morgan’s riflemen. Saratoga (Bemis Heights) New 1778 The Tide Turns February 25 George Rogers and force the King’s troops from Jersey, where the army endures York, Arnold defeats British again European recognition, assistance, Clark recaptures Vincennes. the field at Battle of Monmouth, an extraordinarily harsh winter. and forces them to retreat. and military professionalism New Jersey. April 12 Spain, which had October 17 Burgoyne surrenders came to America in 1778. By been contributing aid to the July George Rogers Clark carries A Bad Year his trapped army to General February, American diplomatic Americans, enters war as an ally 1780 out audacious operation against Horatio Gates. efforts and military achievements of France. A worsening economy, military British-held posts in present-day yielded an alliance with France. disaster in the South, and October 22 Hessian attack on Indiana and Illinois, capturing May Continental Army leaves At the Battle of Monmouth, treason, all undermined the Fort Mercer, New Jersey, is firmly Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Fort Camp Middlebrook, New Jersey. New Jersey, in June, the war effort in 1780. Two South repulsed. Sackville at Vincennes. Americans claimed victory over June 1 British occupy Stony Carolina defeats: the capture November 10–15 Fort Mifflin, their opponent. In November, the July 10 France declares war on Point and Verplancks Point, of Charleston and its large Pennsylvania, reduced and army set up their winter quarters Great Britain. New York, and secure strategic American garrison, and subse­ evacuated after valiant with businesslike efficiency at Kings Ferry on the Hudson River. quent loss at Camden, made the August 29 French Alliance gets American defense. Middlebrook, New Jersey. patriot situation in the South off to a rocky start as uncoordi­ June 21 Spain formally declares extremely tenuous. Benedict November 15 Articles of February 1 Rhode Island nated Franco-American attack on war on Great Britain. Arnold’s treasonous attempt to Confederation adopted by Assembly enacts temporary law Newport, Rhode Island, fails. Continental Congress in York, granting freedom to slaves who July 16 Anthony Wayne captures hand over the plans to Fort West Pennsylvania. enlist in the predominantly November Continental Army formidable fortress Stony Point, Point, New York, added insult African American First Rhode begins fourth winter camp at New York, during daring night to injury. Island regiment. Middlebrook, New Jersey. assault.

11 January Pennsylvania and August 21 Combined armies of New Jersey troops mutiny over Washington and Rochambeau 1782 Stay The Course pay and enlistment grievances. slip away from New York before By spring, England initiated To prevent further spread of the British can discover them peace negotiations, yet fighting revolt among army, Washington missing, marching south to continued. On the seas, British, and his officers deal harshly confront Cornwallis in Yorktown, French, and Spanish navies con­ with the mutineers, executing Virginia. tinued to battle for supremacy. several men. September–October Allied In America, warfare threatened January 17 Daniel Morgan wins siege of Yorktown, Virginia, by security on the frontier and in the one-sided victory against British land seals Cornwallis’s fate. South. By November, however, at the Battle of Cowpens, South Britain and the United States September 5 The Battle of the Carolina. signed a draft peace agreement. Virginia Capes and subsequent February 14 Continental Army naval operations prevent the January As the British begin to under Greene’s command British fleet from entering withdraw forces, loyalists flee the exhausts Cornwallis in marching Chesapeake Bay to rescue United States in great numbers. contest, covering forty miles in Cornwallis. Over the course of the war, sixteen hours. 100,000 Tories depart. September 8 Greene fights February 20 Congress appoints sharp action at Eutaw Springs, April 12 Peace talks between Robert Morris, “The Financier South Carolina, and orders Britain and the United States March 14 Spanish take British- Summer–Fall Guerilla leaders December 2 Nathanael Greene of the Revolution” as another tactical withdrawal. begin in Paris. held post at Mobile (Alabama). Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, assumes command of beleaguered Superintendent of Finances. October 19 Cornwallis April 19 The William Davies, and Elijah Clarke southern army and puts British During trying financial period, March 29–May 12 British surrenders along Netherlands carry the war against British and off guard by dividing his forces Morris astutely manipulates General Sir Henry Clinton with his full recognizes loyalist troops in the South. in the face of superior numbers. accounts to keep the war besieges Charleston, South contingent of American effort funded. Carolina, and compels the August 16 British defeat last 8,000 troops, sovereignty. surrender of its garrison of major southern continental force 1781 Upside Down March 1 States formally ratify marking the July 11 British 5,500 troops. at the Battle of Camden, South the Articles of Confederation. beginning of end their Nathanael Greene’s masterful Carolina. the end for occupation of May 29 Brutal treatment of strategies as well as Franco- March 15 Greene further the British. Savannah, surrendering force at the Battle September Washington foils American cooperation secured weakens British stamina in a Georgia. of Waxhaws, South Carolina, Arnold’s plot to surrender West victory in the South. After Greene fierce clash of arms at the by “Bloody” Banastre Tarleton Point, New York, but Arnold frustrated General Lord Charles Battle of Guilford Courthouse, August 1 Haym arouses patriot fury. escapes. Cornwallis’ designs in the North Carolina. Salomon, broker to June 22 Continental Army leaves October 7 Intimidating British Carolinas, the British general April 25 Finding his position the office of finance, Morristown encampment. tactics backfire as swarms of moved to Virginia where the untenable, Greene withdraws delivers the first of many riled frontiersmen annihilate Allies trapped his army. Yorktown large sums that help alleviate June 23 Continentals under during the Battle of Hobkirk’s Patrick Ferguson’s Tory force at was not the end of the war, as the nation’s financial crisis at Nathanael Greene repulse attack Hill, South Carolina. the Battle of Kings Mountain, Washington and his generals war’s end. led by General Knyphausen May 9 Spanish capture British South Carolina. had to contend with the British at the Battle of Springfield, August 15–19 Tories and Indians garrisons that remained. outpost at Pensacola (Florida). New Jersey. December England declares attack Bryan’s Station (Kentucky). July 6 Finding himself outnum­ November The Netherlands war on Holland. extends the first of four crucial Daniel Boone and Kentuckians July 10 5,500 fresh French bered nearly 10 to 1, Anthony lose skirmish at Blue Licks. troops arrive in Newport, Rhode Continental Army enters sixth Wayne saves his troops from loans to the United States. Island. winter with encampments in capture by charging straight into Continental Army returns to August 27 John Laurens, promis­ New York’s Hudson Highlands Cornwallis’ men at Green Spring Hudson Highlands and New ing young leader and former and Pompton and Morristown, Plantation, Virginia. Jersey for its seventh winter aide-de-camp to Washington, New Jersey. encampment. dies in fight at Combahee Ferry, South Carolina.

12 13 November Continental Army moves into its eighth and final winter quarters, the New Windsor cantonment in the Hudson Highlands. November 10 In the last battle of the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark attacks Shawnee town of Chillicothe (Ohio). November 30 American and British ministers agree upon preliminary peace treaty. December 14 British evacuate Charleston, South Carolina.

1783 Peace In 1783, America acquired independence, but domestic September 3 Final peace treaty troubles threatened. As the between Britain and the United Legacy war wound down, George States signed in Paris. On a personal level, the Washington drew on his leader­ British-allied tribes of the Revolutionary War produced a ship ability to keep order Iroquois Confederacy lose most mixed legacy of positive and amongst a mostly idle, unpaid, of their lands as they are left out negative consequences. On the and discontented army. On of the settlement. Some bands patriot side, the cost of founding September 3, ministers signed settle in southern Ontario with an independent republic was the Treaty of Paris that officially Joseph Brant. high. Approximately 25,000 ended the war. Washington bade sacrificed their lives, and many a tearful farewell to his officers November 2 Washington issues forfeited their livelihood. and then resigned his commission. farewell orders to the “Armies of The success of the Revolution the United States.” January 20 Britain signs prelimi­ brought scorn to those loyal to nary peace articles with France November 25 British finally the Crown, and most of them and Spain. evacuate New York. lost fortunes and homes. The war broadened the horizons and April 11 Congress proclaims December 4 Washington bids prospects of many revolutionaries. cessation of hostilities. farewell to his officers at Numerous former soldiers felt Fraunces’ Tavern in New York City. April 19 Washington declares wanderlust and formed the end to fighting eight years to the December 23 Washington vanguard of westward expansion. day after war began. resigns his commission before In turn, this relentless advance the Continental Congress in forced thousands of American Annapolis, Maryland. Indians off their rich domain. For some African Americans, service brought freedom, yet many remained enslaved. While women gained new outlooks, their actual status remained unchanged. As the sound of combat grew fainter, the battle for individual rights began.

14 In Search of the American Revolution No place is a place by Charlene Mires, Associate Professor of History, until the things that Villanova University have happened in The American Revolution maintains a powerful it are remembered hold on public imagination. More than 225 years after the Declaration of Independence, Americans still in history, ballads, celebrate the Fourth of July. We may be more likely to yarns, legends, gather for a baseball game than for a patriotic oration, but the attachment to that resonant date continues. or monuments. The language and memory of the American Revolution echo in American politics. The stories are staples of —Wallace Stegner school textbooks from the earliest grades through college. The drama of the American Revolution is retold in movies, plays, television documentaries, and best-selling biographies. And by the millions, Americans and visitors from abroad travel each year to the places most associated with the founding, birth, and early struggles of the United States: Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Independence Hall, Morristown, Each building, monument, statue, Saratoga, Valley Forge, Kings Mountain, and Yorktown, and cannon located in a national park commemorating the American among many others, all part of the National Park Revolution helps retell the System. Revolution’s countless stories. Shown are Independence Hall (far left), the statue of William Prescott in front of the Bunker Hill Monument (above), and a vintage picture complete with an enthusiastic pilgrim sitting on one of the many cannons guarding the encampment sites at Valley Forge (left).

16 17 “Collection of Memories” Visiting the historic places of the American Revolution is a way of standing at the intersection of Visitors planning a national park They are familiar, instantly recognizable. They the past and present. Surrounded by a battlefield, or trip have many options. They can reawaken fading memories and jump start the authentic furnishings of a restored 18th-century travel to Wall Street in New York emotions weakened by time. Call them icons. City to see the site of George building, we can try to peer back into history and Call them symbols. We know them when we see Washington’s first inauguration grasp its meaning for our own time. But this can be a (below). them, and we often see them in national parks. difficult task. Like objects in a time capsule, carefully Like the statues of minute men that guard safeguarded, treasured artifacts are separated Lexington Green and Concord’s North Bridge. nonetheless from the people and events that gave them Like the larger-than-life Washington that over­ meaning. The landscapes of history present their own looks Wall Street. Like the Franklin that presides challenges. We may stand in the footsteps of John over an echoing Philadelphia rotunda. Like the and Abigail Adams, George and Martha Washington, Liberty Bell, the monuments to Washington and Crispus Attucks, or Joseph Brant, but a direct view of Jefferson in the nation’s capital, and the rough- the past is obscured by the 21st-century cities which hewn log cabins at Valley Forge, they beckon have grown over the sites of 18th-century towns. modern-day pilgrims to places of national Suburban sprawl has encroached upon Revolutionary- remembrance. era fields. To get the full view of the encampment at The interesting thing about icons is that while Valley Forge or the siege at Yorktown, we travel from many people firmly believe they know what each site to site by automobile. symbolizes, in reality, personal experiences and passing time influence meaning. The Liberty Bell, Or, they can visit rough-hewn, for example, stands for freedom, but is it the reconstructed soldier huts (right), political freedom included in Pennsylvania’s enjoy the pink-tinged blossoms of the commemorative dogwood trees Charter of Privileges? Pennsylvania legislators that bloom each spring at Valley thought so when they purchased the bell in Forge (below), or stand before the 1751. Is it freedom from human bondage as Most parks have an iconic object, landscape, or resolute-looking bronze patriot in abolitionists thought when they adopted the building. Some of the most widely Minute Man National Historical bell’s “Proclaim liberty…” inscription? Is it recognized symbols are: Park (far right). independence from England per a fictional story Minute Man Statue: written before the Civil War? Or is it freedom Minute Man National Historical Park from the oppression of 20th-century dictators? At different times, for different people, the Liberty George Washington Statue: Bell has represented each of these and more. Federal Hall National Memorial As the protector of many icons, national parks Benjamin Franklin Statue: offer opportunities for discussion of different Benjamin Franklin National Memorial viewpoints, places to explore multiple (and Liberty Bell: changing) meanings. As David Glassberg Independence National Historical Park suggests in Sense of History, the contemporary Independence Hall: task of historic sites “may be…to create safe Independence National Historical Park spaces for…dialogue about history and for the collection of memories, and to ensure that Soldiers’ Cabins: various voices are heard in those spaces…” Valley Forge National Historical Park Another revolutionary idea?

18 19 With a wealth of assistance available from knowl­ the American Revolution passed from current emer­ edgeable people at every historic site, the complexity gency into the pages of history? Professor Gordon of the American Revolution might best be glimpsed Wood of Brown University sees the legacy of the during a tour, but the experience is necessarily limited American Revolution spanning the centuries from the in time. The essays in this volume, written by eminent drafting of the United States Constitution in 1787 to Americans of historians, will deepen and expand the experience. Americans’ responses to the attacks of September 11, various ideological What led the American colonists to break from 2001. He traces the tradition of constitution-writing persuasions come, England? Professor Pauline Maier leads us into the and the spread of the language of equality across time streets of Boston, where visitors today may follow the and around the globe. not always reverently, emerging resistance by walking the Freedom Trail, part As each writer shows, there is much to learn about to compete for the of Boston National Historical Park, and to Philadelphia, the American Revolution, far more than may be readily ownership of power­ where Continental Congresses gathered in Carpenters’ apparent during a visit to a historic site. The buildings ful national stories Hall and the Pennsylvania State House (now we visit, the artifacts we observe, and the stories we Independence Hall), both situated in Independence hear are themselves products of history. Each genera­ and to argue about National Historical Park. How did Americans manage tion grapples with the meaning of the American the nature of heroism, to defeat the dominant superpower of the 18th century? Revolution on its own terms. Their perceptions of the the meaning of war, Professor Don Higginbotham of the University of American Revolution echo across time in buildings the efficacy of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, takes us to the battlefields, preserved, objects displayed, or tours led by rangers. sacrifice, and the headquarters, and encampments of an epic conflict. Within a single generation, however, perspectives on His narrative connects the stories of individual sites— the American Revolution may differ. Was the American significance of Saratoga, Fort Stanwix, Cowpens, Guilford Revolution an achievement of freedom, or the beginning preserving the Courthouse, and others—and reveals a struggle of of a long struggle toward an elusive goal? Why are patriotic landscape generals and armies, to be sure, but also a war enmeshed some aspects of the Revolution more apparent at of the nation. in the international rivalries of Europe. The multiple historic sites than others? layers of Revolution history are embedded in national For several decades after the Revolution, Americans —Edward Linenthal park sites like Minute Man National Historical Park, devoted little effort to preserving the places, buildings, or in Sacred Ground On July 18, 1776, Thomas Crafts Morristown National Historical Park, and the objects of the event. They celebrated the Fourth of July stood on the balcony of Boston’s Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail through and honored the “founding fathers” and the veterans of Old State House (above) and read North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. the war, but they did not designate historic sites to the Declaration of Independence to those assembled. A carved lion to Traditionally, political and military stories and sustain the memory. This changed in the early 19th his right and a unicorn to his left, artifacts have predominated at historic sites of the century, as the 50th anniversary of the Revolution symbols of the United Kingdom, American Revolution. But in recent decades, scholars approached and only a few aged veterans remained. framed the scene. have broadened the stories and have shown that the In 1818, the City of Philadelphia purchased the old Jefferson tried to shape his legacy Revolution had far-reaching consequences for society. Pennsylvania State House, meeting place of the by writing a gravestone epitaph What about women, American Indians, and people of Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional (far right) citing the Declaration of African descent, both free and enslaved? Professor Convention, rather than see the building demolished Independence, Virginia’s religious freedom statute, and the University Gary Nash of the University of California, Los Angeles, and its square developed into building lots. In 1824-25, of Virginia as his most important brings the experiences of everyday people to life and a tour of the United States by the Marquis de Lafayette contributions. shows that the Revolution consisted of struggles for touched off a national frenzy of celebration for the independence on many levels. He ushers on stage a aged former general and spurred new regard for arti­ new cast of characters seeking freedom in the streets facts of the American Revolution. The 1820s and 1830s of Boston and Philadelphia, on battlefields, and in were a period for forming historical societies and American Indian territories within and beyond the collecting documents and objects of the Revolution. 13 colonies. What would these experiences mean for The importance of these efforts was underscored everyday people, their leaders, and the new nation as dramatically on July 4, 1826, with the deaths of both

20 21 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. As the American Revolution.” Lippard’s fiction propelled Revolutionary generation passed from history into the Liberty Bell to prominence as a symbol of the memory, physical reminders of their achievements American Revolution. For decades, this association became essential touchstones for the nation. obscured the Liberty Bell’s other place in history as Through the 19th century, interest in sustaining a symbol used by anti-slavery activists wishing to the memory of the founding generation became the “proclaim freedom throughout all the land.” special project of their descendants. For this reason, The historic properties placed in the care of the many of the buildings and objects preserved at historic National Park Service in the 20th century often bear sites represent an elite perspective, often celebrating the hallmarks of this history of memory-making. political or military heroes. Other perspectives may be They also reflect the concerns of the 20th century. less visible, but are nonetheless embedded in many Patriotism swelled during the two world wars and the historic places. For example, the memory of the Cold War. Revolutionary-era icons like the Minute founding fathers was treasured during the mid-19th Man and the Liberty Bell helped to raise money for century by nativists, the native-born Americans who war bonds. To demonstrate that their homelands had feared that immigrants posed a threat to the nation been essential to American success, new immigrants envisioned by the founders. The legacy of the to the United States staged parades and erected American Revolution echoed in other ways through monuments to heroes of the American Revolution the continuing struggles of African Americans, women, like Casimir Pulaski, Friedrich von Steuben, and and organized labor. As professors Nash and Wood John Barry. Patriotism, aided by the automobile, point out in their essays, the language of freedom and spurred visits to historic sites by families who wished equality used during the American Revolution resonated to educate their children in the nation’s founding strongly with people who did not yet share in the “life, principles. Reflecting the patriotic mood, historic liberty, and pursuit of happiness” expressed in the sites often were treated and experienced as shrines. Declaration of Independence. They wrote petitions, The National Park Service, in keeping with its held meetings, and organized demonstrations to call mission to preserve the nation’s treasures and make attention to their continuing struggles, often at the them accessible, scientifically restored buildings, same historic sites that were celebrating the heroic professionally catalogued and conserved artifacts, and achievements of the Revolution. Until recent times, conducted research to provide a strong foundation of these battles for independence received less attention factual information for visitors. than the lives and actions of famous leaders at our nation’s historic sites. National parks, including buildings like Washington’s Headquarters Myth-making also embellished the memory of at Valley Forge (left) or commemo­ the American Revolution during the 19th century, rative souvenirs (above) produced creating stories still retold by Americans today. If you for patriotic celebrations, explore An image of the Liberty Bell was can recite, “Listen my children and you shall hear, of the meaning of their physical first used in the Sonnet, 1839, collections. Published in The Liberty Bell, the midnight ride of Paul Revere,” you have absorbed Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow composed Boston (far above). in 1860. Yes, Paul Revere did ride, but the poem’s focus The Bellman informed of passage on the daring deed neglects the less dramatic tale of of the Declaration of Independence, the coordinated action which alerted the people of Graham’s Magazine, (above) Massachusetts to the movement of the British army. Philadelphia, June 1854. If you arrive in Philadelphia with a notion that the Liberty Bell rang on July 4, 1776, you have absorbed a fictional short story penned in 1846 by George Lippard, a best-selling author of “Legends of the

22 23 Demonstrations and controversies pass quickly from the scene, while buildings and landscapes remain. As a result, it may be difficult to see the many dimen­ sions of meaning that successive generations have attached to the historic places of the American Revolution. In the wake of the Cold War, the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the war on terrorism, the sites of the American Revolution Across time, supporters and acquire new meanings as today’s visitors look to the dissenters of many causes have past through the lens of the present. We are perhaps embraced national symbols, includ­ more determined to safeguard the treasures of the ing those associated with national nation’s history, even if security measures curtail the parks. Even as they seek to call attention to their movement, public’s direct interaction with the touchstones of our demonstrators can influence collective past. But perhaps we also are more willing perceptions, and even alter public to confront the contradictions between the ideals of understanding of the past. Vietnam the Revolution and the continuing quest by many to War protesters purposefully assem­ translate those ideals into reality. The NPS today bled outside Independence Hall (below), displayed placards with presents the evolving story of freedom at sites which eagles, carried American flags, and acknowledge the women’s rights movement and the selectively quoted revolutionary The mall (above) across from The celebratory nature of historic sites, especially internment of Japanese Americans during World War rhetoric. Independence Hall provided 20th­ during the 1950s, reflected trends in history-writing at II. Every visitor to a historic site has the opportunity to century protesters with a space the time. But like so many other aspects of American to express their opinions. Poor bring meaning to the place as well as to absorb its life, history-writing changed during the tumultuous People’s March protesters with histor y. This is the continuing process of appreciating 1960s, and historic places did not remain isolated from posters of Martin Luther King, Jr., and grappling with the legacy of the American May 14,1968. a renewed struggle over the meaning of the American Revolution. Revolution. Continuing a tradition of protest from the 19th century, advocates for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and homosexuals found strength in the language of the Declaration of Independence, and often gathered at historic places to demonstrate …the meanings of for their full inclusion in the rights of American a place are socially citizenship. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. created, multiple, delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the and change over Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he spoke of the Declaration of Independence as a promissory note which had not time. yet been paid. Civil rights activism coincided with the —David Glassberg controversy over Vietnam, which fostered new under­ in Sense of History standings of the American Revolution, as Professor Higginbotham notes in his essay. The deeply divisive Vietnam conflict also attracted pro-war and anti-war demonstrators to sites of the American Revolution. Protesters marched at Morristown, at Valley Forge, and at many other sites. Pro-war and anti-war demon­ strators faced off in Independence National Historical Park. Such activities co-existed with the ongoing flow of patriotic tourism.

24 25 everywhere in America. And violators would be tried The Path Toward in Admiralty Courts, which had no juries and whose jurisdiction was usually confined to cases that concerned Independence shipping and the seas. by Pauline Maier, Professor of American History Some Americans raised economic objections to Massachusetts Institute of Technology the Sugar Act. If strictly enforced, they said, the Inspired by revolutionary unrest, molasses duty would choke off trade with the non- many artisans embellished every­ British West Indies and seriously erode the colonists’ day items—like the allegorical Independence was not what the colonists wanted, print (far below) and teapot not in 1763 when they celebrated Britain’s triumph in capacity to purchase British goods. Other critics protesting the Stamp Tax (below) the French and Indian War. Nor was it their goal a argued that a duty designed to raise revenue was a tax, —with protest messages. As decade later, in 1776, when they accepted a “separate and since the tax was “laid on us without our Privity unrest turned to war, decorative and equal station” among the “powers of the earth” and Consent,” as the North Carolina legislature said in items also commemorated events and celebrated heroism. Many with more resignation than joy. But in the mid-1760s, as October 1764, it violated the colonists’ “Inherent right” of these objects survive in the the two sides began a series of conflicts that led where of “Imposing our own Taxes.” collections of historic sites. neither wanted to go, the story began with a dispute Opposition to the Stamp Act was over taxes. more widespread and passionate than opposition to the Sugar Act. It turned No Taxation Without Representation exclusively on the issue of rights. In Britain, the colonists insisted, taxes Britain did not ask the colonists to help retire the were “free gifts of the people” that heavy debt it acquired in the course of the French could be granted to the government and Indian War. But after a massive American Indian only by the people personally or uprising known as Pontiac's Rebellion, the British through their representatives. Freedom government decided it had to keep an army in North from taxes without consent was America to hold and police its new possessions, and “the undoubted right of Englishmen” that the colonists should help foot the bill. including “His Majesty’s liege In March 1764, George Grenville, the King’s first subjects” in America, who were, as lord of the treasury, asked Parliament to enact a series the colonists’ Stamp Act Congress of new or revised duties on certain goods imported into the American colonies, including a three pence His Majesty’s liege per gallon duty on molasses from the non-British West subjects [are] Indies. The preamble of that measure, known as the Sugar Act, said it was meant to raise revenue in “intitled to all the America “for defraying the expense of defending, inherent rights protecting, and securing the same.” and liberties of Then, because the Sugar Act was unlikely to raise his natural born enough money, Grenville announced plans for another measure, a stamp tax that would require the attach­ subjects within ment of tax stamps to certain items sold in America. the kingdom of The Stamp Act that Parliament finally passed in March Great Britain. 1765 imposed stamp taxes on pamphlets, almanacs, newspapers and newspaper advertisements, playing —Stamp Act Congress, 1765 cards and dice, and a wide range of legal documents. Never before had Parliament imposed taxes directly on the colonists. Moreover, the new taxes had to be paid in gold or silver, which were not readily available

26 declared in October 1765, “intitled to all the inherent in the British system of government from Bland's rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within perspective, a “putrid Part of the Constitution” that the kingdom of Great Britain.” Since colonists did not some “patriotick Spirits” should repair. send representatives to the British House of Commons, Confident that they could be represented only Parliament had no right to tax them. Only their elected by delegates chosen by themselves, the colonists provincial assemblies could do that. And Parliament denied Parliament’s right to tax them in petitions could not interfere with the colonists’ “inherent and that Parliament refused to receive. They also passed invaluable right” to trial by jury. By laying taxes on the resolutions asserting their rights in both their provincial colonists and extending the jurisdiction of Admiralty assemblies and the Stamp Act Congress at New York, Courts, the Stamp Act had “a manifest tendency to where delegates from nine colonies (all but New subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists.” Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia) British defenders of the Stamp Act usually agreed met in September and October 1765. Finally, when all with the principle of “no taxation without representa­ else failed, they prevented the Stamp Act from going tion.” They insisted, however, that the colonists were into effect. represented in Parliament. That the Americans elected On August 14, 1765, a crowd in Boston displayed, no delegates to the House of Commons was irrelevant, paraded, and finally destroyed an effigy of Andrew they said; nine-tenths of the British people could not Oliver, the man appointed to distribute stamps in vote for members of Parliament. Like Englishmen who Massachusetts. Later a mob attacked Oliver’s home; could not vote, and, indeed, like all British subjects, the next day he resigned his office. Since nobody was the colonists were virtually represented by members likely to replace him, the Stamp Act could not be of Parliament who spoke not only for their constituents executed in the Bay Colony. Soon stamp distributors but also for the good of all the British people every­ throughout the colonies resigned their offices to avoid where. Parliament, therefore, could tax them just as it Oliver’s fate. By November, the Stamp Act could be taxed other subjects of the King. implemented only in the frontier colony of Georgia, But the situation of colonists differed from that of and even there for only a short time. The colonists also In 1770, when King George III posed nonvoting Englishmen, replied the pamphleteer Daniel began a limited boycott of British imports in an effort to with Queen Charlotte and their six Dulany of Maryland in 1765. Members of Parliament, build support for repeal of the Stamp Act within Britain. children (above), the royal family of their constituents, and nonvoting subjects all had to By the spring of 1766, Grenville was out of office, colonies already showed the signs of estrangement. Disagreements over pay whatever taxes the House of Commons approved. and his replacement, Lord Rockingham, who had the exercise of authority, arguments They therefore were held together by a bond of interest never liked the Stamp Act, was ready to give in. over finances, and distance each that did not include the Americans. Instead, the more Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but it also passed While colonial protesters could hurl played a role in growing imperial Parliament taxed the colonists, the more it relieved the a Declaratory Act that asserted its power to bind the only verbal threats across the tension. tax burden of Britons at home. Virtual representation colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” Then, rather than Atlantic, they managed to lay Between 1762 and 1783, while might work within Britain, Dulany suggested, but it leave bad enough alone, the British government again rough hands on unfortunate royal surrogates, particularly those in George III fathered 15 children, his could not cross the Atlantic. tried to tax the colonists. paternalistic attitudes helped lose Massachusetts, who tried to collect the American colonies. “I wish Dulany’s pamphlet made him a hero throughout the Stamp Tax (above). nothing but good,” he said, but the colonies. But before long, Richard Bland of The Townshend Crisis “everyone who does not agree is Virginia went one step further. Virtual representation In 1767, after Rockingham had left office, the a traitor or a scoundrel.” made no sense anywhere, he said. “I cannot compre­ chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, hend,” Bland wrote, “how Men who are excluded from proposed to raise money in America by levying new voting at the Election of Members of Parliament can duties on imported glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. be represented in that Assembly, or how those who are The Townshend Act or Revenue Act of 1767 was elected do not sit in the House as Representatives of designed, as its preamble said, to raise a revenue their Constituents.” If 90 percent of the people within “for defraying the charge of administration of justice, Britain were disenfranchised, that was “a great Defect” and the support of civil government in such provinces

28 29 where it shall be found necessary” and to help pay for everywhere toasted the “Pennsylvania Farmer” and “defending, protecting, and securing the said domin­ followed his advice. When petitions failed, they ions.” That was a double attack on the colonies’ elected negotiated provincial nonimportation agreements. assemblies: it denied their exclusive power to tax their In some ports, those agreements cut imports by more constituents and threatened their role as paymaster of than half. British exporters managed to blunt the royal officials, a role they used to make those impact of the colonial boycotts by selling more in appointees respect colonial interests. other markets. Nonetheless, by 1770, the King’s new This time, a Philadelphia lawyer called his coun­ minister, Lord North, recommended repeal of the trymen to action. John Dickinson’s Letters from a Townshend duties on commercial principles. Farmer in Pennsylvania first appeared as a series of Parliament agreed but kept the duty on tea to show essays in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. They were widely that it retained the right to tax the colonists—the republished in other colonial newspapers and later same reason it had passed a Declaratory Act when it John Dickinson (far left) foresaw printed together in a popular pamphlet. Dickinson repealed the Stamp Act four years earlier. his dilemma. In the 1760s, he defined a tax as “an imposition on the subject, for Some colonists wanted to maintain the nonimpor­ wrote, “What particular circum­ the sole purpose of levying money.” The distinc­ tation agreements until all their grievances were stances will in any future case tion bandied about in London between redressed. But, one by one, the colonies deserted the justify…resistance [by force] can “external” and “internal” taxes—between agreements and resumed trading. Sometimes, as at never be ascertained till they happen.” In 1776, he refused to duties on trade and taxes raised within the New York and Philadelphia, colonists continued an vote for independence, but joined colonies —was meaningless; all measures informal boycott of legally imported tea and instead the militia. to raise revenue were taxes. The got their tea from smugglers. At Boston, however, Other colonies resisted the tempta­ Townshend duties were for Dickinson a handful of merchants who had never joined the tion to join the unrest brewing in as objectionable and as worthy of nonimportation agreement happily paid the Massachusetts. As late as May 1776, opposition as the Stamp Act. Townshend duty on imported tea and apparently Maryland congressman Thomas During the resistance to the Stamp had no problem selling it to retail customers. Stone wrote, “To cut the only Bond Act, crowd violence sometimes got out which held the discordant Members of the Empire together seems to of hand. In Boston, for example, a mob The Tea Crisis me the most weak and ill judged attacked several officials involved in a To some, the years after 1770 were a time of quiet. Measure I have ever met with in crackdown on smugglers and tore down For others, like Boston’s Samuel Adams, it was instead a State which had the least the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Pretention to wisdom or knowledge a period of “sullen silence.” The issue of what rights in the Affairs of Men.” Hutchinson. A demonstration in Newport, Parliament had over the American colonies remained Rhode Island, led to four days of uncontrolled unresolved. Moreover, the faith in the British King and rioting. Dickinson wanted to avoid similar out­ nation expressed by John Dickinson began to be seri­ breaks of disorder. “The cause of liberty,” he wrote, ously questioned. During the mid-1760s, colonists had “is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbu­ The cause of liberty frequently explained Britain’s violations of Americans’ lence and tumult.” Instead, he recommended starting rights as a result of misinformation from unfriendly is a cause of too with another round of petitions. He was confident governors and other royal officials within the colonies. much dignity to be they would work. “We have an excellent prince, in Soon, however, the government in London adopted sullied by turbulence whose good dispositions toward us we may confide,” other policies—toward the English radical John Wilkes he wrote, and “a generous, sensible, humane nation” and tumult. and toward Ireland, for example—that echoed those to ask for redress. But if the colonists’ petitions failed, applied to America. First the members of Parliament, —John Dickinson he recommended that the colonists withhold from then the King’s ministers, and occasionally, by 1770, Britain “the advantages she has been used to receive even the King himself seemed involved in a plot to from us.” That is, the colonists should cut off imports undermine the liberty of Britons both in America and and see “if our ingenuity, industry and frugality, will elsewhere, including England itself. not give weight to our remonstrances.” Colonists

30 31 The British government sent troops to Boston in on tea that was shipped to America. Perhaps the com­ 1768 to reinforce the authority of royal officials. On pany could then price its tea low enough to compete March 5, 1770, a handful of soldiers shot into a hostile with smugglers. East India Company tea would, how­ mob and killed five Bostonians, an event remembered ever, remain subject to the old Townshend duty, which as the Boston Massacre. Two years later, a crowd of Lord North refused to repeal. The new arrangements men from Providence, Rhode Island, attacked and also gave the company a monopoly that squeezed By representing the soldiers burned a royal ship, the HMS Gaspée, that had been many American merchants out of the tea trade. To Unity proved an elusive goal charged in the Boston Massacre disrupting trade in Narragansett Bay. The Crown make matters worse, the company chose as consignees for colonial activists. In 1754, (far below), John Adams (below) during the French and Indian War, risked his reputation and patriot appointed a special investigating commission with merchants who had been opponents of the old nonim­ Ben Franklin lamented “the present credentials. His defense was, power to send accused persons to England for trial portation movement, including the sons of Thomas disunited state of the British Adams wrote in his diary, “one of and to call for British troops if that seemed necessary. Hutchinson, then the royal governor of Massachusetts. Colonies,” published his “Join or the most gallant, generous, manly These events were local and isolated, although Opposition in New York and Philadelphia Die” political cartoon (below), and disinterested Actions of my news of them spread through the colonies. Nothing succeeded in getting the consignees to resign, and and provided a rallying cry for whole Life…” the decades to come. awoke widespread opposition to Britain until 1773, when then persuaded the captains of tea ships to return to Parliament passed a Tea Act to help the financially England with their cargoes. In Boston, however, the strained East India Company sell its large stock of first tea ship, the Dartmouth, slipped into the harbor imported tea in colonial markets. The act allowed the on November 28, and others followed in early company to sell tea directly through its own agents or December. The consignees refused to resign and fled consignees in America rather than auction it off to to the protection of British troops on an island in the merchants whose commissions added to the product’s harbor. If customs duties on the Dartmouth’s cargo final cost. The act also provided duties paid in England remained unpaid 20 days after the ship’s arrival, customs officials could seize it. And then the tea would surely be released to the consignees, who would pay the duties, opening the way for more Parliamentary taxation, and disgrace Boston in the eyes of patriots elsewhere. No! Ne'er was For 20 days, opponents of the Tea Act from Boston and neighboring towns tried unsuccessfully to get mingled such a clearance papers from customs agents and the governor draught In palace, so the ships could return the tea to England. Finally, hall or arbor, on the night of December 16, 1773, a group of men As freemen brewed dressed as “Indians” boarded the ships and tossed and tyrants quaffed 342 chests of tea into the harbor. They acted in a quiet, disciplined manner; bystanders heard only the sound That night in of axes cracking open the chests and the “plop, plop, Boston Harbor. plop” of tea dropping into the water. The “Indians” destroyed nothing else. When a small padlock was —Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) The Ballad of the inadvertently broken, they found another to replace Boston Tea Party it, and when a participant stuffed some tea into his pockets, he was stripped of his clothes and forced to run home naked. The news from Boston threw the King’s ministers into a fury. In 1774, Parliament approved four Coercive Acts, which the colonists soon labeled the “Intolerable Acts:”

32 33 The waves created by the tea chests pitched into Boston Harbor in 1773 rippled onto far-flung shores. They further eroded relations with England, chilled the soul of those seeking reconciliation, and bathed similar protests, then and more recently, in a revolutionary heritage. ■ The Boston Port Act closed the port until the Beginnings of Self-Government town paid for the destroyed tea and compensated Resistance was not revolution. It was meant to customs officers who had suffered damage during prevent would-be oppressors from having their way uprisings there. and to safeguard lawful rights, but not to undermine ■ The Massachusetts Government Act the rule of law or overturn the government. The changed the charter of 1691 by making members colonists, however, took over, crisis by crisis, more and of the council or upper house of the legislature more powers of self-government. In late November appointed by the Crown rather than elected 1765, for example, after enforcement of the Stamp Act by the lower house; allowed the governor to had already been stopped, organizations called the remove on his own authority all judges; ended Sons of Liberty began to appear throughout the the election of juries; and abolished all town colonies. The first Sons of Liberty group was a quasi- When political resistance shifted meetings except one each year for electing military organization that promised to assist New York to the First Continental Congress officials. That substantially reduced the colonists’ if the Crown used the royal army to enforce the Stamp meeting in Philadelphia’s participation in their government and increased the Carpenters’ Hall (below), local Act there. Later the Sons worked to keep the Stamp power of the Crown. Adding insult to injury, the activists seized the day. Prevented Act from being implemented while preventing acts of King appointed General Thomas Gage governor of from serving as a delegate, Charles private vengeance. Sometimes, as at Albany, New York, Thomson, “the Sam Adams of the colony, essentially putting Massachusetts under they professed their loyalty to the King and the British Philadelphia,” became secretary military rule. constitution while establishing an elaborate committee of the first and all successive ■ The Administration of Justice Act allowed Continental Congresses. structure for processing accusations against accused Crown officials accused of committing murder while Stamp Act supporters. Royal officials such as Thomas executing their offices to be tried in England if the Hutchinson complained bitterly that “the authority royal governor decided they could not get a fair trial of every colony is in the hands of the sons of liberty.” in Massachusetts. The colonists quickly called it After news arrived that the Stamp Act had been “the Murder Act” because they feared it would repealed, however, the Sons of Liberty dissolved, encourage royal officials to kill colonists. a sure sign that their objectives were limited. ■ A new Quartering Act, which applied to all of During the Townshend crisis, committees entrusted the colonies, allowed military commanders to quarter with enforcing the nonimportation agreements troops in vacant houses and other buildings. Standing assumed authority over trade and even tried to regulate armies, it seemed, were going to be a standard fixture prices. Like the old Sons of Liberty, nonimportation British General Thomas Gage (far in America even though, as the colonists kept saying, committees tried and punished violators of the above) advised, “If force is to be free men weren’t governed at the point of a gun. used…it must be a considerable agreements, usually by imposing social and economic With these measures, the Anglo-American conflict one…To begin with small numbers boycotts on those “enemies of their country.” But the will encourage resistance, and not moved far beyond a dispute over taxation. If the committees also disappeared after the partial repeal of terrify; and will in the end cost people of America refused to submit to the Coercive the Townshend duties and collapse of the nonimporta­ more blood and treasure.” Acts, the King’s minister for the American colonies tion agreements. After the Tea Act, 51 women in said, “they say in effect that they will no longer be A more lasting transfer of authority came with the Edenton, North Carolina, formed an a part of the British empire.” From the colonists’ meeting of a first Continental Congress to coordinate alliance to “give memorable proof perspective, however, submission required surrender of their patriotism” and boycott colonial opposition to the Coercive Acts. Twelve to a government determined to destroy the colonies’ British tea and cloth. In 1775, a colonies—all except Georgia—sent delegates to that English liberty. As the Virginia planter George London newspaper satirized the Congress, which met at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia “Edenton Tea Party” in an early Washington wrote on July 4, 1774, the existence of from September 5 through October 26, 1774. Soon after political cartoon (above). “a regular, systematic plan” against American freedom assembling, it endorsed a set of radical resolutions had become “as clear as the sun in its meridian passed by an extralegal convention in Suffolk County, brightness.” The only acceptable response, it seemed, Massachusetts. The resolutions held that the Coercive was resistance.

36 37 Acts were unconstitutional and should not be obeyed, tion of dissolving “the Union which has so long and discouraged paying taxes to the royal government of happily subsisted” between them and Britain. The Massachusetts, and called on colonists to arm. Later, Congress’s Olive Branch Petition to the King, drafted the Congress told the patriots in Massachusetts to act in the most respectful terms by John Dickinson and only on the defensive. If, however, the Crown tried to adopted by Congress on July 5, asked the King’s help enforce its policies with armed force, “all America in achieving a “permanent and happy reconciliation” ought to support them in the opposition.” between Britain and America. The Congress went on to approve a declaration of The King refused to receive the petition from the colonists’ rights and a list of parliamentary acts Congress’s emissaries or to issue an official answer. that violated those rights, much as the British On August 23, 1775, however, he issued a proclamation …many of our Parliament had done in 1689. Congress also petitioned stating that the Americans were engaged in an “open subjects in divers the King for redress and sent addresses to the people and avowed rebellion.” And on October 26, he told parts of our Colonies of Britain, Qúebec, and America. Above all, to bring Parliament the American rebellion was “manifestly and Plantations in pressure on the British government, it adopted a broad carried on for the purpose of establishing an inde­ nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexporta­ pendent Empire.” All the colonists’ “expressions of North America… tion agreement called the Continental Association. attachment to the parent State” and “professions of have at length pro­ Committees elected in every county, city, and town in loyalty to me,” he said, were “meant only to amuse” ceeded to open and America, by persons qualified to vote for members or distract Britain’s rulers “whilst they were preparing avowed rebellion, by of their provincial assemblies, would enforce the for a general revolt.” Some members of the House of association. Finally, the Congress called for the meet­ Commons said King George III was putting the word arraying themselves ing of another Congress on May 10, 1775, if America’s independence in the colonists’ mouths and, by treating in a hostile manner, grievances had not been redressed. them “upon suspicion, with every possible violence,” to withstand the By that date, news of the outbreak of war at was forcing them “toward that, which must be our execution of the law, Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, ruin.” But the majority approved the King’s speech and traitorously 1775, was spreading through the country. At first, and in December 1775, replaced earlier restrictions on military matters dominated the agenda of the Second colonial trade with a drastic act that prohibited all preparing, ordering Continental Congress. Soon other issues commanded trade with the 13 colonies. The Prohibitory Act and levying war Congress’s attention. As royal governments collapsed, declared the American ships and their cargoes forfeit against us… the Congress advised first Massachusetts, and later to the Crown “as if the same were the ships and effects New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia, how of open enemies” and allowed American seamen to be —King George III to reconstitute civil governments. Congress also impressed or drafted into the King’s navy. established a Continental Post Office, took charge of Indian affairs, regulated trade, tried to settle disputes King George III (left) resisted between colonies, and published directions on how to criticism. In 1779, he wrote that treat colonists who sided with the King. It became, in he expected his officials to agree effect, the first government of what would become “to keep the Empire entire and that In the summer of 1775, the the United States. no troops shall be consequently colonists spoke with at least two The Congress, however, did not advocate separa­ withdrawn from thence nor independence ever allowed.” voices. The Second Continental tion from Britain. Military operations were undertaken Congress sent George III the Equally persistent, royal critic Olive Branch Petition (shown to prevent British conquest until American rights could Edmund Burke observed, “They here) expressing hope for “a happy be secured. Even the new provincial governments defend their errors as if they and permanent reconciliation.” established under Congress’s direction were to remain were defending their inheritance.” But a confiscated letter from in effect only until the Anglo-American conflict was John Adams claimed that war was settled. In July 1775, Congress issued a Declaration on inevitable. Taking Up Arms that said the Americans had no inten­

38 39 Independence In the end, perhaps 20 percent of the American population sided with the King for a variety of reasons: News of the King’s October speech to Parliament because they thought the American cause would fail, I wish the good of the arrived in Philadelphia on January 8, 1776. The next because they feared for their own rights in a govern­ colony when I wish day, the first issue of Common Sense appeared. The ment ruled by the majority, or sometimes because they work of Thomas Paine, a previously undistinguished to see some further lived in remote places unaffected by the events that Englishman who had arrived in America a little over restraint of liberty had eroded the loyalty of other colonists. The loyalist a year earlier, the pamphlet for the first time publicly ranks included many men who had held royal appoint­ rather than the advocated independence. Americans could never ments, from local sheriffs to governors like Thomas connexion with the be secure in their freedom under British rule, it said, Hutchinson, as well as wealthy merchants and land­ parent state should because the constitution of England included two holders, many recent immigrants, and ordinary major errors: monarchy and hereditary succession. be broken…such a American-born farmers, artisans, and former slaves, What freedom the British had depended not on breach must prove many of whom joined the British lines in a search for complex checks and balances, Paine said, but on the their own freedom. the ruin of the colony. republican or elective component of their government, In fact, most colonists who advocated independence the House of Commons, which had been hopelessly —Thomas Hutchinson did so because they saw no alternative but military corrupted by the Crown. defeat. In May, news arrived that the King had Americans were slow to abandon British rule, secured German-speaking soldiers to help suppress he said, because they had no plan for a new the rebellion. Obviously, America needed help, government. And so, in the hope that his “hints” and France was her most likely ally. But the would “be the means of giving rise to something French would only help the colonies if they better,” Paine laid out a plan for new state and broke away from Britain; it was, after all, in continental governments founded entirely on France's interest to dismantle her enemy's popular choice, with no hereditary rulers— empire, not to help put it back together. a republic as the Americans came to understand Finally, on May 10 and 15, 1776, the that term. The Americans had it in their power, Continental Congress adopted a resolution with a he said, to “form the noblest, purest constitution on radical preface that called on the colonies to form the face of the earth” to the benefit of all mankind. new governments. It began by attacking the King— Written with language accessible to everyone, Common which signaled revolution—for approving the Thomas Paine (above) arrived in Sense rapidly spread through the colonies. Suddenly Unlike English-born Thomas Paine the colonies just in time to ignite Prohibitory Act, refusing to answer the colonists’ and James Chalmers, Thomas Americans everywhere were debating independence. the debate over independence with petitions for redress, and turning “the whole force” Hutchinson (above), the last civilian Not everyone believed Paine’s assurance that his immensely popular pamphlet of Britain “aided by foreign mercenaries” against governor of Massachusetts colony, Common Sense. Americans could hold out against Britain, his insistence boasted a long Boston pedigree. “the good people of these colonies.” It had become During his royal service, Hutchinson In response, in his own pamphlet that American products would find a market, or his necessary, it said, “that every kind of authority under offered advice on American affairs titled Plain Truth, loyalist James criticisms of the British constitution. The colonists the said Crown should be totally suppressed, in all the based on his distrust of popular Chalmers characterized Paine’s would surely lose a war with Britain, the strongest powers of government exerted, under the authority of government. vision as “quackery.” Chalmers military power in Europe, Paine’s critics said, and be served as a lieutenant colonel in the people of these colonies….” The pronouncement, Dogged by discontent and violence, worse off than before. To solicit the help of France the First Battalion of Maryland as John Adams observed, was a declaration of Hutchinson finally sailed into exile would risk subjection to a monarch more absolute Loyalists, and returned to England independence in all but name. The final vote, however, after the Boston Tea Party. Although than George III. The American economy would where he socialized with other was seriously divided. he died in England before the war expatriates like Ben Franklin’s stagnate without British purchases. And republics ended, Hutchinson’s three-volume On the same day, May 15, Virginia instructed its son William. throughout history were short-lived; they dissolved in History of Massachusetts Bay congressional delegates to propose independence. chaos, which usually led to military rule. Where Paine reflected his deep Massachusetts And so, on June 7, Richard Henry Lee moved “that roots. looked to “the birthday of a new world,” loyalists— these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Americans who rejected independence—saw disaster. free and independent States, that they are absolved

40 41 This unfinished engraving by Edward Savage proved to be almost as good as a photograph. Based on a painting by Robert Edge Pine, Savage captured important details of the Assembly Room of Independence Hall, details that the Park Service used years later when restoring the room.

42 43 from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all and sincere petitions…giving every assurance of our political connection between them and the State of affection and loyalty,” the freemen of Charles County, Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” Maryland, said, but got in return “an increase of insult Following his instructions, Lee also called for the and injury.” negotiation of foreign alliances and the preparation “Both sides grew every day more and more incensed,” of a plan of confederation for the consideration and wrote the Freeholders of Buckingham County, Virginia, approval of the colonies. until the confidence necessary to continue under British Congress debated Lee’s first resolution on June 8, rule seemed “entirely annihilated.” Now it was necessary a Saturday, and the following Monday. Even those to “bid the last adieu” and hope “some foreign power who opposed the motion conceded that independence may, for their own interest, lend us an assisting hand.” had become inevitable and argued only for delay. These local statements occasionally echoed the Negotiations with France should precede the adoption language of Common Sense, but their complaints were of independence, they said, or the Americans would against the King, his ministers, members of the British have less bargaining power. Moreover, the instructions Parliament, and those British people who failed to issued to their congressmen by several colonies, support the colonists. Nonetheless, they assumed, including New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and sometimes explicitly demanded, that their future Pennsylvania, and Maryland, did not allow them to government would be republican, like the temporary vote for independence—only to work for reconciliation. constitutional government recently established in The colonies needed to be united on so momentous South Carolina. “What every one once dreaded as the a decision, and opinion was ripening quickly. In the greatest misery,” separation from Britain, “they now end, Congress delayed the vote until July in the hope unexpectedly find their greatest advantage,” a grand Congressman Thomas Jefferson it would then get stronger support. But on June 11, it jury in the remote Cheraws District of South Carolina (above) rented two second-floor said. The people best capable of governing the American rooms in the newly constructed appointed a committee of five delegates to draft a home of Philadelphia bricklayer declaration on independence. people, they had discovered, were themselves. Jacob Graff, Jr. There, Jefferson The committee met, discussed the document, When Congress resumed discussion of independ­ wrote his draft of the Declaration decided on its structure, and appointed its chairman, ence on July 1, it remained divided. But the next day, of Independence, perhaps attended Thomas Jefferson, to prepare a draft. Jefferson probably with some shifts in votes, a few strategic absences, and by his longtime companion and the timely arrival of another delegate from Delaware, it enslaved valet, Jupiter. did that in a few days and then submitted his text for comments to fellow committeemen John Adams and adopted Lee’s resolution on independence by a vote of 12 Artist Charles Willson Peale took Benjamin Franklin. Later, the drafting committee, which to 0, with New York abstaining. A week later, New York advantage of the fact that added its consent, but not without lamenting “the cruel Philadelphia served as national also included Roger Sherman of Connecticut and capital during and after the Robert R. Livingston of New York, reviewed the revised necessity which has rendered that measure unavoidable.” Revolution. He cajoled Jefferson With independence adopted, Congress turned to draft and asked Jefferson to make some additional Like the members of Congress, and dozens of Founders to sit for changes before sending it to Congress on June 28, 1776. the draft declaration of independence. It spent most of the furnishings in Independence portraits. Today, many of Peale’s In the meantime, an intense campaign within the the next two days editing the document—removing Hall’s Assembly Room (far above) portraits hang in the Second Bank words, phrases, and one whole passage; adjusting the ranged from modest to flamboyant. of the U.S. various colonies managed to get all but New York to give its delegates power to adopt independence. language; and replacing part of the final paragraph, the Uncarpeted wood floors and simple one that declared independence, with words from the green table covers contrast with Towns, counties, grand juries, and other local groups the elegant silver inkstand made met in the late spring and early summer, urged their Lee resolution. Finally, on July 4, the delegates by Philip Syng (above) probably legislatures to endorse independence, and sometimes approved the text and sent it to printer John Dunlap. used to sign the Declaration. explained why. One after another mentioned how they Within days, copies went out to the states and army had loved the British King and people. Their feelings with instructions that it be so distributed that the mass had changed because of the “cruelty and injustice of of the people know that “these united colonies” had the British Government.” The “United Colonies” had become at last “free and independent states…absolved “tried to get redress of grievances, by decent, dutiful, from all allegiance to the British Crown.”

44 45 “Volumes Had Been Written…” “Principles, Opinions, Sentiments, & Affections”

The Revolutionary generation employed the pen of nations. Jefferson’s powerful words did more. On February 13, 1818, John Adams wrote Hezekiah Constitution but also explores principles like long before brandishing the sword. As early as They echoed across time in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Niles a letter. “The Revolution,” Adams advised, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 1776, Thomas Paine observed that volumes Address, the speeches of Frederick Douglass, “was effected before the War commenced. The The Liberty Bell challenges visitors to think already had been written on the conflict the Declaration of Sentiments written at the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the about the liberties they enjoy, and where liberty between England and America. Women’s Rights Conference, and Martin Luther people; a change in their religious sentiments of remains unattained. Federal Hall (site of the first King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the their duties and obligations…This radical change U.S. capitol) focuses on leadership, precedents, The newspapers of colonial cities like Boston Lincoln Memorial. in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and individual rights, and limited government. filled columns of type with political philosophy. affections of the people, was the real American Broadsides hawked on streets tried to sway A trip to a number of national parks puts the Revolution.” public opinion. Poet Phillis Wheatley, the first wisdom of John Adams to the test. Was he published African American woman in North While national parks protect a superior collection correct, were “radical” changes afoot? America, used a cautiously optimistic poem to of landscapes, buildings, and artifacts, they Adams National Historical Park appeal to King George III for enlightened leader­ also preserve less tangible treasures like ideas, ship. As the divide between country and colony ideas that shaped the “duties and obligations” Saint Paul’s Church National Historic Site widened, blatant propaganda—like Paul Revere’s shouldered by ancestors. Minute Man National Historical Park drawing of the Boston Massacre—used images What motivated the “embattled farmer” to to heighten opposition to King and Parliament. Boston National Historical Park confront the British at Lexington and Concord? The Continental Congress, meeting in Why did loyalist Scots from the Carolina upcountry Moores Creek National Battlefield Independence Hall, resorted to words again by shout “King George and Broadswords” as they Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial sending George III the Olive Branch Petition. attacked patriots across Moores Creek Bridge? Fort Stanwix National Monument Spoiling for a confrontation, the King responded Why did Polish military engineer Thaddeus with words of his own—he declared Kosciuszko join the Continental Army? Why did Charles Pinckney National Historic Site the colonies in open revolt. Oneida warriors ally with the patriots while other Thomas Stone National Historic Site Many individual founders Six Nation tribes fought with the British? How participated in this written did Charles Pinckney justify enslaving Africans William Floyd’s Home dialogue. John Adams, while he fought for “liberty?” Parks also conserve (Fire Island National Seashore) for example, wrote his “principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections.” Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial influential Thoughts on Government just as one Sites commemorate landmark events in the Independence National Historical Park history of freedom of assembly, freedom of colony after another Federal Hall National Memorial drafted constitutions To discover the power of the pen visit: religion, and freedom of the press. Red Hill replacing British rule. commemorates the genius of Patrick Henry, Roger Williams National Memorial Boston National Historical Park an orator skilled at capturing and expressing After warfare erupted, the pen Independence National Historical Park political sentiments. Independence National became a powerful ally of the Historical Park not only preserves original printed Valley Forge National Historical Park sword. In his immensely popular copies of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine Adams National Historical Park denounced British rule, fomenting revolutionary sentiment. As the American army encamped at Gettysburg National Military Park Valley Forge, his The Crisis bolstered support for Lincoln Memorial independence. Frederick Douglass National Historic Site In 1776, the Second Continental Congress, no Women’s Rights National Historical Park longer conciliatory, resorted to words again when it prepared a declaration of independence. Martin Luther King, Jr., National Members had no illusions that they would sway Historic Site King or Parliament. Instead, they addressed not-yet-committed colonists and the community 46 47 The War for Independence If hvistoriographers Washington fought from beginning should be hardy to end. From the day the Second by Don Higginbotham, Professor of History, enough to fill the page Continental Congress chose him to University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill of History with the command the Continental Army in 1775, until the day he resigned his The American Revolution, like most successful advantages that have commission in 1783, Washington revolutionary struggles, involved violence and bloodshed, been gained with built an impressive record for military resilience. He not only but it also brought about significant transformations. unequal numbers (on survived battle, he outlasted political If the Revolution had not succeeded militarily, the the part of America) intrigue and the jealousy of rivals. state constitutions would have been revoked, the At war’s end, he even survived U.S. Constitution would never have been written, and in the course of this success, choosing to retire voluntarily the social, cultural, and economic changes that resulted contest, and attempt to Mount Vernon. from the separation from Britain would not have to relate the distress­ taken place. ing circumstances How was it possible for the 13 colonies, often under which they fractious and suspicious of one another, to prevail over Great Britain, which after her defeat of France in have been obtained, it the French and Indian War, had become 18th-century is more than probable Europe’s dominant superpower? George Washington that Posterity will said at the conclusion of hostilities that the question bestow on their labors would always challenge historians, for the outcome bore all the marks of fiction. Not surprisingly then, the epithet and marks most scholars until recent years have maintained of fiction; for it will that Britain had not taken advantage of her vast not be believed that resources—a professional army, the world’s most such a force as Great powerful navy, and Europe’s most sophisticated financial Britain has employed and industrial complex. Moreover, they claimed, the British war effort suffered from mediocre political for eight years in this and military leadership. Country could be America’s failure in the Vietnam War, however, baffled in their plan generated new perspectives on superpowers engaging of Subjugating it by in conflicts in distant parts of the world. Problems of public opinion at home, logistics, and an unfamiliar numbers infinitely environment where traditional methods of fighting less, composed of and campaigning came up short also could explain, in Men oftentimes half some measure, Britain’s inability to maintain its hold starved; always in on the 13 colonies. Moreover, Britain confronted an Rags, without pay, aroused countryside—angry citizens in arms who brought about both a political and a military revolution. and experiencing, at The 18th-century military system, with its highly times, every species of trained armies and upper-class officers, faced a new distress which human challenge, one that would be repeated in the era of the nature is capable French Revolution and countless times in the next two centuries. This simple fact explains one great, often of undergoing. overlooked advantage of the American revolutionaries. —George Washington,1783

49 “Useful Lessons” Initially, they controlled the local infrastructure every­ where. The colonial assemblies, now calling themselves George Washington had an interesting view of Washington’s struggle to keep his army intact, provincial congresses and, after 1776, state legislatures, history. “We ought not to look back,” he said, and his willingness to defer to civilian control of continued to dominate the domestic sector, making “unless it is to derive useful lessons from past the military. In 1781, Washington marched his errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear- army through New Jersey again, now accompa­ laws that threatened or coerced people who opposed bought experiences.” nied by French allies, on the way to Yorktown. the rebellion. Their chief weapons for securing the His leadership on the battlefield persuaded many homefront were the old colonial militias, activated and that they needed him in national service after reorganized. As a result, the Crown’s adherents, the Nothing can be more the war, first as president of the Constitutional loyalists or Tories, remained mostly silent or ineffectual hurtful to the service, Convention when it met in Independence Hall, except when a British army arrived to rally or embolden and then as U.S. President when New York and them. than the neglect of then Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital. The Continental Congress, made up of representa­ discipline; for that tives from the colony-states, topped the revolutionary The NPS, it seems, is intent on allowing genera­ discipline, more than tions of visitors to rediscover “useful” lessons in command structure. Local authorities deferred to numbers, gives one Congress in the interest of securing independence, Washington’s “past errors” and “dear-bought army the superiority experiences.” especially after it became apparent by early 1776 that Britain intended to continue to resolve the imperial over another. George Washington Birthplace National crisis by means of a military rather than a political —George Washington, 1777 Monument solution. The Declaration of Independence, however, Fort Necessity National Battlefield (first did not mean that the American states were ready to combat for Washington and only surrender) create a strong national government. Instead, Congress Independence National Historical Park existed as an extralegal institution until its efforts to If they agreed with Washington, those who have (Independence Hall, site of the President’s establish a loose constitutional union, the Articles molded the National Park System must have felt Mansion, Congress Hall) of Confederation, was ratified in 1781. The Articles that Washington’s life had many lessons to essentially confirmed the jurisdiction that the states Longfellow National Historic Site teach. No one is better represented by NPS sites had informally bestowed upon the Congress at the (Washington’s Headquarters) than George Washington—from his Virginia outset: the power to raise military forces, conduct birthplace, to his first test in battle, to the sites Valley Forge National Historical Park foreign relations, deal with Indian tribes, coin money, of his inaugurations as U.S. president. Morristown National Historical Park and set up a post office. The plantation of Augustine Washington After the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, Crossroads of the American Revolution embraced son George; the child’s formative Britain had sent several thousand troops to the National Heritage Area influences included a financially comfortable Massachusetts capital and appointed the military family living on a rural Virginia plantation Colonial National Historical Park commander in North America, General Thomas Gage, dependent on enslaved Africans. The frontier (Yorktown) governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Tensions battlefield location of Fort Necessity sheds light Federal Hall National Memorial (site of built and fighting erupted on April 19, 1775, when a on Washington’s development as a military Washington’s first inauguration) British column, seeking to destroy militia supplies at officer. Chosen commander of the Continental Concord, came under heavy fire as it fell back through Army by Congress meeting in Independence Hall, Lexington seeking the safety of Boston. Hundreds of Washington took up headquarters in a Cambridge, men from nearby towns joined in the assault. The Massachusetts house later purchased by poet column, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Following his might have been annihilated had Gage not sent out retreat from New York, Washington helped New support under General Hugh, Earl Percy. Before the Jersey earn its reputation as the Crossroads of exhausted, frightened regulars made good their the Revolution. With Washington in command, escape, they had suffered 274 casualties as opposed to more battles occurred in New Jersey than in any other state. Valley Forge and Morristown reveal 93 American casualties. The attackers—their numbers

50 51 swelling to almost 20,000 as all of the New England colonies joined Massachusetts in the conflict—quickly encircled the land side of Boston and confined the British there. Nearly two months later, on June 17, Gage endeavored to retake the Charleston peninsula. His troops won the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill on Breed’s Hill, but it was one of numerous costly victories in the war. The British swept up the terrain, only to be driven back with heavy losses before they finally prevailed, too bloodied and disorganized to follow up their hollow accomplishment. One British officer called it “a dear bought victory.” Another victory like it “would have ruined us.”

Concord’s North Bridge (above) reminds us that warfare erupted more than a year before independ­ ence. When the colonials, warned by a lantern (far right) hung in a Boston steeple, gathered to oppose the British, battle was just hours away, first at Lexington and then at North Bridge. Amos Doolittle prepared several engravings illustrating the events of April 1775, including these showing the British in Concord (right). A Connecticut engraver and silversmith, Doolittle visited the scenes of battle and interviewed eyewitnesses. Nonetheless, his version reflected a colonial perspective; the British had their own narrative of events.

52 53 John Trumbull’s painting of Bunker Hill is focused and personal. It captures, Trumbull explained, “the moment when… British troops became completely successful and masters of the field.” Abigail Adams said her “blood shivered” when she saw the original sketch. British General John Burgoyne, watching from afar, instead described the panorama of war. “And now ensued,” Burgoyne wrote, “one of the greatest scenes of war that can be conceived…”

54 55 Later that June, in response to a plea from Washington succeeded in New England, but a Massachusetts, Congress agreed to “adopt” the New column from his camp in Cambridge and another From July 1775 until April 1776, George Washington (below) England militia forces. They became the Continental force advancing up the Hudson River failed to wrest made the Cambridge home of Army, and the delegates chose George Washington of Canada from the Crown. At the city of Québec, they John Vassall, Jr., now Longfellow Virginia as commander-in-chief. The appointment met defeat on December 31, 1775, resulting in the death National Historic Site, his military of a leader from the South would be another step in of General Richard Montgomery and the wounding headquarters. making it truly an American war, not just a New of Colonel Benedict Arnold. England enterprise. Even so, Washington emerged as the best candidate in his own right. As a prominent figure in the resistance movement prior to entering Congress, he had proved his military credentials with impressive service in the French and Indian War. Wearing his old uniform in Congress, Washington signaled his readiness to serve. He had been outside the military profession for more than 17 years, but military theory and technology had scarcely changed, and the British generals he would face had been only majors and colonels in the last war with France. Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the newly designated Continental Army in July 1775, beginning an eight-and-a-half-year assignment, a record of continuous service without a leave of absence unparalleled in American history. From his headquarters, a mansion abandoned by a fleeing loyalist family, Washington confronted the first of his numerous challenges in the Revolutionary War—containment of British forces in Boston. Our cruel and It proved easier than he might have thought. His unrelenting enemy opponent, General Sir William Howe, who replaced Gage, hardly relished another bloodbath after Bunker leaves us only the Hill. As it turned out, the more pressing challenge was choice of brave to bring order and discipline to the New England resistance, or the most militiamen ringing the city. They were ill-disciplined, In the spring of 1776, Washington and his army Hoping to incite a French Canadian poorly trained, and plagued by rivalries among different were on the move headed for New York City. Howe uprising, the Americans invaded abject submission. Canada. On a snowy December 31, provinces. Furthermore, the civilian population had a had evacuated Boston a few weeks earlier, choosing to We have, therefore, 1775, during an unsuccessful long history of opposing military forces in their regroup, await reinforcements from Britain, and then assault on Québec, General Richard to resolve to conquer presence. If Washington whipped his regiments into attack where the Americans seemed more vulnerable. Montgomery died in action. or die. shape, he also created a common bond in the army Reports had it that he would soon assemble a huge After the war, John Trumbull used and bolstered the prestige and authority of the force for an attack on New York. The British unfolded his art to immortalize a patriot —George Washington, hero’s death (above). before the Battle of Continental Congress. He made it clear that he took an ambitious plan for the campaign of 1776. General Long Island, 1776 orders only from Congress, even as he remained Howe and his brother, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, tactful in dealing with Massachusetts civil authorities. rode at anchor before New York City in August. Their In all these endeavors, he set precedents he would armada, huge by that day’s standards, consisted of 73 follow throughout the conflict. warships and several hundred transports carrying 32,000 troops. Their objectives were to take New York

56 57 City and then isolate New England, which they consid­ Departing on July 23, 1777, Howe sailed down ered to be the storm center of the rebellion. In doing the coast and on August 25 landed at the head of so they sought to draw Washington into a full-scale Chesapeake Bay. Washington positioned his army battle, destroy his army, and bring about the collapse across Howe’s line of advance and confronted him John Burgoyne’s (below) bold plan General William Howe (below) of resistance. It all might have worked. Between on September 11 at Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania. to divide the northern colonies captured cities—he occupied August and December, William Howe bested In fierce fighting, Howe eventually turned Washington’s failed when Horatio Gates, and the Boston, Philadelphia, and New Washington in a series of contests in the greater New right flank and the Americans withdrew. Washington American wilderness, forced him to York—but failed to win the war. surrender at Saratoga. York City area—at Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, suffered 1,000 casualties in all categories, twice that of at Kip’s Bay and Harlem Heights on Manhattan Island, Howe, and could only watch as his adversary occupied and at White Plains on the mainland. In defending the Philadelphia. Then, before dawn on October 4, islands, Washington risked encirclement but, thanks Washington struck Germantown, where Howe had in part to luck and Howe’s lethargy, he managed to quartered part of his army. The contest was intense, extract most of his army (the British captured 2,000) with each side experiencing roughly the same number and pull back to other positions. of losses as they had at Brandywine. Howe knew that Initially, as he fled through New Jersey, Washington’s his triumphs were costly, because he could not count situation seemed to go from bad to worse. Howe’s on reinforcements and Washington could. He settled advance units nipped at his heels, his small army unravel­ in for the winter at Philadelphia, while Washington ing from expired enlistments and desertions. Although retired to Valley Forge, 22 miles northwest of the Washington escaped into Pennsylvania, his departure capital, to keep an eye on Howe. allowed Howe to station garrisons throughout the Meanwhile, Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign from Jerseys and to detach a force that seized Newport, Canada, aided by a diversionary movement of 2,000 Rhode Island. The campaign of 1776, however, did not troops under General Barry St. Leger moving east end with the calendar. Washington bounced back with along the Mohawk Valley, started well. He comes, he comes, two brilliant assaults. Crossing back over the Delaware Burgoyne exuded confidence, but he and the Hero comes, River to Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night, he Lord George Germain failed to comprehend Sound, sound picked off the celebrating German troops, the so-called that the Americans could quickly increase your trumpets, Hessians. Returning briefly to Pennsylvania, Washington their Northern Army, commanded by beat your drums. gathered militia support and again crossed into New General Philip Schuyler and later by Jersey. Outmaneuvering British reinforcements from General Horatio Gates. Burgoyne, with a From port to port New York, he captured Princeton and gained the protec­ force of 7,000 British regulars, Germans, The military let cannon roar tion of the mountains near Morristown for the winter. Indians, and Tories, retained his optimism career of for the time being. According to the Horatio Howe’s welcome to Leaving garrisons in New York and Rhode Island, Gates (left), this Western shore. William Howe moved against Philadelphia, the patriot fascinating journal account of Baroness buoyed by capital. He decided to take his army by sea rather than Frederika von Riedesel, wife of the Saratoga, went —Loyalist greeting by land. Not only longer, this sea route meant that he Brunswicker commander, Burgoyne partied awry thanks to General Sir William Howe and General John Burgoyne, in command of a smaller along the way in scandalous fashion, fueled by wine political intrigue and defeat at the Battle of Camden. to New York City, 1776 army in Canada, would remain in the dark about each and the charms of his mistress. Traveling up Lake other’s location and intentions. It seems incredible that Champlain in June, he placed heavy artillery above Lord George Germain, the British colonial secretary Fort Ticonderoga, forcing the Americans to evacuate and the man supervising military operations in the post. Facing minor opposition, he moved to America, authorized this campaign without insisting Skenesborough, 25 miles from the Hudson River, on coordination and cooperation between Howe and where he rested for three weeks awaiting his supply Burgoyne. But similar miscommunications and conflicts wagons slowed by upstate New York’s rough, forested within the British command structure would be repeated terrain. The delay was a major error. It gave the throughout the war, with serious consequences. Americans a chance to create obstructions and to

58 59 reorganize and augment their Northern Army on the Gates’s victory at Saratoga gave France the final west side of the Hudson. As Burgoyne lurched forward, nudge to becoming an overt American ally. Washington he was bedeviled by downed trees and flooded creeks and his generals stressed to the lawmakers in Philadelphia designed to slow his pace. He needed 24 days to reach that military aid from abroad was imperative because the Hudson, which he crossed only to encounter a America lacked the know-how to manufacture large revived and well-entrenched American Northern quantities of military stores. In fact, Congress’s If war should break Army. That was not the end of the bad news. St. Leger’s resolution for independence included language calling out between France expedition, half British and half Indian, had been for foreign alliances. Even before July 1776, Congress and Great Britain turned back at Fort Stanwix and Oriskany. And began sending representatives abroad. Led by Benjamin during the continu­ Burgoyne’s eastern wing, a column searching for Franklin, they dealt skillfully with the French and gained ance of the present horses and foodstuffs, fell to patriot militia in what the confidence of the normally cautious Foreign Minister became known as the Battle of Bennington. Comte de Vergennes. For over two years, French agents war between the surreptitiously supplied the Americans with arms and United States and In France, Benjamin Franklin played munitions. With the victory at Saratoga, France and England, his majesty a critical role in the American America signed treaties of commerce and alliance and the said United success at Saratoga. Jonathan Dull, (February 1778) formally bringing the French into the senior associate editor at the war. It was an auspicious beginning to a year that States shall make it Franklin Papers, points out that marked a turning point in the war. a common cause, “most of the muskets used at Saratoga by the Americans were Although they continued to hold New York and and aid each other French, as were the cannon.” Newport, the British had little to show for three years mutually with their Merchant Elkanah Watson, in of campaigning in New England and the middle states. good offices, their France when news of Saratoga In June 1778, they evacuated Philadelphia and their (far right) arrived, wrote that forces returned overland to bolster the garrison in counsels, and their “Franklin’s great influence at the New York. Washington, after the winter at Valley forces, according Court of France was the primary Forge, fielded a much better-trained army. He trailed cause of producing this bold to the exigence of enterprise…” the British until he and Sir Henry Clinton, on June 28, conjecture, as fought an indecisive battle at Monmouth Courthouse Geography bedeviled the British. becomes good and When General Burgoyne reached in New Jersey. Clinton, who had been the British Saratoga, his slog through New second in command since 1776, succeeded William faithful allies. York had exhausted his supplies Howe, who had asked to be relieved and had returned Burgoyne’s choices were grim: turn around and —Treaty of Alliance with and men. The Hudson River (right), struggle back through the north country or fight his to England skeptical that Britain could ever turn the France, Article 1. 1778 proved to be his final barrier when way through the Americans waiting on Bemis Heights. clock back and totally subdue America. he tried to retreat after punishing combat at Freeman’s Farm and Always a gambler, Burgoyne fought two bloody battles, Bemis Heights. September 19 and October 7, and suffered approximately 1,200 casualties, more than the American losses. Encircled and aware that the British garrison in New York City could not extricate him, the Briton capitulated on October 17 at Saratoga. Burgoyne and Howe, by their failure to cooperate, had botched the campaign of 1777. In one respect, however, Howe displayed superior judgment. He stayed near the coast, never venturing far from his supply lines and mindful of the fact—having served in America in the French and Indian War—that the wilderness could swallow up a British army.

60 61 For the next three years, as the British continued settlers from British and Indian raiders based in to concentrate their remaining forces in the vicinity of Detroit. George Rogers Clark of Virginia staged a cam­ Long Island and New York City, Washington paign of retaliation into the Illinois Country seizing engaged in a holding operation in the middle Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. Although Spain states. Even when it lost, the Continental entered the war on the side of France, occupying West Army fought reasonably well, and Florida and parts of the lower Mississippi, neither side continued to improve. German gained control of the vast interior. The one decisive officers observed in their journals that American victory came when General John Sullivan Washington’s officers seemed to be destroyed numerous Iroquois tribal villages in the well informed on European military New York backcountry. But permanent peace in the literature. In America, senior officers frontier awaited diplomatic events in Europe. like Henry Knox and Nathanael The war took a new Greene made references to the tactics direction in late 1778 after of Caesar, Charles XII, Frederick the Britain reversed its policy Great, and Comte de Saxe. In light of of largely ignoring the this, perhaps, the so-called “Baron” American South. In 1776, a Friedrich von Steuben has received too small British military and much credit. naval expedition under The former member of Frederick the Great’s Clinton and Commodore A product of the Prussian military, staff did standardize critical practices, including drill Sir Peter Parker had been Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard formation and moving in column and line. But he did ordered to stir up loyalist Augustin von Steuben (above) so in what amounted to collaboration with Washington, support along the coast of spoke no English when he arrived in America in 1777. Instead he who oversaw his writing and made improvements the Carolinas. Since the relied on French to communicate before publication of Regulations for the Discipline of North Carolina loyalists with bilingual army officers like the Troops of the United States. had prematurely taken up Alexander Hamilton and As a result of his experiences at Valley Forge, arms and suffered a total Nathanael Greene. Washington spread his forces in a kind of arc around defeat at Moores Creek in the enemy in New York, just as he had deployed them February, Clinton and when containing Howe’s army in Philadelphia in 1778. Parker sailed on to join the armada for the assault on That way he could better control much of the country­ New York City. The loyalists had hoped to establish a Battles like the one that occurred side, support the patriot militia, and harass the loyalists. beachhead near Charleston, South Carolina, but in at Moores Creek (above) illustrate the diversity of the 13 colonies. Because Washington had all he could handle in June the city’s defenders drove off the attackers. This Scottish settlers, fiercely loyal to controlling the Continental Army in the Middle setback hardly dampened the enthusiasm of loyalist King George III, charged across Department, he could not effectively supervise and leaders and exiled southern royal governors. They the partially dismantled bridge instruct the American commanding generals in the assured Germain that the population from Virginia to spanning Moores Creek into the New England, Northern, Western, and Southern Georgia was overwhelmingly committed to the Crown, withering musket and cannon fire of 1,000 North Carolina patriots Departments. Thus far, except in the Northern that the loyalists there had been intimidated by the waiting in the morning fog. Department where Gates bested Burgoyne, most of patriot minority, and that the appearance of a British The patriot victory ended British the action had taken place in Washington’s theater. army would bring them rallying to the King’s standard. rule in North Carolina forever. In the West, small forces and their Indian allies had Regardless of how well-intentioned an occupying fought sporadically but furiously with both sides nation may be, rarely have a people enjoyed being committing gruesome atrocities. Owing to old occupied. The South was no exception. In the winter grievances against colonial expansion, most Indians of 1778-1779, small British forces had seemingly sided with the King rather than with the Continental subdued Georgia except for scattered resistance in the Congress. Daniel Boone sought to defend Kentucky backcountry. Fighting was indecisive in the Georgia-

62 63 “The Die is Now Cast” South Carolina borderlands in 1779. South Carolina was a greater test and a greater prize because of its The American patriots chose a formidable enemy, enormous wealth and sizable population. That challenge Great Britain, an 18th-century superpower. did not come until early 1780. Slow to implement fully So how could the British army, highly trained, the southern strategy, Clinton finally brought the bulk professional, equipped with the most sophisticated of his army from New York to South Carolina and weapons, and backed by extensive financial and landed just below Charleston. He soon put the city industrial resources, possibly lose to an enemy under siege. Charleston’s dignitaries insisted that with none of those advantages? The Revolutionary General Benjamin Lincoln lay down his arms rather War parks of the NPS offer clues to how at least than see their beautiful metropolis destroyed. On May one “superpower” lost a war. The Americans, 12, Lincoln surrendered the state capital and about As political unrest increased, the patriots first though not all in 5,500 men, the largest group of American prisoners outmaneuvered loyalists and gained control of taken anywhere during the war. Within two weeks, uniform, nor their local infrastructure, including militia. Britain then dress so neat, yet South Carolina appeared to be completely subdued. failed to expand loyalist support, while alienat­ exhibited an erect, Many prominent Charlestonians, backcountry loyalists, ing neutrals and infuriating patriots. Each time National parks include many sites that illustrate and neutralists pledged allegiance to George III. soldierly air, and the British army marched inland from a port city, how to battle a “superpower:” Clinton paroled hundreds of militiamen captured at the countryside swallowed them up. Lexington Colonial National Historical Park (Yorktown) every countenance Charleston in return for their promise to remain and Concord, Fort Stanwix and Saratoga, Fort beamed with neutral or to sit out the war. Yet in just two months, Sackville, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Morristown National Historical Park satisfaction and joy. Clinton and his subordinate, Lord Charles Cornwallis, Courthouse, Ninety Six, and Yorktown all reflect Valley Forge National Historical Park The concourse of alienated countless former patriots and even some the dangers inherent in moving outside an longstanding loyalists. Loyalists complained that occupying army’s safety zone. An ocean from Saratoga National Historical Park spectators from Britain was slow to restore civilian control. The home, the British found limited resources lost in Fort Stanwix National Monument battle, particularly troops, difficult to replace. the country was Clinton parolees, told that if called upon they must Governors Island National Monument prodigious, in point take up arms for Britain, felt their pledge of neutrality International support, at first from individuals Thaddeus Kosciusko National Memorial of numbers was had been violated. Even the defeat of a small force of like Kosciuszko, von Steuben, and Lafayette, Continentals and militia under General Gates on and then from governments—France, the Cowpens National Battlefield probably equal to August 16 at Camden, in the South Carolina backcoun­ Netherlands, and Spain—forced Great Britain Guilford Courthouse National Military Park the military, but try, did not dampen renewed resistance. Patriot into another budget-busting global conflict. universal silence and guerrilla chieftains—Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, On the patriot side, the Continental Army’s Ninety Six National Historic Site order prevailed. and Andrew Pickens—took to the field in response to stubborn struggle to survive, well illustrated by George Rogers Clark National threats and mistreatment from marauding loyalists. the leadership of George Washington and the Historical Park —Dr. James Thacher, On October 7, at Kings Mountain, patriot militia wiped winter encampments at Valley Forge and Arkansas Post National Memorial October 19, 1781, Yorktown out Major Patrick Ferguson’s 1,000-man loyalist force, Morristown, prolonged the war. The King and noted for its harsh treatment of former patriots. his supporters remained intractable, refusing Kings Mountain National Military Park When Clinton returned to New York, he left to diverge from an all or nothing strategy. Fort Moultrie (part of Fort Sumter Cornwallis in command of South Carolina with “The die is now cast,” George III wrote in 1774, National Monument) permission to advance into North Carolina and “the colonies must either submit or triumph… we must not retreat.” With patriot privateers Overmountain Victory National Virginia if “the safety of Charleston and the tranquility Historic Trail of South Carolina” was assured. With South Carolina’s pestering British commerce at sea, the length backcountry in revolt, Cornwallis marched north, and expense of the land war, as it dragged on, Crossroads of the American Revolution eroded British public support. The “superpower” justifying his offensive on the grounds that the patriots National Heritage Area blinked, and then focused attention on other were being supplied from North Carolina. Salem Maritime National Historic Site international threats.

64 65 For Cornwallis, the results proved disastrous; he was outgeneraled by Nathanael Greene, Washington’s most able subordinate, who now commanded the William Ranney’s 1845 painting of Southern Department. Greene moved cautiously into Cowpens shows a legendary sword South Carolina, dividing his army so that each division fight between Banastre Tarleton sat on one flank of Cornwallis at Winnsboro. Greene and Lieutenant Colonel William Washington. As the colonels took a position on the Pee Dee River, while General engage in face-to-face combat, Daniel Morgan and the South Carolina militia under Washington’s “waiter” rides up to Andrew Pickens advanced southwestward into the help drive Tarleton from the field. state, beginning a game of cat and mouse. Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton’s British Legion after Morgan, but on January 17, 1781, Morgan decisively defeated Tarleton at the Cowpens. Morgan pulled back into North Carolina, where he and Greene reunited their wings and escaped northward. Fleeing to Virginia, Greene reorganized his force and added Virginia militia before returning to North Carolina, where he challenged Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro. The fighting was intense. Greene left the field to Cornwallis after inflicting more than 500 casualties while suffering 250 of his own. It was another costly victory for Britain. Cornwallis’s battered and bruised army limped to Wilmington on the coast. He had put a European military machine through stresses and strains too great to bear. Greene, meanwhile, would not let up and again turned southward. In 1781, he fought two indecisive battles at Hobkirks Hill Nathanael and Eutaw Springs and laid siege to Greene (left), in a garrison at Ninety Six. The British command of the commanders in the state, Lord Rawdon American army during and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart, the Southern Campaign, could not stop Greene. Coordinating his moves had a simple explanation for his brilliantly successful strategy with his local allies, Greene picked off all the enemy- against Cornwallis (above). held interior posts. Although large-scale fighting ended “We fight,” he said, “get beat, in the lower South in 1781, Greene’s forces stood guard rise, and fight again.” Battle until the British evacuated Charleston and Savannah after battle, Greene maneuvered in 1782. Greene had never won a pitched battle, but Cornwallis toward the trap sprung by Washington at Yorktown. he and the South Carolina partisans had fought a brilliant coalition war, a predecessor of 20th-century guerrilla conflicts.

67 Cornwallis, having abandoned the lower South to Greene, plodded up to Virginia. He rested and resupplied his bedraggled force and took under his command British raiding parties led by General The surrender at Yorktown provided William Phillips and the turncoat Benedict Arnold. a bit of symbolic theater captured by John Trumbull (far below). After After random skirmishing for two months, he retired first attempting to surrender to to the coast and erected fortifications at Yorktown, Rochambeau, a British officer then perhaps believing that joint Franco-American tried to surrender to Washington. operations against him remained unlikely. Washington also refused because In New York, Clinton was baffled and angered Cornwallis himself did not attend. Instead, General Benjamin Lincoln, by Cornwallis’s wandering, but essentially continued field commander of the American to give him a free hand. Clinton, an insecure man, forces, accepted the English sword. hated confrontation and failed to order Cornwallis to move to a more secure location. Although planning to attack New York City, Washington saw new possibilities when he learned that French Admiral de Grasse’s fleet in the West Indies was heading to the Chesapeake Bay. The 5,500 French troops under Comte de Rochambeau and the American armies under Washington hurried southward hoping to trap Cornwallis on the Virginia peninsula. The Yorktown campaign of 1781 had begun. At the same time, the Comte de Barras’s small The French played critical roles in French naval squadron in New England waters headed the victory at Yorktown. Lafayette down the coast for Chesapeake Bay. Simultaneously, (far right), serving with the Continental Army, defended a small American contingent that had been in Virginia Virginia when Cornwallis invaded. all summer, commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette, Comte de Rochambeau (above), blocked Cornwallis’s escape inland. Amazingly, in an in command of thousands of age without instantaneous communication and rapid French troops, marched from Rhode transportation, all land and sea forces arrived about Island to join Washington as they both hurried south to confront the same time. Cornwallis’s days were numbered, the British. At the Battle of the especially after de Grasse beat off Admiral Thomas Chesapeake, Rear-Admiral Comte Graves’s outmanned British naval expedition, hastily de Grasse defeated the Royal dispatched by Clinton to counter the French fleet. Navy sent to re-supply Cornwallis. Outnumbered by more than a two-to-one margin and subjected to a ceaseless artillery bombardment, Cornwallis surrendered his roughly 8,000 men on October 19, two months to the day from Washington’s letter to de Grasse setting the gigantic undertaking in motion. Lafayette wrote that the play was over and “the fifth act has just been closed.”

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68 69 It was unclear to Washington and Congress that Addresses circulated in the camp, Washington Britain, in fact, had lost the will to continue the persuaded the officers to let him present their grievances American war. To continue might well have required to Congress. The army peacefully disbanded and melted the kinds of sacrifices that Britain’s 18th-century ruling into civilian life. Washington bade farewell in an When Washington resigned from classes were unwilling to pay. Peace negotiations began emotional parting with his officers at Fraunces Tavern the army (below), just months after in Paris in 1782, with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay in New York City. Then he rode to Annapolis, the Treaty of Paris (far left), he again deferred to civilian authority. representing the United States and Richard Oswald, an Maryland, to resign his commission before Congress. “Having now finished the work old friend of Franklin, handling matters for the British. The war had transformed Washington and his assigned me,” he said, “I retire… On November 30, 1782, the three diplomats approved a senior officers into strong American nationalists. They and bidding an affectionate farewell preliminary treaty between Britain and America to take were convinced that the new nation would not survive to this august body under whose effect when Britain and France came to terms. Hoping without a firmer kind of union than the existing orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission…” to win her former colonies away from the French, the Articles of Confederation. London government agreed to remarkably generous They worked with civilian terms, especially the concession of the Mississippi leaders of similar senti­ River as the new nation’s western boundary. ments, men like James Although in the years before the Revolution the Madison, James Wilson, colonists had often complained that they had been and numerous others who dragged into the wars of the Old World, European had served in Congress rivalries and conflicts between 1775 and 1783 had aided or held posts in the profoundly in securing American independence. Confederation govern­ Britain, with numerous enemies, fought without ment. They too had found European allies for the first time in centuries. French the war to be a nationaliz­ military supplies and military intervention and loans ing experience. The result from the French court and Dutch bankers was the Philadelphia were critical to the American cause. Spain convention of 1787 that had entered on the side of France late in created the U.S. the war, but its role was minor and the Constitution, a military Madrid court did not recognize American as well as political independence at the time. document. It perpetuated Although word of the final treaty the twin military traditions of the past—a professional The President shall brought great rejoicing in America, army and a system of state militia—but greatly Washington, numerous congressmen, and enlarged Congress’s war and defense powers and be Commander in other Confederation officials were sobered permitted state militias to be called into federal Chief of the Army by internal tensions and other difficulties. service in time of crisis. It was to the great credit of and Navy of the The states, considering the war over, were Washington and the Continental Army that, despite United States, and increasingly unresponsive to congressional the stresses and trials of the Revolution, they remained of the Militia of the appeals for troops and financial aid. Tensions committed to civil control of the military. Without that between army officers and the lawmakers commitment, Americans would never have agreed to several States, increased because of the military’s justifiable such a dramatically new form of political engineering when called into complaints about unpaid salaries and as the Constitution. the actual Service of Congress’s failure to follow through on a fixed the United States… plan for postwar compensation. Discontent climaxed in March 1783 at Washington’s —United States Constitution, encampment at Newburgh, New York. Article 2, Section 2 Responding to the inflammatory Newburgh

71 70 Forgotten Americans by Gary B. Nash, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles

Revolutionary War historic sites properly lavish attention on the founding fathers of the American Revolution because they led the movement to gain independence from Great Britain and wrote the now sacred documents upon which the new nation was built. But until recently these sites, like text­ books and many other forms of history, largely ignored huge numbers of people—African Americans, American Indians, women, and laborers—who played vital roles in the unfolding of the American Revolution and whose contributions to the cause were indispensable to the outcome. In the last several decades, the outpouring of scholarship focused on each of these groups has raised awareness and provided factual materials that can be When British soldiers in Boston used in public education. We all now possess a rich opened fire on March 5, 1770, they and multi-stranded tapestry of the Revolution, filled killed three outright—sailor Crispus with engaging biographies, local narratives, weighty Attucks (above), a ropemaker, and explorations of America's greatest explosion of political a mariner. thinking, annals of military tactics and strategies, and In the 1850s, abolitionists returned discussions of the religious, economic, and diplomatic to the story of Attucks. A circa 1856 aspects of what was then called the “glorious cause.” chromolithograph (far above) shows Attucks in the center of Notwithstanding this prodigious scholarship, the chaotic scene. we still do not fully appreciate the lives and labors, the sacrifices and struggles, the glorious messiness, the hopes and fears of the diverse groups that fought in the longest and most disruptive war in our history, with visions of launching a new age filling their heads. The iconic founding fathers are surely part of our story.

72 73 But in reality, those in the nether strata of colonial Therefore “there is nothing that leads us to a belief, or society and those outside “respectable” society were suspicion, that we are any more obliged to serve them most of the people of revolutionary America. Without [our masters] than they us, and…can never be con­ their ideas, dreams, and blood sacrifices, the American vinced that we were made to be slaves.” Revolution would never have occurred, would never By its very nature, the Revolutionary Era created have followed the course that we can now comprehend, unprecedented situations and opportunities for slaves. In 1775, in his essay “Taxation and would never have reverberated around the world A wave of black insurrectionary activity coursed No Tyranny,” Englishman Samuel among oppressed people down to the present day. through South Carolina in the 1760s. More than 100 Johnson turned his famous literary This human complexity and richness, stories like slaves made a concerted attempt in 1765 to establish a talents and wit on the Americans. those in this essay, ought to be an essential part of the refugee colony in the interior. White Charlestonians Among other pointed criticisms, history curriculum in our schools and woven into the took alarm the next year when black men paraded Johnson wanted to know “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps interpretive storylines of historic sites. They should be through the streets chanting the white rhetoric for liberty from the drivers of mainstreamed into the core of our national narrative, “Liberty, Liberty!” White authorities put the city Negroes?” Benjamin Latrobe’s never treated like optional footnotes. under arms for a week as rumors of insurrection sketch dated 1798 (below) captured spread through the colony. A nervous legislature “an overseer doing his duty.” The Black Struggle for Freedom quickly passed a three-year prohibitive tariff on We can only imagine how imported slaves that had the desired effect of choking the spirits of enslaved African off the flood of nearly 7,000 slaves who had arrived Americans, one-fifth of the from Africa in 1765. colonial population, were With the huge movement of both civilian and affected by what they heard of military populations in and out of nearly every major the movement for liberty. They seaport from Savannah to Boston between 1775 and And I hereby would have gleaned much from 1781, urban slaves had unprecedented chances for making their personal declarations of independence further declare all the dinner-table conversation indented servants, of their masters, working in and for destabilizing the institution of slavery. Similarly, taverns and coffeehouses where as loyalist and patriot militia crisscrossed the country­ Negroes, or others Revolutionary politics were side plundering the farms and plantations of their (appertaining to hatched, and reading or hearing enemies, slaves found ways of tearing holes in the Rebels) free, that fabric of slavery. of pamphlets denouncing the are able and willing slavery imposed by Britain on its A turning point came in November 1775, when the colonial subjects. royal governor of Virginia, Lord John Dunmore, issued to bear arms, What is certain is that many of the enslaved acted a dramatic proclamation that guaranteed freedom to they joining His Lord Dunmore (far right) was on their hatred of their clanking chains to petition slaves and indentured servants who escaped their Majesty's Troops, as not alone in championing slave for their freedom in ways calculated to prick the con­ masters and reached the King’s forces. Against this enlistments. Young South concrete offer of unconditional freedom, slaves could soon as may be, for Carolinian John Laurens proposed science of the master class. Couched cautiously at first, the more speedily freeing the slaves that he would their petitions became bolder as the war approached. only hope that the American patriots would respond eventually inherit, roughly 40 able- “We expect your house [the legislature] will…take our to calls for the end of slavery advocated by the first reducing the Colony bodied men, and enlisting them as deplorable case into serious consideration, and give us abolition society established in Pennsylvania just a few to a proper sense of the core of a regiment of black months before. Waiting for freedom as a gift at some soldiers in the Continental Army. that simple relief which, as men, we have a natural right their duty, to this to,” remonstrated four slaves in rural Massachusetts in indeterminate point turned out to be a poor substitute for immediate freedom. When word of Dunmore’s Majesty's crown 1773. Six years later in Connecticut, slaves echoed and dignity. these claims to freedom: “We do not ask for nothing proclamation quickly spread through the South, hundreds of slaves fled their masters to British lines but what we are fully persuaded is ours to claim,” for —Lord Dunmore's “we are the Creatures of that God, who made of one where officers formed them into the Black Regiment of Proclamation, 1775 Blood, and Kindred, all the Nations of the Earth.” Guides and Pioneers. Some marched in uniform with the inscription on their breasts, “Liberty to Slaves.” 74 75 With the blessing of George Washington, Rhode Island author­ ized the 1st Rhode Island Regiment (soldier shown on the far left) to be composed of “able-bodied negro, mulatto, or Indian man-slaves.” Each recruit was “immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress.” The 1st Rhode Island marched with Washington to Yorktown and helped capture Redoubt 10.

76 77 Dunmore’s proclamation galvanized the South whip the Americans, “for then all Negro slaves will against England, for it conjured up a vision of a large gain their freedom.” body of free Negroes, armed by the British, abroad in In New York City and its surrounding hinterland, the land. “Hell itself,” wrote one southerner, “could not the flight of slaves was even greater. The slave of have vomited anything more black than this design of Quaker John is illustrative. Named Titus by his master, emancipating our slaves.” But thousands of slaves did this 21-year-old fled his master [P]eace was restored find freedom by reaching British lines. The black war in 1775. Going by the name of for independence occurred in every part of the country Tye, he soon was organizing between America and was especially intense whenever slaves were within other slaves and free African and Great Britain, running distance of the British army or navy. Americans to fight against the which diffused In the South, the pursuit of freedom through flight patriots. For five years he led universal joy among to the British was so large that the British army was a local guerrilla band that all parties, except us, often hard-pressed to provision the fleeing slaves. terrorized the patriot farmers Thomas Jefferson, Virginia’s wartime governor, reported of northern New Jersey. Tye’s who had escaped that 30,000 slaves fled their masters during the British struggles to end slavery ended from slavery, and invasion of Virginia in 1780-1781. Twenty-three of with battle wounds and lock­ taken refuge in the Jefferson’s slaves fled his plantations to join the British, jaw, but he remained a symbol English army; for a as did 17 of Washington’s slaves. In South Carolina and of black rebellion. Georgia, probably one-third to one-half of the enslaved While most black report prevailed at fled to the British during the southern campaigns Americans chose the British New-York, that between 1779 and 1781. Without doubt the American side, many free African all the slaves, in Revolution marked the greatest slave rebellion in the Americans and a small number number 2000, were long history of North American slavery. But seeking of slaves fought for the to be delivered up freedom with the British had its own risks. Many found American cause. Prince, the themselves returned to masters who were loyal to the slave of a New Hampshire to their masters, English Crown. Many more died of camp fevers and soldier, pulled the stroke oar altho' some of them smallpox. Only a minority of those who fled for free­ carrying Washington across had been three or dom survived the war to take up life as free people. the Delaware River in a pierc­ four years among In the North, where about one-tenth of the ing snow and sleet storm on colonies’ half-million enslaved African Americans Christmas night, 1776. James Armistead, a Virginia the English. Lafayette’s return to the United lived, the hungering for freedom was no less intense. slave whose master allowed him to enlist under the States in 1824 triggered celebrations —Boston King’s memories Even in the budding capital of American abolitionism, Marquis de Lafayette, played a dramatic role as a across the nation. Perhaps in of the evacuation Philadelphia, where many believed that the city’s slaves double-spy. Posing as a runaway slave, Armistead conjunction with Lafayette’s tour, from New York were docile and contented, whites were shocked when infiltrated the British lines at Yorktown and took back artist John Blennerhassett Martin a “gentlewoman” walking near Christ Church was crucial information that gave the Americans the upper captured James Armistead’s likeness (above) and paired it insulted by a black man only a few weeks after hand in the climactic siege of the war. After the war, the with Lafayette’s description of Dunmore’s proclamation. When the woman repri­ Virginia legislature purchased Armistead’s freedom in Armistead’s service during the manded him, he replied: “Stay you d[amne]d white recognition of his service. Revolution. bitch ’till Lord Dunmore and his black regiment come, Freedom came gradually for many African and then we will see who is to take the wall.” When the Americans in the North. A small percentage gained British occupied Philadelphia in September 1777 for their freedom from conscience-stricken masters or nine months, hundreds of Philadelphia slaves fled to escaped to melt into small free black communities the British, confirming one Lutheran leader’s belief taking root in the cities. Some gained freedom by that it “is almost universal among the Negroes in legislative or judicial decree. Vermont’s constitution of America” that they secretly hoped for the British to 1777 declared slavery illegal. In Pennsylvania, a gradual

78 79 “Silken Slippers…Wooden Shoes”

French philosopher Voltaire observed that “histo­ the British attack on Arkansas Post or the jour­ This depiction of James Armistead, ry is filled with the sound of silken slippers going nals of the Baroness von Riedesel, wife of the shown with Lafayette and holding downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” commander of Germans fighting for the British. the general’s horse, differs radically from the Martin portrait on page 79. Usually, however, history reveals more about the Personal diaries and letters of everyday people As author Ralph Ellison observed, owner of the slippers and little about the servant provide details of individual lives. Eighteenth- John-Baptiste Paon’s portrait “inten­ clad in wooden shoes. We know volumes about century newspapers overflow with information— sified the hierarchical, master-servant George Washington, but much less about Thomas what was for sale or who was in business. symbolism of his composition by Stone (a signer of the Declaration). We know little Notices describing runaway slaves or servants rendering the black orderly’s features about Stone’s wife, and virtually nothing about help document the extent and nature of so abstract, stylized, and shadowy those enslaved on Stone’s plantation. American servitude. Oral traditions fill gaps in that the viewer’s attention is drawn not to the individuality of Armistead’s written records. Artifacts—like wooden shoes— But there are ways to sidestep preservation biases. features but to the theatrical splendor illustrate the lives of servants, women, and At national parks, history often is preserved in of his costume.” children. building fabric—scholars use house inventories, written accounts, land surveys, archeological, and Novelist Virginia Woolf writes, “History is too architectural evidence for reconstruction and much about wars; biography too much about refurnishing. Morristown’s Ford Mansion reveals great men.” Those who agree will find additional as much about Theodosia Ford, her children, and points of view at: servants as it does about her wartime tenants— Boston National Historical Park George Washington and his “family” of aides. The cabins at Morristown and Valley Forge reflect Independence National Historical Park the lives of soldiers. Signers’ homes—Adams, Morristown National Historical Park Stone, Floyd, Pinckney—or the room where Jefferson wrote the Declaration, place the Valley Forge National Historical Park famous in parlors, bedrooms, and kitchens. Fort Stanwix National Monument Birthplaces—Adams and Washington—suggest Crossroads of the American Revolution influences on adult attitudes. National Heritage Area Many park collections include documents that Ninety Six National Historic Site widen perspectives on events—political cartoons, petitions, broadsides, and first person observa­ Castillo de San Marcos National tions like the Spanish commander’s account of Monument Charles Pinckney National Historic Site Thomas Stone National Historic Site Colonial National Historical Park Salem Maritime National Historic Site Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church National Historic Site Touro Synagogue National Historic Site

80 81 abolition act in 1780 promised freedom to all those Despite a trading alliance that the Six Nations had born of slaves, but not until they reached 21 if they maintained with the northern colonists for generations, were females and 28 if they were males. Massachusetts and despite the close ties that the Mohawks maintained abolished slavery in 1783. Other northern states— with William Johnson, as Brant matured he realized New Jersey and New York, for example—passed that the growth in non-Indian population threatened A fierce enemy during the American his people. Barely 20,000 colonists inhabited New York Revolution, Thayendanegea (Joseph abolition laws only at the end of the century or early Brant) traveled to Philadelphia in the 19th century. in 1700, but by 1770, the number had increased to twice in the 1790s as the invited For those who fought with the British, freedom 160,000. Many times, rapacious New York land guest of the U.S. government. had to be pursued on other shores. There could be no speculators and frontiersmen had swindled the The Washington Administration staying in the land of the victorious Americans, for the Mohawks out of land. So, as war clouds gathered in asked Thayendanegea to help 1775, Brant went to London to see what King George negotiate a truce with the new United States was still slave country and black American Indians in the Northwest Americans who had fought with the British were III would offer the Six Nations for their support in a Territory, but the talks failed. particularly hated and subject to re-enslavement. war that, while still not formally declared, had been During his second visit, in 1797, England itself wished no influx of ex-slaves because in the shooting stage since April. Brant left London Thayendanegea sat for a Charles London and other cities already felt burdened by convinced that liberty, the protection of life, the reten­ Willson Peale portrait (below). growing numbers of impoverished blacks seeking public tion of ancient homelands, and Indian independence might best be preserved by fighting against the support. Black loyalists could not be sent to English …the Six Nations sugar islands in the West Indies where slavery reigned. independence-minded Americans. Brant arrived The answer was to send the black refugees to Nova back in North America a few weeks after the signing shall and do yield to Scotia, where they had to struggle among scattered old of the Declaration of Independence. the United States, all French settlers and a mass of British soldiers who were Symbolic of the complexities of the Revolution, claims to the country settling on this new frontier rather than returning to the war caused the first major split among the Six west of the said England. Among the thousands of blacks sent to Nations—many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the Canada, most found life discouragingly difficult. Americans while the Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and boundary, and then About half returned to Africa in 1792 after the English Mohawk, including Brant, remained loyal to Great they shall be secured set up a refuge in Sierra Leone for former American Britain. As fighting intensified, Brant seemed to be in the peaceful slaves and poor free blacks residing in England. everywhere. He was at Oriskany in August 1777, when possession of the the British and their Indian auxiliaries, in one of the lands they inhabit The American Indian Revolution bloodiest battles of the war, defeated the New York militia and their Oneida Indian scouts trying to reach east and north For some 150,000 American Indians living the besieged, strategically located Fort Stanwix. He between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River, of the same… fought at Cherry Valley in the summer of 1778, and the Revolutionary War was a time to “try men’s souls.” helped drive farmers from their fields in southern —Treaty of Fort Stanwix, Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, stands as an illumi­ October 22, 1784, New York and northern Pennsylvania. He participated nating example. Brant was born a Mohawk, one of between representatives in many skirmishes in 1779 when American General the Indian tribes that comprised the Six Nations of the United States John Sullivan burned Indian towns in pursuit of his (sometimes called the Iroquois Nation). In 1755, at and the Six Nations blunt motto: “civilization or death to all American age 13, Brant fought in the French and Indian War with savages.” For the entire war, Brant fought to prevent William Johnson, the English superintendent of northern the New York-Pennsylvania backcountry from Indian affairs. In 1763, Brant proved his loyalty to the contributing grain and meat to the Continental Army. American cause by battling against Pontiac’s uprising, “A thousand Iroquois and five hundred Tory rangers,” when Ottawa and other Indian warriors tried to expel historian Anthony Wallace wrote, “were able to lay in British soldiers and their encroaching American waste nearly 50,000 square miles of colonial territory.” cousins from the Ohio country.

82 83 Though not militarily defeated during the war, Brant and his Indian allies lost one-third of their people, only to be abandoned by the British at the peace talks in Paris. When peace came in 1783, they were left to cope with an aggressive, combat-hardened, and land- hungry American people. Confronting insurmountable odds and thunderstruck that British diplomats sold them out, the Six Nations, at Fort Stanwix in 1784, signed a treaty on terms dictated to them. Brant spent the last 20 years of his life adjusting to the harsh new realities by which proud and independent people found that the pursuit of happiness by white Americans required them to surrender life, liberty, and property. In the interior of eastern North America, almost all Indian nations sided with the British. The logic of nearly two centuries of abrasive contact with colonizing Europeans compelled the choice, for it was the settler- subjects of the English King who most threatened Painted by Francis Parsons in 1762, Indian autonomy. American Indians fought an anti­ the Cherokee chief (far left), colonial war against those attempting to slip their own known as either Cunne Shote or colonial yoke. Oconostota, captures the resolve of The Shawnee of the Ohio country and the many Indians determined to resist colonial expansion. Although the Cherokee of the upper South allied to attack the Cherokee initially supported the encroaching Virginians even before the Continental British against the French, they Congress declared independence. “From being a great soon waged their own independent nation,” the Shawnee sorrowfully told the Cherokee war, led by Cunne Shote, on in May 1776, “[we are now] reduced to a handful.” “those in red coats.” Once they had “possessed lands almost to the seashore,” The American Revolution further but “red people who were once masters of the whole tested Cherokee unity as tribal country [now] hardly possessed ground enough to members sporadically attacked outlying colonial settlements. stand on.” Knowing that the white settlers intended to Although a number of Indian bands destroy them, the Shawnee argued that it was “better negotiated a peace treaty with to die like men than to dwindle away by inches.” the United States in 1785, others Two months later, Cherokees led by Dragging continued to resist encroachment, Canoe, a young militant chief from the Overhill, or sometimes with violence. western, Cherokee villages, fell upon settlements on the frontier of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The frontiersmen under attack had settled west of the Proclamation Line of 1763, in defiance of royal decree, on lands ceded by older or impoverished Cherokee chiefs who made cessions without the consent of the Cherokee Nation. Now the frontiersmen felt the wrath of young Cherokee warriors. Failing to obtain support from the powerful Creek Nation to their south and far from British trade sources, the Cherokee, however,

84 85 found themselves short of ammunition and other cycles of subsistence farming and hunting. Like the Six supplies. This left them vulnerable to southern militia Nations, the Shawnee were shocked when the British eager to extirpate the Cherokee and drive them, as sued for peace in 1783 and abandoned them to the Jefferson recommended, beyond the Mississippi River. victorious Americans. In the summer and fall of 1776, four expeditions of Some Indian tribes, mostly small ones surrounded southern militiamen punished Cherokee towns severely. by colonists and greatly reduced by disease and earlier During the winter of 1780-1781, American militias wars, allied with the Americans. The Passamaquoddy once more ravaged Cherokee towns. The Cherokee and Penobscot in Maine, who had sustained bitter The utmost good and Shawnee raided sporadically throughout the war, losses in the French and Indian War fighting against faith shall always be but they never mounted a sustained assault on the New Hampshire rangers, now fought alongside the Americans. The war deeply divided the Cherokees, rangers against the British. The Stockbridge in observed towards the with Dragging Canoe leading the young Cherokees south Massachusetts, an amalgam of remnant Indians from Indians; their lands and west to establish new towns along Chickamauga the Hudson River Valley and western Massachusetts and property shall Creek in Tennessee. There they remained militantly anti- who had fought alongside Robert Rogers’s Rangers in never be taken from American through the 1780s. By 1788, the Cherokees the French and Indian War, served with Washington’s had lost three-quarters of their land and had seen half troops at Boston in 1775 and later in New York, New them without their of their towns destroyed. Jersey, and Canada. The Oneida in New York, and the consent; and, in their Throughout the Illinois country, the heroics of Tuscarora and Catawba in North Carolina all pledged property, rights, and Lt. Colonel George Rogers Clark turned the tide allegiance to the Americans and contributed scouts liberty, they shall against the American Indian allies of the British. and warriors to the Revolutionary cause. But the never be invaded or During early 1779, Clark led a ragtag body of Indians who gave support, usually because they were Kentuckians through icy rivers and across 157 miles dependent on American trade and surrounded by a sea disturbed, unless in of frozen terrain to attack an English outpost at of settlers, or because of the welcomed influence of just and lawful wars Vincennes in present-day Indiana. Even though the Protestant missionaries, reaped little benefit from their authorized by Americans were outnumbered two to one by the efforts. Although grateful state governments compen­ Congress; but laws British regulars and their still-loyal, local French sated a number of Indian warriors after the war, they founded in justice militiamen, Clark fooled the fort’s defenders into did little to protect tribes from land-hungry Americans. believing that his force was much larger. Convinced In the end, American Indians lost heavily in the and humanity, shall that he faced disaster, the British commander surren­ war partly because they did not overcome intratribal from time to time be dered after a fierce, 38-hour siege. This marked the and intertribal factionalism and partly because the made for preventing beginning of a momentous collapse of pan-Indian supplies of British trade goods on which they depend­ wrongs being done efforts, aided by the British, to drive the frontiersman ed—especially guns, powder, and shot—were seriously out of ancient Indian homelands in what became disrupted during the war. The pro-British stance can­ to them, and for Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. not be counted as a failure of judgment on their part. preserving peace The Shawnee captured Daniel Boone during Had they sided with the Americans, they would have and friendship February 1778, and later, during September 1778, laid fared no better, as the disheartening postwar experience with them…. siege to the frontier post of Boonesborough—a post of the Tuscarora and Oneida demonstrates. which threatened Shawnee territory between Facing the heavily armed Americans who had —Northwest Ordinance, 1787 Kentucky and Virginia. For the Shawnee, the war voracious appetites for new land after 1783, almost throughout the West brought terrible destruction. all Indian nations found themselves in a new war— Some Shawnee villages tried to remain neutral, and a a war of national expansion waged by the victorious few pledged allegiance to the Americans, but most Americans. Joseph Brant’s second trip to London in villages gravitated toward the British. Clark’s invasion 1785 brought limited aid from the British, while new of Shawnee country in the summer of 1780 began an efforts to foster intertribal cooperation led to fierce annual series of search-and-destroy missions to burn Indian resistance in the Old Northwest. A new genera­ Shawnee crops and villages, deeply disrupting Indian tion of resistance leaders—Black Hawk, Tecumseh, 86 87 and others—led spirited attempts to protect their arbitrary uses of power also changed women’s percep­ homelands against the veterans of the war swarming tion of their role. The more male leaders talked about Soon after their marriage in 1764, across the Appalachians. In the Northwest Ordinance England’s intentions to “enslave” the Americans and Amidst the distress John and Abigail Adams (below) of 1787, the new American nation promised that the England’s callous treatment of its colonial “subjects,” and sufferings of bought a matching pair of pastel “utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the more American women began to rethink their own portraits from Benjamin Blyth. the Army, whatever Their legendary relationship survived the Indians; their lands and property, rights and liberty domestic situations. The language of protest against sources they have until Abigail died in 1818 at age 73. … shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just England reminded many American women that they John lived until July 4, 1826. and lawful wars authorized by Congress.” The ordinance too were badly treated “subjects” of their husbands, arisen, it must be a went on to promise that “laws founded in justice and who often dealt with them cruelly and exercised consolation to our humanity shall from time to time be made, for prevent­ power over them arbitrarily. If there was to be inde­ Virtuous Country ing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving pendence, new laws must be passed, Abigail Adams Women that they peace and friendship with them.” The promise, as it reminded her husband, John, on March 1, 1776. As they have never been turned out, would be honored mostly in the breach as did their work, the male lawmakers should think about the war of national expansion grew in intensity in the the rights of women and their enslavement by men. accused of with­ 1780s and 1790s. Choosing words and phrases that had been used over holding their most and over in the protests against England, she wrote: zealous efforts to Daughters of Liberty “Do not put such unlimited power into the hand of the support the cause Women played a vital role in the movement toward husband…Put it out of the power of the vicious and we are engaged in… revolution and some drew upon revolutionary argu­ the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity,” she ments to define their own goals. Women signed non­ insisted. “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they —George Washington to Sarah importation agreements, which pressured English could.” Borrowing directly from the republican Bache, daughter of Benjamin policymakers through a boycott of British finished ideology used to protest Parliament’s attempts to tax Franklin, 1781. Bache led an association of women who goods. They harassed non-complying colonial mer­ the Americans, Abigail Adams warned that American women “will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in purchased dry goods with chants, and they helped organize “fast days” during their own money and which we have no voice, or representation.” She even which communities prayed for deliverance from English sewed shirts for soldiers. oppression. Their most important role was facilitating promised that women would “foment a rebellion” the boycott of English goods, like textiles. From Georgia if men did not heed their rightful claims. I have done as much to Maine, women and children of all classes began Many American women, still bound by the social to carry on the war spinning yarn and weaving cloth. Towns often vied conventions of the day, were not ready to occupy the new territory to which Abigail Adams laid claim. as many that set patriotically with each other in the manufacture of cotton, linen, and woolen cloth as the women staged But the protests against England had stirred up new now at the helm open-air spinning contests to publicize their commit­ thoughts in the minds of many people about what of government. ment to non-consumption pacts. In 1769, the women seemed arbitrary or despotic in their own society. of tiny Middletown, Massachusetts, set the standard Hence, many agendas for change appeared and with —Rachel Wells by weaving 20,522 yards of cloth, about 160 yards each. them a new feeling that what had been endured in After the Tea Act in 1773, women began boycotting the past was no longer acceptable. “We have it in our Charles Willson Peale painted their favorite drink. Newspapers carried recipes for power,” Abigail Adams warned her husband, “not miniature portraits of both George tea substitutes and recommendations for herbal teas. only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and and Martha Washington (far right). without violence throw both your natural and legal On the reverse of Martha’s minia­ In Wilmington, North Carolina, women paraded ture is a portrait of her son John solemnly through the town and then made a ritual authority at our feet.” Parke Custis (Jacky), who died of display of their patriotism by burning their imported If not challenging “arbitrary power” as directly as camp fever soon after the Battle tea. Many women could agree with one Rachel Wells: Abigail, women in all parts of the rebelling colonies of Yorktown. “I have done as much to carry on the war as many that played important public roles in the Revolution that set now at the helm of government.” gave them greater legitimacy than as dependents of Colonial protests and petitions against England’s fathers, husbands, and brothers. Once war was under-

88 89 way, women provided indispensable services. Some women became spies—on both sides of the Revolution. By night, Lydia Darragh served evening meals to British officers occupying Philadelphia in 1777-1778; by day, she smuggled messages sewed into the linings of her pockets. What she overheard as the British Politics pervaded the life of Mercy discussed their spring campaign plans over dinner We may destroy Otis Warren—her brother James reached General Washington at Whitemarsh. Otis and husband James were all the men in active patriots. Shown here in John Many more women—as many as 20,000 according Singleton Copley’s 1763 portrait, to one careful estimate—traveled with the armies, America, and we she needed little prompting to cooking, laundering, nursing, and comforting the men. shall still have all contribute her own literary talents Some even accompanied their husbands into battle, to revolution. In 1772, she wrote we can do to defeat The Adulateur, a satirical play loading guns and attending the wounded. Sometimes the women. targeting Governor Thomas acting as informal commissaries, they scoured the Hutchinson. Her History of the countryside for food and clothes. In the winter of —Lord Cornwallis Rise, Progress and Termination 1777-1778, Mary Frazier, as her granddaughter later of the American Revolution, published in 1805, consisted of recounted, “day after day collected three volumes and over 1,300 from neighbors and friends far and pages. near, whatever they could spare for the comfort of the destitute soldiers the blankets, and yarn and half worn clothing thus obtained she brought to her own house, where they would be patched and darned and made wearable and comfortable …She often sat up half the night, sometimes all, to get clothing ready. Then with it, and whatever could be obtained for food, she would have packed on her horse and set out on her cold lonely journey to the camp—which she went to repeatedly during the winter.” At the climactic battle at Yorktown, Sarah By 1854, when Dennis Malone Osborn cooked for the American troops and brought Carter painted Molly Pitcher at them food under fire because, as she remarked to the Battle of Monmouth (above), Washington, “it would not do for the men to fight and revolutionary legends were common. star ve too.” By then, “Molly Pitcher” referred to Off the battlefield, women like Abigail Adams women like Mary Hayes McCauley, Mary Ludwig, and Margaret Corbin helped redesign the political culture of a democratizing who carried water for swabbing society. They encouraged—often shamed—men to go cannon, and replaced wounded into battle in the interest of the state. Abigail Adams’s husbands in battle. friend Mercy Otis Warren and other women wrote plays to whip up patriotism. They were even more in the public eye when they took to the streets to enforce

90 91 ethical conduct in the marketplace. The prolonged was entitled to put new words on the slate and how clash of arms led to food shortages, depreciated would people with different agendas for the future currency, and unscrupulous attempts to withhold resolve their differences? These questions, faced in each goods while waiting for prices to rise or even corner of the 13 states, brought forth a torrent of reformist the market in commodities such as coffee and sugar. ideas. Some would be implemented, others defeated, Time after time, women in the cities and small towns and others deferred. descended on grasping retailers to regulate market Our historical sites are so focused on the War for prices that had gone awry. In one case, in September Independence that they give visitors little sense of the 1777, a crowd of women seized monopolizers and price wave of reform that swept America even while the gougers in Boston and carted them out of the city. battle against England wore on. It does no discredit to I see with trembling, Two months later, about 60 women and a handful of the magnificent work of the Founders to point out that men seized the sugar of a merchant in nearby Beverley, some of the most advanced reformist ideas came from that if disputes forced other merchants to surrender their sugar, and the lower strata of American society. On farms, on continue with put a woman shopkeeper in charge of selling the sugar seaport docks, in taverns, and on streets, ordinary Britain, we shall at a reasonable price. Women became arbiters of what Americans were not only indispensable to the success be under the was fair, what was patriotic, and what was necessary to of any reform movement but in many cases were the serve the needs of the whole community. cutting edge of reform ideas. domination of After the war, women carved out new roles for Of all the reform notions, the mightiest was that a riotous mob. themselves in shaping the republic. If “our principles, of the capability of the ordinary man to be an active It is to our interest, opinions, and manners” had to be changed to fit political player, both as voter and officeholder. therefore, to seek “the forms of government we have adopted,” as Way before the “Age of the Common Man,” usually a reunion with Benjamin Rush put it, women were vital in nurturing associated with the Jacksonian politics of the 1820s an understanding that every adult—both women and and 1830s, urban craftsmen and country farmers the parent state. men—had to play a part in shaping a society of educated, abandoned deference to upper-class merchants, —Governeur Morris, 1770 thoughtful, involved citizens. Precisely for these lawyers, and planters. They played a central role in Margaret Kemble Gage (above) reasons, female academies began to spring up as the forging a non-importation agreement in 1768, calling may have lived a double life. Born idea spread that the “daughters of liberty” could not public meetings, publishing newspaper appeals, in New Jersey, she married General serve the new nation without an expansive outlook organizing secondary boycotts against foot-dragging Thomas Gage. Rumors suggested and the ability to read, write, think, and reason. merchants, and ferreting out and tarring and feathering that Margaret warned of the British raids planned for Lexington and opponents. Cautious merchants in Philadelphia, for Concord. True or not, Gage Revolutionary Reform from Below example, complained that mere artisans had “no right to give their sentiments respecting an importation” removed any temptation by “Can America be happy under a government of sending his wife to England. and called the craftsmen a “rabble.” But artisans forged her own?” Thomas Paine wrote in answering an attack ahead, soon filling elected municipal positions and on Common Sense. “As happy as she please; she hath insisting on their right to participate equally with their a blank sheet to write upon.” In these two, pithy social superiors in nominating assemblymen and other sentences Paine captured the under-noticed side of important officeholders. the American Revolution—the struggle the patriots As agitation against English policy intensified in faced in remaking America after renouncing the the 1770s, the power of people in the lower orders English charters and laws under which they had frightened many upper-class leaders. Losing control of functioned. Under what kind of laws, political the protests they had initially led, many abandoned the arrangements, and constitutionally protected liberties resistance movement against Britain. Non-privileged did they wish to live? By what means should they members of colonial society also began lobbying for create new state governments? Would everyone enjoy reform laws. Led by new radical leaders, they demanded the unalienable rights expressed in the Declaration of internal reforms: opening up opportunity; curbing the Independence? If the slate had been wiped clean, who

92 93 accumulation of wealth by merchants; abolishing the “is sufficient to quicken everyone’s feeling, and enable property requirement for voting; allowing militiamen him to judge rightly, what advantages he is likely to enjoy to elect their officers; and imposing stiff fines on or be deprived of, under any constitution proposed to men who refused militia service to be used for the him.” In Maryland, “Watchman” wrote in the press support of the families of poor militiamen. Although that “every poor man has a life, a personal liberty, and Philadelphia’s reformers never controlled the city, they a right to his earnings, and is in danger of being injured always jostled for position with prosperous artisans by government in a variety of ways” and therefore and shopkeepers of more moderate views and with “should enjoy the right of voting for representatives to cautious lawyers and merchants. And mobilization of be protectors of their lives, personal liberty, and their artisans, laborers, and mariners in Philadelphia and little property, which, though small, is yet, upon the That share of other cities became part of the chain of events that whole, a very great object to them.” common sense, led toward independence. A host of political reforms flowed from this which the Almighty After the Declaration of Independence, states had expansion of the politically relevant part of the com­ has bountifully to fashion constitutions to live under. This is where munity. Several states installed a unicameral legislature radicals of no conspicuous standing made their greatest unfettered by a governor armed with veto power over distributed amongst contributions to a more democratically designed system legislative acts. The legislative chambers were thrown mankind in general of self-government. In some states, constitution writing open to the public, and the proceedings and votes of is sufficient to was confined to upper-class representatives who wrote legislatures were published so the public would know quicken everyone’s conservative constitutions that mimicked the old exactly what they were doing. Annual elections in most feeling, and enable colonial order. But in states such as Pennsylvania and states kept the elected representatives close to their Vermont, notions that may not seem radical today but constituents’ interests. Bans against holding office in him to judge rightly, were decidedly radical then took hold. Most important more than one branch of government were another what advantages was severing the vote from property ownership. Almost innovation. Term limits prevented an entrenched set he is likely to enjoy everywhere, “the people” began to think of themselves of politicians, even if the public kept voting them back or be deprived as the only source of authority for constructing funda­ into office. mental law. But for the elite, “the people” really meant Other reforms of the revolutionary era deeply of, under any those “with a stake in society,” a way of saying that concerned ordinary Americans and became tests of the constitution those without a certain amount of property were not Revolution’s success in accomplishing what Tom Paine proposed to him. entitled to vote or hold office. In Pennsylvania and predicted: “We have it in our power to begin the world Vermont, however, citizenship required no property over again…The birthday of a new world is at hand.” —Committee of Mechanics, ownership at all. “The great secret of government,” Among the tests of this new world for people of mid­ New York City wrote the humble men of one Massachusetts town, dling and lower status were abolishing imprisonment “is governing by all.” From this basic proposition of for debt, the creation of tax-supported public schools, universal male suffrage followed the idea that men of the phasing out of indentured servitude, the abolition humble status and limited education were just as of slavery, women’s suffrage, the right of labor to capable of becoming wise legislators as the well-born, bargain for fair wages and working conditions, tax wealthy, and educated. reform to end the patently unequal poll tax system, This principle also applied to the notion of the and passage of laws making divorce less restrictive. people’s right to examine a constitution drafted by Not all of these reforms were accomplished in the their delegates and approve it before it became the law. Revolutionary era. Some, such as women’s suffrage The Committee of Mechanics in New York City argued and the abolition of slavery, took generations to that if every working man was not capable of writing a complete. But all of them became part of an agenda constitution, every citizen could judge one and ought to to be pursued. be consulted in a general referendum. “That share of common sense, which the Almighty has bountifully distributed amongst mankind in general,” they reasoned, 94 95 “Discover, Uncover, Rediscover, and Recover”

Individuals, groups, and nations preserve the life stories of some and forget many others. Historian John Hope Franklin bluntly states that “history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.” National park sites prove that point; as a public agency, the NPS is influenced by “interests” and “predilections.” Those who leave the most intriguing record receive attention. Not only have the letters that Abigail Adams wrote to husband John been preserved, they also are fascinating to read. The literate and artistic have an advantage. Written documents received wider circulation than oral tradition. Charles Willson Peale’s portraits, painted to show famous Americans “Uncover” the histories of everyday, forgotten of his day, are a treasure, but nearly all are people at: white men. Boston National Historical Park Recognizing these “prejudices,” national parks still can broaden perspective by viewing Independence National Historical Park history not as a canon of facts but as a process, Morristown National Historical Park “a relentless struggle to discover, uncover, Fort Stanwix National Monument rediscover, and recover” aspects of the past “that have been swept from public consciousness.” [NPS Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial Cultural Heritage Needs Assessment, 2004] Castillo de San Marcos National For example, Castillo de San Marcos adds the Monument Spanish colonial experience to the British. The Charles Pinckney National Historic Site frontier settlement of Ninety Six figures into the Revolutionary War narrative twice, but beyond George Rogers Clark National those days of combat the town flourished for Historical Park decades as a center of trade and seat of colonial Ninety Six National Historic Site justice. European and American Indian cultures William Floyd’s estate (Fire Island intermingled at Fort Stanwix; built on the site of National Seashore) the Great Carry—a portage linking waterways— Fort Stanwix is more about complex intercultural Crossroads of the American Revolution negotiations, motivations, and survival than National Heritage Area famous generals. Revolutionary-era sites in New George Washington Birthplace Jersey reveal the impact of civil war on ordinary National Monument people. Tradesmen, workers, and sailors swelled town meetings at Faneuil Hall, and Philadelphia’s Yorktown (Colonial National master builders offered Carpenters’ Hall to the Historical Park) First Continental Congress. Visitors who walk Valley Forge National Historical Park Yorktown’s streets discover the unexpected— Arkansas Post National Memorial the pottery factory of Virginia’s “poor potter.” Salem Maritime National Historic Site

96 97 The Revolution’s Legacy by Gordon S. Wood, Professor of History, Brown University

So immense, so powerful, and so far-reaching have been the consequences of the American Revolution that they seem nearly impossible to measure. The Revolution has affected both America’s entire history and the world’s history as well. It is the most important event in American history, bar none. The Revolution not only legally created the United States, it also led directly to the great hopes and values of the American people. Their noblest ideals and aspirations—their commitments to freedom, constitu­ tionalism, the neutrality of government in religious In 1954, at the time of the matters, the well-being of ordinary people, and McCarthy hearings in the Senate, and on the eve of decades of especially equality—came out of the Revolutionary domestic protest including the era. These ideals and beliefs constitute the driving Civil Rights Movement and the force behind all of America’s subsequent progressive Selma-to-Montgomery March (left), reforms, everything from the abolition of slavery to President Dwight Eisenhower women’s suffrage to civil rights. addressed the Columbia University National Bicentennial Dinner. “Here in America,” he said, “we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. Without exhaustive debate—even heated debate—of ideas and programs, free government would weaken and wither. But if we allow our­ selves to be persuaded that every individual, or party, that takes issue with our own convictions is necessarily wicked or treasonous— then indeed we are approaching the end of freedom’s road. We must unitedly and intelligently support the principles of Americanism.”

98 99 “Moved to a New Resolve”

The story of the United States is not a simple, Historian John Hope Franklin, explained the linear tale. Rather, the trajectory of American importance of sites like these. “The places that liberty has been uneven, and for many, inequitable. commemorate sad history are not places in While not a perfect reflection of this complex which we…wallow in remorse,” he said “but history, national parks reflect the on-going instead places in which we may be moved to a struggle to achieve the Revolution’s promise. new resolve, to be better citizens.” Since several founders owned enslaved Africans, As Thomas Paine predicted, the ideals espoused national parks that commemorate the lives of by the revolutionary generation were “not the founders—George Washington, Thomas Stone, concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are and Charles Pinckney, for example—and many virtually involved in the contest.” Challenges to antebellum and Civil War sites explore the contra­ realization of the revolutionary vision remain, as diction between revolutionary ideals and slavery. evident at these national parks and many others: The long-term impact of the Revolution is evident Statue of Liberty National Monument in the stories of many other sites. In 1863, just African Burial Ground National months after the Emancipation Proclamation, Historic Site President Lincoln spoke at the Soldier’s National Cemetery at Gettysburg. His two-minute speech Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site reminded listeners that the U.S. was “conceived in Frederick Douglass National Historic Site Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” a clear reference to the Lowell National Historical Park Declaration of Independence. Similarly, visitors to Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site Seneca Falls, New York, discover that delegates at Trail of Tears National Historic Trail the Women’s Rights Convention symbolically modeled their Declaration of Sentiments on the George Washington Birthplace National Declaration. And, on August 28, 1963, Martin Monument Luther King, Jr. used his “I Have a Dream” speech Thomas Stone National Historic Site at the Lincoln Memorial to explain that “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent Charles Pinckney National Historic Site words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Gettysburg National Military Park Independence they were signing a promissory note Independence National Historical Park to which every American was to fall heir.” Women’s Rights National Historical Park In addition to civil rights, the preservation of civil liberties is fundamental to American Martin Luther King, Jr., National freedom. Debates about freedom of expression Historic Site versus national security have a long history that Lincoln Memorial National Memorial includes the Alien and Sedition Acts passed when “O, yes, Congress met in Congress Hall in Philadelphia. Brown v. Board of Education National I say it plain, The internment camp at Manzanar recalls the Historic Site America never was America to me, treatment of Japanese Americans during World And yet I swear this oath— Manzanar National Historic Site War II. U.S. troops attacked and massacred America will be!” Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site Cheyenne and Arapaho women, children, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (his Atlanta Selma to Montgomery National birth home, shown here) criticized elderly at Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864. the Vietnam War by quoting Historic Trail “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes.

101 Moreover, these beliefs and values made, and still Constitutionalism make, the United States a nation. To be an American is The Revolution’s creative effects on constitution­ not to be somebody, but to believe in something. That alism were the most immediate and the most notice­ is why the United States has always been particularly able results. The Revolution created the structure of On November 9, 1989, the BBC receptive to immigrants. People from every part of the reported, “The Berlin Wall has been America’s governments beginning with the state world have come to America and become American breached (below) after nearly three constitutions written in 1776-1777. These were radical citizens simply by subscribing to these beliefs and decades keeping East and West documents that aimed to abolish tyranny as the British Berliners apart. At midnight, East aspirations. These common ideals and values are what North American colonists had come to understand it. Germany's Communist rulers gave hold Americans together. Without them the United In a period dominated by monarchy, these state permission for gates along the wall States, composed of so many different races, religions, to be opened after hundreds of peo­ constitutions were something new in the world; they and ethnicities, might very well fall apart. When there ple converged on crossing points…. established free republican governments based on was a fundamental disagreement over these ideals and Ecstatic crowds immediately began the consent of the people. Most of them created a to clamber on top of the wall and values in the middle of the 19th century, the United separation of governmental powers with the single hack large chunks out of the 28­ States did, in fact, fracture in a bloody civil war. Only executives, bicameral legislatures, and independent mile…barrier.” President Abraham Lincoln’s steadfast belief that the judiciaries that have come to characterize American United States was a grand experiment in self-govern­ constitutionalism. Bills of rights protecting individual ment and the last best hope for democracy in the liberties from the government were added to many of world brought the nation through the crisis. them. With these constitutions, the Revolutionaries As Lincoln suggested, the American Revolution may expanded suffrage, made the representative legislatures not be just the most important event in American history. proportionate to population, and created the most With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the discrediting of popularly responsive governments in the world. Communism, and the emergence of the United States as Enlightened philosophers everywhere celebrated these the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, the revolutionary state constitutions. Many were immedi­ American Revolution may also have become the most ately translated into several European languages. important event in modern world history. At the same time, the 13 American states formed a league of friendship, the Articles of Confederation, a kind of treaty among themselves that resembled the present-day European Union. When Americans discov­ ered that this Confederation, which lacked the powers to tax or regulate trade, was unable to meet their needs, they replaced it with the federal Constitution of 1787. This Constitution, modeled on the state constitutions with a single executive, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary, created a single republic operat­ ing directly on behalf of the people now spread across half a continent—an impossibility according to the best political science of the day. This gave their new national government an experimental and problematical character that continued through the first half of the 19th century. The federal Constitution and its first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, added in 1791, were the greatest of America’s constitutional achievements during the Revolutionary era.

102 103 Although most nations in the world have not principal framers of the Constitution of 1787, added, followed the American pattern of separating the “in their hands it is clay in the hands of a potter; they powers of the legislature from the executive and creating have the right to mould, to preserve, to improve, to complicated checks and balances, they nevertheless refine, and to furnish it as they please.” have been profoundly affected by America’s constitu­ Although 18th-century Englishmen, like the writer tion-making experience. Arthur Young, scornfully dismissed the American The purpose of a First of all, the Americans established the modern definition of a constitution as if it “were a pudding Congress shall make idea of a written constitution, a written document made from a recipe,” it was the American idea of a written constitution that is both a blueprint for government and a limita­ constitution as a written document separated from no law respecting is to bind up the tion on that government. Written constitutions had government that carried the day and has lasted into an establishment several branches existed before in Western history, but the Americans in our own time. When people today talk about forming of religion, or of government by the Revolutionary era did something new. They made a new constitution for their nation they instinctively prohibiting the free written constitutions a practical and everyday part think of a written constitution. exercise thereof; certain laws, which, of governmental life. They showed the world not In 1776, when Americans made constitutions for when they transgress, only how written constitutions could be made truly their newly independent states, they naturally sought or abridging the their acts shall fundamental, distinguishable from ordinary legislation, to make them fundamental and explicitly wrote them freedom of speech, become nullities; to but also how such constitutions could be interpreted out in documents. It was one thing, however, to define or of the press; or render unnecessary on a regular basis and altered when necessary. the constitution as fundamental law, different from the right of the Moreover, they offered the world concrete and usable ordinary legislation and circumscribing the institutions an appeal to the governmental institutions for carrying out these of government; it was quite another to make such a people peaceably people, or in other constitutional tasks. All in all, these were extraordinary distinction effective. In the years following the to assemble, and to words a rebellion, achievements, scarcely duplicated by any other nation Declaration of Independence, Americans struggled petition the govern­ on every infraction in such a brief period of time. with this problem of distinguishing fundamental from ment for a redress Before the Revolution, a constitution was rarely statutory law, and none did so more persistently than of grievances. of their rights, on ever distinguished from the government and its Thomas Jefferson. In 1779, Jefferson knew from expe­ the peril that their operations. Traditionally, in English culture, a constitu­ rience that no legislature “elected by the people for the —Amendment 1 Ratified and acquiescence shall tion referred both to the way the government was put ordinary purposes of legislation only” could restrain added to the U.S. Constitution, be construed into together or constituted and to the fundamental rights the acts of succeeding legislatures. Thus he realized 1791 an intention to the government was supposed to protect. The 18th­ that to declare his great act for Establishing Religious century English constitution was an unwritten mixture Freedom in Virginia to be “irrevocable would be of no surrender those of laws, customs, principles, and institutions. effect in law; yet we are free,” he wrote into his bill, rights. By the end of the Revolutionary era, however, the that “if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the Americans’ idea of a constitution seems to be no part present [act] or to narrow its operation, such act will —Thomas Jefferson, 1782 of the government at all. It was a written document be an infringement of natural right.” distinct from and superior to all the operations of Eventually enacted by the Virginia legislature in government. A constitution was, as Thomas Paine 1786, Jefferson’s bill contributed to one of the greatest of said in 1791, “a thing antecedent to a government; and America’s constitutional achievements—the separation a government is only the creature of a constitution.” of church and state. Nowhere else in Christendom And, Paine said, it was “not a thing in name only; but did religion become so free of government, and yet in fact.” For Americans, a constitution was something nowhere else did religion flourish as it did in early written, possessed by every family, and carried about 19th-century evangelical America. Other enlightened like the Bible to be quoted and cited article by article. states in the 19th century developed high degrees of Such a constitution could never be an act of the religious toleration, but only the United States neutral­ legislature; it had to be the act of the people themselves, ized the role of government in religion, creating true declared James Wilson in 1790. Wilson, one of the religious freedom that was eventually protected by the first of the Bill of Rights. 104 105 Still, the problem of distinguishing fundamental that unelected judges could set aside acts of the popu­ law from statutory law raised by Jefferson was not larly elected legislatures; this seemed to be undemoc­ easily solved, and he and other leaders continued to ratic usurpation of power. But, as early as 1787, James seek some means of making constitutional principles Iredell, soon to be appointed a justice of the newly superior to ordinary legislation. To make the constitu­ created Supreme Court of the United States, saw that tion truly fundamental and immune from legislative the new meaning Americans had given to a constitution tampering, it would have to be created, as Jefferson had clarified the responsibility of judges to determine put it, “by a power superior to that to the legislature.” the law. A constitution in America, Iredell said, was not By the early 1780s, the answer had become clear. only “a fundamental law” but also a special, popularly “To render a form of government unalterable by created “law in writing…limiting the powers of the ordinary acts of assembly,” wrote Jefferson, “the people Legislature, and with which every exercise of those must delegate persons with special powers. They have powers must necessarily be compared.” Judges were accordingly chosen special conventions or congresses not arbiters of the constitution or usurpers of legislative to form and fix their governments.” power. They were, Iredell said, merely judicial officials Here is the limit of Massachusetts had shown the way. In 1780, it had fulfilling their duty of applying the proper law. When faced with a decision between “the fundamental your authority; elected a convention specially designated to form a constitution and had then placed that constitution unrepealable law” made especially by the people and and hither shall before the people for ratification. When the Philadelphia an ordinary statute enacted by the legislature contrary you go, but no Convention drew up a new constitution for the nation to the constitution, they must simply determine which further. in 1787, it knew what to do. It declared that the new law was superior. Judges could not avoid exercising Constitution had to be ratified by the people meeting in this authority, Iredell concluded, for in America a —George Wythe, 1782 state conventions called for that purpose. Constitutional constitution was not “a mere imaginary thing, about conventions and the process of ratification made the which ten thousand different opinions may be formed, people themselves the actual constituent power. These but a written document to which all may have recourse, devices were distinctive contributions the American and to which, therefore, the judges cannot witfully John Marshall’s opinion in Revolution made to world politics. blind themselves.” Marbury v. Madison argued, But the idea of special conventions to draw up Although Iredell may have been wrong about the “If then the courts are to regard or amend constitutions and the process of popular number of different opinions that could arise over a the constitution; and the constitution ratification of constitutions were not America’s only constitution, he was certainly right about the direction is superior to any ordinary act of contributions to constitutional understanding. With judicial authority in America would take. The way was the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must the conception of a constitution as fundamental law prepared for Supreme Court Justice John Marshall’s govern the case to which they immune from legislative encroachment more firmly decision in Marbury v. Madison in 1803 and the both apply.” in hand, some state judges during the 1780s cautiously subsequent development of the doctrine of judicial began to impose restraints on what the assemblies review. With this doctrine, judges in America came to were enacting as law. They told the legislatures, as exercise an extraordinary power over governmental George Wythe, judge of the Virginia Supreme Court, life. It is the kind of judicial power that is now being did in 1782: “Here is the limit of your authority; and copied by many judiciaries everywhere in the world. hither shall you go, but no further.” These were the These then were the great contributions to hesitant beginnings of what would come to be called constitutionalism that Americans in the Revolutionary judicial review—that remarkable practice by which era made to the world: the constitution as a written judges in the ordinary courts of law have the authority document, the separation of church and state, the to determine the constitutionality of acts of the state device of the convention for creating and amending and federal legislatures. constitutions, the process of popular ratification, and The development of judicial review came slowly. the practice of judicial review. Only by recognizing It was not easy for people in the 18th century to believe that the people had a political and even legal existence

106 107 outside of all the institutions of government were what Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, called Americans able to create these constitutional institutions “the great God absolute!” The “Spirit of Equality,” and practices. No institution of government, even all Melville said, spread a “mantle of humanity” over of them put together, could completely embody the all Americans and brought “democratic dignity” sovereign people of America in the way the House of to even “the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike.” Commons embodied the British people. Southerners and would-be aristocrats in the By thinking of the people in this way, the North vainly tried to argue that Jefferson could never Americans were able to conceive of federalism, that is, have meant that all men were literally equal and that the remarkable division of power between central and they all had equal rights. But that provincial governments. By creating two legislatures was precisely what most Americans, with different powers operating over the same territory at least in the North, came to —the Congress and the separate state legislature—the believe; and some came to say not Americans offered the world a new way of organizing just white men but black men had government. In the 19th century, libertarian reformers these equal rights; and some even­ everywhere in Europe and Latin America, struggling to tually went so far as to say that not put together central governments in the face of strong just men but women had these local loyalties, appealed to the American example of rights. The anti-slavery movement federalism. German reformers in 1848 cited the and the women’s convention at American example in their efforts to build a confeder­ Seneca Falls in 1848 were the ation, and liberal reformers in Switzerland called the consequence of this American United States Constitution “a model and a pattern for commitment to equality. the organization of the public life of republics in Within decades following the general, in which the whole and parts shall both be Declaration of Independence, the free and equal…The problem,” they said, with more United States became the most enthusiasm than accuracy, given America’s growing egalitarian nation in the history of federal crisis that resulted in the Civil War, “has been the world. Indeed, the desire for solved by the new world for all peoples, states and equality continues to drive most countries.” of America’s current public debates—whether over affirmative A Belief in Equality action, gay rights, or the role of women. American constitutionalism is not the only Jefferson and the other important legacy of the Revolution. The Declaration Revolutionary leaders made much of Independence, with its statement that “all men are of equality, but they did not mean created equal,” probably has had a greater impact on by equality a leveling of their society. They thought of America and the world than America’s constitutional equality primarily as equality of opportunity. They Icons of the American Revolution system. Ho Chi Minh invoked those very words in the often serve as meaningful back­ wanted positions of leadership determined by talent 1945 declaration of independence that he wrote for drops for protesters seeking and merit, not by lineage or social position. They the Republic of Vietnam. redress. In 1965, the Mattachine wanted what Jefferson called a natural, not an artificial, Society (above), seeking equality For Americans themselves the idea of equality aristocracy, and they concocted three-tiered systems for the homosexual community, was certainly the most radical and powerful force let of public education in order to recruit talented leaders chose Independence Hall. loose in the Revolution, and it was much more radical from society. They thought that making merit the crite­ and powerful than Thomas Jefferson or any of the rion of leadership would lead to a circulation of elites, founders realized. Once invoked, the idea of equality and no traditional aristocracy would have time to could not be stopped, and it tore through American harden and perpetuate itself. society and culture with awesome force. It became

108 109 In the end, the concept of equality meant more to minds of those who feel themselves inferior.” the founders than equality of opportunity. Indeed, if Consequently, everyone strives to be equal with those equality had meant only equality of opportunity or above him, “in dress, if in nothing else.” A society that even a rough equality of property holding, it could had no place for inferiorities of occupation and dress never have become, as it has, the single most powerful was an unusual society indeed. This was drawing out and radical ideological force in American history. the idea of equality faster and further than any of the Equality became so potent for Americans because it founders had expected. came to mean that everyone was really the same as Under these circumstances “aristocracy,” natural everyone else, not just at birth, not in talent or property as well as artificial, quickly became a pejorative term, The history of the or wealth, and not just in some transcendental religious at least in the North, and many of those who wished past is but one long sense of the equality of all souls. Jefferson and many of for a political career had to appear as plain and as the other founders came to conclude that all humans straightforward as the people who voted for them. struggle upward were basically alike, that they all partook of the same Politicians played down their college educations and to equality. common nature. They believed that there was some­ claimed that they were just ordinary folk born in log thing in each human being, some sort of moral sense cabins. White servants refused to call their employers —Elizabeth Cady Stanton or sympathetic instinct, which made possible natural “master;” for many the term “boss,” derived from compassion and affection. Even the lowliest of the Dutch word for master, became a euphemistic persons, they assumed, had this sense of sympathy substitute. The servants themselves would not be for others and the capacity to tell right from wrong. called anything but “help.” “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor,” By the early 19th century, there were greater said Jefferson; “the former will decide it as well, and disparities of wealth in American society than had often better, than the latter, because he has not been existed in the colonial period. Yet the society felt more led astray by artificial rules.” equal and lauded itself for its egalitarianism—a paradox This belief in the equal moral worth of every that has puzzled more than one historian. With “the individual was the real source of America’s democratic disappearance or diminution” in America of nearly all equality, an equality that was far more potent than the traditional aristocratic distinctions, as Alexis de merely the idea that everyone started at birth with the Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, there was “hardly same blank slate. Ordinary Americans came to believe anything left but money” to separate one person from that no one in a basic down-to-earth and day-in and another. For many Americans in the new democratic day-out manner was really better than anyone else. society, the ability to make money had become the sole They came to have a sense of self-worth and dignity and only proper means for distinguishing one person that allowed them, regardless of their lack of wealth or from another. Catherine Sedgwick spoke for all the education, to look others in the eye and treat them as old aristocracy when she observed of the emerging equals and to expect to be treated as equals in return. 19th-century entrepreneurial hierarchy: “Wealth, you The Revolutionaries’ idea of equality was very know, is the grand leveling principle.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton (above) permissive, and those who invoked it had little inkling remained married for 47 years. of the lengths to which it could or would be carried. Leader of the Free World Nonetheless, she felt that “(t)he Equality immediately rendered suspect all kinds of All these consequences alone make the American custom of calling women Mrs. John distinctions, whether naturally derived or not. In a Revolution one of the great revolutions of world This and Mrs. Tom That and colored free and independent republic, it was said in the 1780s, men Sambo and Zip Coon, is history. But perhaps the most important legacy of founded on the principle that “the idea of equality breathes through the whole and the Revolution is the way in which it has affected white men are lords of all.” every individual feels ambitious to be in a situation not America’s conception of its role in the world, a inferior to his neighbour.” Among Americans, “the idea conception that still seems to have resonance today. of inferiority, as of pursuing a mean employment or The Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, with, occupation…mortifies the feelings, and sours the as Emerson put it in the mid-19th century, a “shot

110 111 heard round the world.” That, in fact, was how the revolutions. Nevertheless, Americans continued to Revolutionaries and sympathetic foreigners saw the believe that they, and not the French, were the center Revolution: as an event of worldwide significance. of the international revolution. For the people of America—numbering only two and Despite promising not to intervene in Europe’s one-half million huddled along a narrow strip of the internal affairs and expressing a desire to have no Atlantic coast, three thousand miles from the centers entangling alliances with Europe, most 19th-century of civilization—to claim that their little colonial Americans remained very concerned with what went rebellion possessed universal importance was the on there. Yet they were reluctant to get directly height of audacity. Yet the Revolutionaries and their involved in any revolutionary ventures that might heirs in the 19th century sincerely believed that they endanger their own republican experiment. Believing The right of revolu­ were bringing liberty and republicanism not only to that people who were ready for republicanism would America but also to the rest of the world. America’s sooner or later become republicans as they had, tion is an inherent conception of itself as the leader of the free world Americans concluded that they could best accomplish one. When people began in 1776. their mission of bringing free governments to the rest are oppressed by Americans launched their Revolution with very of the world simply by existing as a free government, their government, high hopes that other peoples would follow their lead, by being an exemplar to the world. throw off monarchies, and become republics. Naturally, So Americans watched and encouraged all the it is a natural at first, they saw the French Revolution of 1789 as a 19th-century revolutions. They did not intervene in right they enjoy to copy of their own Revolution, and they welcomed the deed, but they did in every other way. Individuals relieve themselves effort. But its rapid perversion and excesses, ending in raised money for the rebels and some went off to fight of oppression, if they Napoleonic despotism, disillusioned many Americans on behalf of revolutionary movements. In all the are strong enough, about the ability of other peoples to emulate them in European revolutions of the century—the Greek revolt becoming republican and tempered their optimism of 1821, the French constitutional transformation of whether by with­ about the future. 1830, the general European insurrections of 1848, and drawal from it, or These doubts soon played into American attitudes the overthrow of the Second French Empire and the by overthrowing it toward the Latin American colonial rebellions that establishment of the Third French Republic in 1870— and substituting a the United States was usually the first nation to extend broke out in the early decades of the 19th century. government more If any revolutions were emulations of the American diplomatic recognition to new revolutionary regimes. After all, in the Americans’ eyes these European acceptable. A leader in the fight for independ­ Revolution these rebellions against Spanish imperialism revolutions were simply efforts by oppressed peoples ence in Latin America, Simon certainly seemed to be. And, of course, Americans —Ulysses S. Grant, 1885 Bolivar (above) revealed his such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson welcomed to become like them, all species of the same revolu­ ambivalence toward his North them. But at the same time they were skeptical of the tionary genus Americanus. At first, Americans were American neighbor. “The United South Americans’ ability to create free republican unthreatened by these revolutions and had no fear States,” he reportedly said, “seems whatsoever of the spread of revolutionary ideas— destined by Providence to plague governments. “I feared from the beginning,” Jefferson the American continent with misery wrote in 1821, “that these people were not as yet except the successful African slave rebellion that in the name of liberty.” sufficiently enlightened for self-government; and that occurred in Haiti in 1804; the United States did not after wading through blood and slaughter, they would recognize the Haitian republic, the first free black end in military tyrannies, more or less numerous.” republic of its kind, until the Civil War. But Americans Thus Americans from the outset had an ambiguous welcomed all the others and toasted revolutionary attitude toward republican revolutions in other parts patriots, like the Hungarian Louis Kossuth in 1852, of the world. Naturally there was no hostility, only when they came to America in search of money and sympathy and enthusiasm mixed with a kind of support. patronizing pessimism bred of an anxiety that other Naturally this encouragement of revolution did peoples would not have the social and moral qualities not endear us to the European monarchies, but 19th­ necessary to carry through successful republican century Americans were proud of their example and

112 113 simply assumed that they were the cause of all the Russian Revolution was a new revolutionary genus revolutionary upheavals in Europe. When the altogether, a totally new departure in world history. Hapsburg monarchy protested American sympathy The antagonism that sprang up between the for the Hungarian revolution of 1848, Secretary of United States and the Soviet Union rested not simply State Daniel Webster accepted nothing less than full on power politics or on contrasting marketing systems, American responsibility for the European uprisings. but, more importantly, on the competitiveness of two In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant even had the audacity very different revolutionary traditions. The Cold War to congratulate the French for using “American political really began in 1917. The Soviet Union threatened ideas” in overthrowing the Second Empire and estab­ nothing less than the displacement of the United States lishing the Third Republic. With the Russian Revolution from the vanguard of history. For the first time since of 1917, however, everything changed. At first, with the 1776, Americans were faced with an alternative March 1917 overthrow of the tsar and the formation revolutionary ideology with universalist aspirations of the Provisional Government, Americans welcomed equal to their own. The Russians, not the Americans, the Russian Revolution as they had welcomed earlier now claimed to be pointing the way toward the future. anti-monarchical European revolutions. Seven days With this dramatic emergence of an opposing after the tsar abdicated, the United States extended revolutionary ideology, Americans in the 20th century diplomatic recognition to the new Russian govern­ grew more and more confused about themselves and ment, the first power in the world to do so. President their place in history. They could not very well stand Woodrow Wilson now thought he had “a fit partner against the idea of revolution, but at the same time for a league of honor,” a league that he hoped would they could no longer be very enthusiastic about be a means for the worldwide extension of democracy. revolutions that they assumed would be Communist. In May 1917, the American ambassador in Moscow America’s Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union wrote that he expected Russia to come out of its ordeal eventually culminated in its disastrous intervention in “as a republic, and with a government…founded on Vietnam in the 1960s. Most Americans thought they correct principles,” that is to say, principles similar to were simply following President John F. Kennedy’s those of the American republic. call in 1961 to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet When Warren Harding delivered When the Bolsheviks took over the revolution any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe his State of the Union address to in the fall of 1917, however, all this initial enthusiasm to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Congress in 1921, the government’s quickly disappeared. Instead of its firmest friend, the Suddenly, in 1989, everything changed again. position on the Russian Revolution United States suddenly became the bitterest enemy of The Soviet Union collapsed, and with it collapsed its had solidified. “We do not recognize the Russian Revolution. Instead of quickly extending revolutionar y aspirations to make the world over as the government of Russia,” he said, “nor tolerate the propaganda diplomatic recognition to the new regime, the United Communist. But before the United States could fully which emanates therefrom…” States withheld diplomatic recognition from the Soviet enjoy its victory over this rival Soviet revolutionary Union for 16 years and four American presidencies, ideology, it found itself, on September 11, 2001, in a making the United States the last major Western power new and very different war, a war against terrorism. to recognize the revolutionary regime. Whether America’s revolutionary tradition and its In light of America’s earlier revolutionary tradition long-existing desire to make the world safe for this was a remarkable turnabout—a turnabout, however, democracy will enable it to wage this war successfully that is explicable only in terms of that earlier revolu­ remains to be seen. But the United States still sees tionary tradition. The cause of the abrupt change of itself, as it did in 1776, as the leader of the free world attitude can be found in the nature of the Bolshevik and assumes that the democratic principles for which appeal, the new character of the Communist ideology. it stands resonate universally around the globe. The Bolsheviks claimed not simply to be leading another anti-monarchical republican revolution in emulation of the American or French models. The

114 115 “If Men Were Angels” “E Pluribus Unum?”

“If men were angels,” wrote James Madison, In the national pantheon of heroes, the founders Hamilton was an immigrant from the West “no government would be necessary…neither have achieved mythic proportions. Legislators Indies. He and Thomas Jefferson squabbled external nor internal controls on government and jurists routinely refer to the founders’ continually. Franklin and Adams held radically would be necessary.” Alas since men, and “intent.” The motto E Pluribus Unum—from different outlooks on personal lifestyle. Patrick women, fail to attain the moral stratosphere of many one—appears to ratify the idea of mono­ Henry’s speeches electrified patriots, but he Heaven, the founders adopted the dual concepts lithic harmony. “smelt a rat” when delegates—Washington, of separation of power and checks and balances. Hamilton, and Pinckney among others—met at Using national parks that focus on the lives of As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams, the Constitutional Convention. Henry and a founders, visitors can test that linguist equation— “The first principle of a good government is diverse group of other Anti-Federalists vigorously E Pluribus Unum—for themselves. It’s easy to certainly a distribution of its powers into executive, opposed the Constitution. Optimistic motto find similarities, consensus, and interlocking judiciary, and legislative…” Add the concept of aside, many wondered whether national unity relationships. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin federalism—distribution of government among or irreconcilable diversity would carry the day. hailed from greater Boston. Thomas Stone, federal, state, and local officials—and the U.S. Charles Pinckney, and George Washington lived Look for both the unum and the pluribus at: Constitution begins to take shape. on plantations dependent on enslaved Africans. Benjamin Franklin National Memorial The development of constitutional ideas is well Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson served illustrated at several national parks focused on in Washington’s cabinet. William Floyd, Stone, Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial individuals—John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin signed the Declaration of Adams National Historical Park Charles Pinckney, and Patrick Henry—while Independence. Washington and Pinckney served other sites trace the application of constitutional as officers in the army during the Revolution. Independence National Historical Park concepts. When delegates wrote the U.S. Washington, Pinckney, and Hamilton attended Thomas Stone National Historic Site Constitution, they met in the Assembly Room of the Constitutional Convention and played impor­ Hamilton Grange National Memorial Independence Hall. Interestingly, Congress met tant roles in drafting the Constitution. in this same space when it produced the first Charles Pinckney National Historic Site U.S. constitution, the Articles of Confederation, William Floyd’s home (part of Fire Island a document that gave considerable power to Explore the application of revolutionary ideas to National Seashore) states, included no chief executive, and had only government at: Boston National Historical Park one legislative branch. Independence National Historical Park George Washington Birthplace National Following ratification of the Constitution, the Federal Hall National Memorial new Congress met on the site of Federal Hall in Monument New York. With members of Congress present, Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial Washington Monument George Washington, newly elected chief executive, Adams National Historical Park Thomas Jefferson Memorial took his oath of office and then delivered his inaugural address to both legislative houses. Hamilton Grange National Memorial Federal Hall National Memorial Reacting to criticism of the constitution, Congress Friendship Hill National Historic Site adopted and sent a bundle of amendments—the But what about the pluribus side? By the (home of Albert Gallatin) Bill of Rights—to the states for ratification. Revolution, the colonies already were ethnically, religiously, economically, and racially diverse. Roger Williams National Memorial After Congress moved to Philadelphia in 1790, At the Battle of Kings Mountain virtually all the the Supreme Court held its first session, George Saint Paul’s Church National Historic Site combatants on both sides were Americans. Washington rented a residence a block away, French settlers helped George Rogers Clark and the government set about refining how each capture Fort Sackville. The Ethiopian Regiment branch would function in the unheavenly reality of ex-slaves fought with the British in Virginia. of American politics. While elected leaders included no women or African Americans, even this reduced sample of founders contains intriguing differences.

116 117 “A Political Duty of Grave Importance” Related Sites

Park (1946) and Independence National Boston National Historical Park Salem Maritime National Historic Site Historical Park (1948) entered the NPS. John Boston, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts Adams and John Quincy Adams served as congressmen, diplomats, and presidents, not A revolutionary generation of Bostonians blazed Salem, like many other 18th-century American soldiers. Independence Hall symbolized the the trail from colonialism to independence. Sites seaports, served as a haven for privateers, power of ideas, not military prowess. throughout the city interpret the complexities of privately owned vessels of all sizes and descrip­ that journey, peopled by heroes of history (like tions commissioned by Congress to disrupt Similarly, celebrations played a recurring role Paul Revere) as well as by anonymous individuals, enemy shipping. In lieu of a significant navy in NPS expansion. In tandem with the 200th patriots and loyalists, caught in war’s turmoil. to challenge the British, America’s nearly 800 anniversary of George Washington’s birth (1932), privateers captured or destroyed about 600 www.nps.gov/bost his birthplace became a national monument. The British ships. Revolution’s bicentennial brought several more Longfellow National Historic Site historical parks into the system—Valley Forge, Cambridge, Massachusetts www.nps.gov/sama Ninety Six, Fort Stanwix, and Boston National From July 1775 to April 1776, the Longfellow Historical Park, a cluster of sites commemorating mansion served as headquarters for George the city’s revolutionary spirit. St. Paul’s Church Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted had a Washington, commander-in-chief of the newly focuses on religious freedom, and Thomas gift. Sometimes, it seemed, he could see into the formed Continental Army. There Washington Stone’s country home provides a venue for future. Calling park creation “a political duty of honed his military skills—he planned the siege exploring tensions inherent in declaring grave importance,” in 1864 he predicted that a of Boston, forced the British out of the city, and independence. As the nation commemorated national system of parks would emerge from polit­ embarked on eight years of dogged preservation the Constitution, the Pinckney plantation provides ical acts—public laws or executive orders. If alive of his diverse army. opportunities to interpret nation-building and today, Olmsted could simply survey the creation of the paradox of slavery. www.nps.gov/long parks highlighted in this handbook and see how the political process he envisioned has worked. Personalities also fueled politics and park creation Adams National Historical Park —sites need political sponsors to maneuver Quincy, Massachusetts Many of the parks commemorating independ­ them through Congress. Senator Hugh Scott, for ence focused on military history. The War Adams National Historical Park commemorates example, along with civic leaders like Judge Department preserved forts and battlefields like the personal and public lives of a family famous­ Edwin Lewis, championed Independence National Yorktown, Cowpens, Kings Mountain, Moores ly dedicated to national service. Over the span of Historical Park. Inside Congress, Phillip Burton Creek, Morristown, Castillo de San Marcos, and five generations (from 1720 to 1927), the Adams presided over an unprecedented effort to estab­ Fort Necessity as textbooks on combat. But family boasted two U.S. presidents (including lish new parks. Historians categorize his National Saratoga National Historical Park Horace Albright, NPS director in the 1930s, patriots John Adams and his wife Abigail), three Parks and Recreation Act (1978) as “the most Stillwater, New York inserted an interesting dynamic into the history U.S. ministers, historians, and writers. sweeping piece of environmental legislation ever of these federally owned sites. As part of his Site of the first significant American military to pass the Congress.” The new areas in Burton’s www.nps.gov/adam strategy to expand the NPS, Albright turned to victory, Saratoga ranks among the 15 most bill included Thomas Stone National Historic Site historic preservation. He personally lobbied Minute Man National Historical Park decisive battles in world history. American forces and St. Paul’s Church. Franklin Roosevelt to use executive authority Concord, Massachusetts met, defeated, and forced a major British army to surrender, leading France to recognize U.S. to transfer 44 historical areas to the NPS. This Ever since historical parks took their place Minute Man National Historical Park brings to life independence and enter the war as an ally. massive reorganization, in 1933, marked a mile­ within the NPS, politicians have promoted sites "that famous day and year" when colonial militia What turned the tide on Europe’s superpower? stone in NPS evolution. It expanded the agency’s commemorating the Revolution and its legacy. defended liberty. By firing the “shot heard ‘round role in the preservation and interpretation of Sites associated with national expansion and the world” and harassing British soldiers as they www.nps.gov/sara history, and increased NPS presence in the East. the clash of cultures, women and women’s marched along “battle road,” citizen soldiers rights, and human and civil rights have inspired Olmsted, no doubt, would notice that the politics ignited the Revolution. Who were these men, on community leaders and elected officials to of park creation often reflected the times. both sides, and why did they fight and die? exercise their “political duty” to create an Following the World War II triumph of allied www.nps.gov/mima expanded, more inclusive park system. democracies, both Adams National Historical

118 119 William Floyd Estate (Fire Island National loyalists and patriots. Crossroads of the American Morristown National Historical Park Independence National Historical Park Seashore) Revolution preserves and interprets dozens of Morristown, New Jersey Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mastic Beach, New York sites related to the military and civilian struggle During two winters (1777 and 1779–80), Independence National Historical Park, home of for independence. When William Floyd sided with the patriots— Morristown sheltered the encamped Continental familiar icons like Independence Hall and the as a militia officer, member of the Continental www.nps.gov/crossroads Army and served as headquarters for Commander­ Liberty Bell, offers an ideal place to explore many facets of the Revolution, including the Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Federal Hall National Memorial in-Chief Washington. The now peaceful meadows promises and paradoxes of revolutionary rhetoric Independence—he not only imperiled his own New York, New York and stately Ford Mansion commemorate the life but also that of his family. In 1777, when hardships faced by American soldiers, the impact and the struggle to find common cause among the British invaded Long Island, Floyd, his wife Events on the site of Federal Hall laid a firm of war on loyalist and patriot civilians, and the diverse peoples and ideas. Discover how revolu­ Hannah, and three children fled their home. foundation for an evolving framework of govern­ ability of George Washington to preserve the army. tionary the American Revolution really was. ment. In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress met www.nps.gov/fiis/historyculture/williamfloyd.htm there to protest British policy. After independ­ www.nps.gov/morr www.nps.gov/inde Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site ence, Congress, meeting at the Wall Street site, Benjamin Franklin National Memorial Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial Mount Vernon, New York hosted Washington’s first inauguration, created Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the federal judiciary, and endorsed individual In 1733, Saint Paul’s stood beside a village The massive, iconic statue of Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson called Thaddeus Kosciuszko, rights and limited government in the Bill of green, scene of an election that denied Quakers by James Earle Fraser commemorates one of “As pure a son of Liberty as I have ever known.” Rights. the right to vote. The legal struggle that followed the most famous Founders, a disciple of the Born in Poland and trained as a military marked an early victory for religious freedom, a www.nps.gov/feha Enlightenment and firm believer in progress. engineer, Kosciuszko was one of the first tenet of the revolutionary generation. After the Governors Island National Monument Only Franklin signed the Declaration of Europeans to aid the Revolution, designing battle at Pell’s Point (October 1776), the church New York, New York Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the fortifications at Saratoga and West Point. A global opened its doors to the wounded. U.S. Constitution. champion of freedom, Kosciuszko returned to Strategically positioned in New York Harbor, the Europe and led a failed attempt to free Poland. www.nps.gov/sapa military installations on Governors Island have www.nps.gov/archive/inde/ben-frank.html Fort Stanwix National Monument protected the harbor, the city, the nation, and the www.nps.gov/thko Rome, New York ideals symbolized by the nearby Statue of Liberty Valley Forge National Historical Park for over two centuries. The outpost at Fort Stanwix, a major venue of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania cultural exchange with the tribes of the Six www.nps.gov/gois Valley Forge commemorates more than the Nations , controlled a principal route from the Hamilton Grange National Memorial sacrifices of the revolutionary generation, it pays Hudson River to Lake Ontario. After patriots New York, New York homage to everyday individuals who overcome rebuilt an old fort at the site, American and adversity and persevered in extraordinary times. Indian resistance contributed to the American Alexander Hamilton, owner of “The Grange,” Despite the privations of the winter encampment victory at Saratoga by repulsing a British and earned his place on the $10 bill. An immigrant from of 1777-1778, George Washington, his officers, Indian invasion from Canada. the West Indies, he served on Washington’s staff and his soldiers built a unified, professional during the Revolution and became convinced that military that ultimately won independence. www.nps.gov/fost the U.S. needed strong central government. Crossroads of the American Revolution Hamilton attended the Constitutional Convention nps.gov/vafo Heritage Area and co-authored the Federalist Papers. As treasury New Jersey secretary, he helped secure the nation’s financial health. Situated between British headquarters in New York and the patriot capital of Philadelphia, New www.nps.gov/hagr Jersey was the scene of more Revolutionary War engagements than any other colony. As a result, her citizens suffered through some of the worst days of the struggle, including civil war between

120 121 Fort Necessity National Battlefield Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial Moores Creek National Battlefield Cowpens National Battlefield Farmington, Pennsylvania Brookneal, Virginia Currie, North Carolina Chesnee, South Carolina At Fort Necessity, troops commanded by young As the last home and burial place of Patrick The battle at Moores Creek Bridge (February 27, Daniel Morgan knew both his men and his George Washington lost the first battle of the Henry, “Red Hill” commemorates not only the 1776) was all about allegiance. Loyalists, many opponent well. At Cowpens, in the first month French and Indian War. More importantly, they life of a man but also the power of words. in tartans, shouted “King George and of 1781, Morgan played the cards he held, using began a global struggle to control North America Henry’s compelling speeches kindled the fires of Broadswords!” as they charged out of morning his mix of Continental veterans, militia, and that set the stage for revolution. By war’s end, revolution and fueled the quest for independence. mists. The defenders, fed up with colonial politics cavalry to defeat Banastre Tarleton's British Washington had valuable military experience, as usual, answered with musket and cannon. The regulars. Following a patriot victory at Kings www.redhill.org/ Great Britain had a larger empire, and France patriot victory ended British and loyalist plans to Mountain, Cowpens marked the second defeat had a desire to get even. George Washington Birthplace National regain control of North Carolina quickly. for British forces invading the South under Monument Cornwallis. www.nps.gov/fone Washington’s Birthplace, Virginia www.nps.gov/mocr www.nps.gov/cowp Augustine Washington’s plantation, the birth­ Guilford Courthouse National Military Park Charles Pinckney National Historic Site place of his son, George, suggests the earliest Greensboro, North Carolina Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina influences on the man destined to become After the largest, most hotly contested action America’s first national hero. Thanks to the of the Southern Campaign, Lord Charles Charles Pinckney’s coastal plantation, reputation George built as commander of the Cornwallis forced General Nathanael Greene to “Snee Farm,” is a fitting site to ponder the Continental Army, embellished by his two terms withdraw, apparently winning the Battle of meaning of freedom. What did freedom mean to as president, Washington became “first in Guilford Courthouse. In reality, March 15, 1781, Pinckney, a Revolutionary War veteran, wealthy peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his proved to be the high water mark of the British planter, lawyer, and principal author and signer countrymen.” invasion of the South and their efforts to rally of the U.S. Constitution? And how did Pinckney’s loyalists. With fading hope of re-supply, concept of liberty compare to that of the enslaved www.nps.gov/gewa Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas for Virginia. African Americans who toiled on his plantation? Colonial National Historical Park Yorktown, Virginia www.nps.gov/guco www.nps.gov/chpi Colonial National Historical Park includes two Kings Mountain National Military Park Ninety Six National Historic Site of the most historic places in North America— Blacksburg, South Carolina Ninety Six, South Carolina Jamestown, the first permanent English The Battle of Kings Mountain, the first major Ninety Six, a strategic trading post in South settlement in North America, and Yorktown, patriot victory following the British invasion of Carolina’s backcountry, became the battleground Thomas Stone National Historic Site the final major battle of the American the South, turned the campaign’s tide of fortune. for bloody tests of loyalty. In 1775, patriots Port Tobacco, Maryland Revolution. These sites, connected by the On October 7, 1780, patriot militia from the and loyalists fought to a draw in the fields Colonial Parkway, commemorate the beginning Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and present-day and fencerows of Ninety Six. Six years later, In 1776, the world of country lawyer and slave and end of English colonial America. Tennessee surrounded and captured Major Nathanael Greene’s Continental troops laid owner Thomas Stone changed forever. By signing Patrick Ferguson and his army of loyalists. All siege to loyalists defending the town’s star fort. www.nps.gov/colo the Declaration of Independence, Stone literally but one of the soldiers (Ferguson) at King’s Although the siege failed, the loyalists burned wrote himself into history. As Stone’s experience Mountain were American. Ninety Six and marched away. illustrates, independence, once achieved, reordered not only personal and political lives, www.nps.gov/kimo www.nps.gov/nisi but also reshaped the dialogue on the use of enslaved labor in the U.S. www.nps.gov/thst

122 123 Fort Moultrie (Fort Sumter National Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail Monument) North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Sullivans Island, South Carolina Tennessee Days before Congress adopted the Declaration Through four states, the 330-mile Overmountain of Independence, Great Britain threatened both Victory Trail preserves and commemorates the Boston and Charleston. On June 28, 1776, at route used by the patriot militia who, angered by an unfinished fort defending Charleston harbor, brash British threats, initiated the campaign that American militia fought off a British invasion led to American victory at Kings Mountain in fleet. According to legend, the fort’s soft palmetto October 1780. logs did not crack but absorbed the cannons’ www.nps.gov/ovvi shot. This victory deterred British activity in the South for three years. Castillo de San Marcos National Monument St. Augustine, Florida www.nps.gov/fomo A bastion of the Spanish Empire, the largest Arkansas Post National Memorial European empire ever created, the Castillo near Gillett, Arkansas guarded the edge of Spain’s known world. Settled by the French (1686), Post de Arkansae After winning Florida in the French and Indian was the first permanent European colony in the War, Britain held the fort during the Revolution, Mississippi River Valley. One of many outposts using it to attack the rebellious colonies. Three of European empire entangled in global warfare, of South Carolina’s signers of the Declaration, it played a valuable role in the struggle to imprisoned in Castillo cells, personally dominate the fur trade. In the westernmost experienced rebellion’s price. action of the Revolution, the British attacked the www.nps.gov/casa post’s Spanish garrison, allies of the French. www.nps.gov/arpo George Rogers Clark National Historical Park Vincennes, Indiana The 1778-1779 campaign of George Rogers Clark, aided by French residents, stymied British attempts to dominate the Ohio and Illinois country. Using surprise attacks, adroit diplomacy with Indian nations, and extraordinary leadership skills, the 26-year-old Clark paved the way for the cession of the Northwest Territory to the new United States. www.nps.gov/gero

124 125 Index

Adams, Abigail, 8, 8, 54, 88, 89, 91 Boston Tea Party, 7, 33-36, 34-35, federalism, 108, 116 Kennedy, John F., 115 Oconostota, 84-85 Steuben, Friedrich von, 11, 11, 62 Adams, John, 8, 14, 32 Brant, Joseph, 10, 11, 14, 82-83, 82, 85, 87 Ferguson, Patrick, 12, 64 Kentucky, 13 Ohio, 14, 85 Stewart, Alexander, 67 Administration of Justice Act, 36 British armada, 8 financing the revolution, 8, 13 King George III, 7, 27, 28, 39, 39, 83 Old State House, 20 Stockbridge Indians, 87 African Americans, 7, 10, 14, 22-23, 24, 24, Burgoyne, John, 9, 10, 54, 59-60, 59, 60 1st Rhode Island Regiment, 10, 76-77 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 24, 46, 100 Olive Branch Petition, 7, 38, 39 Sugar Act, 6, 26-27 44, 46, 72, 73, 74-82, 74, 76-77, 98-99 Butler, Walter, 11 Florida, 13, 124 Knox, Henry, 8 Olmstead, Frederick Law, 118, 118 Sullivan, John, 11, 63, 83 Alabama, 12 Fort Lee, 9 Knyphausen, Wilhelm, 12 Oneida Indians, 87 Sumter, Thomas, 12, 64 Allen, Ethan, 7 Camp Middlebrook, 11 Fort Mercer, 10 Oriskany, 60 symbols, 19-25, 53 America, leader of the free world, 111-115 Canada, 7, 8, 9, 14, 57, 57, 59 Fort Mifflin, 10 Lafayette, James Armistead, 79, 79, 81 Osborn, Sarah, 91 American Indians, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 63, 82 Carpenters’ Hall, 37 Fort Moultrie, 8 Lafayette, Marquis de, 9, 11, 21, 68, 68-69, Tarleton, “Bloody” Banastre, 12, 66, 67 88, 84 Carroll, Charles, 8 Fort Necessity, 122 79, 79, 81 Paine, Thomas, 8, 9, 40, 40, 92, 95, 104 taxation, 26-35 Armistead, James, 79, 79, 81 Castillo de San Marcos National Fort Stanwix, 9, 10, 83, 85 Lake Champlain, 9, 59 Parker, Peter, 63 Tea Act, 31-36, 36, 88 Arnold, Benedict, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 57, 68 Monument, 124 Fort Sullivan, 8 Latin American colonial rebellions, 112 parks, American Revolution historical, 119 Thayendanegea, 10, 11, 14, 82-83, 82, 85, Articles of Confederation, 8, 10, 13, 51, 103 casualties, 14, 51 Fort Ticonderoga, 7, 8, 9, 59 Laurens, Henry, 14 124 87 artillery, 8, 17, 60 Catawba Indians, 87 Fort Washington, 9 Laurens, John, 13 parks, creation of historical, 118 The Crisis, 9 Attucks, Crispus, 73 Chalmers, James, 40 Fort West Point, 11, 12 Lee, Arthur, 9 Passamaquoddy Indians, 87 Thomas Jefferson Memorial, 117 Cherokee Indians, 9, 84, 85-86 France, alliance with, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Lee, Henry “Light Horse Harry,” 11 peace process, 13, 14, 70 Thomas Stone National Historic Site, 80 Bache, Sarah, 89 Chesapeake Bay, 10, 13, 68 44, 60, 61, 68 Lee, Richard Henry, 8, 41, 43 Pennsylvania, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 18, 19, 78, Thomson, Charles, 37 Bahamas, 8 civil rights, 24, 98-102, 109 Franklin, Benjamin, 9, 9, 14, 33, 61, 89 Liberty Bell, 19, 22-23, 22 82, 83 Tories, 11, 12, 13, 83 Barras, Comte de, 67 Clark, George Rogers, 11, 14, 63, 86-87 Franklin, William Temple, 14 Lincoln, Abraham, 46, 46 Penobscot Indians, 87 Townshend Revenue Acts, 6, 7, 29-31 Battle of Bennington, 60 Clarke, Elijah, 12 Frazier, Mary, 91 Lincoln, Benjamin, 69 People’s March, 24 treason, 11, 12 Battle of Brandywine, 10 Clinton, Sir Henry, 12, 61, 63-64, 68 Frederick Law Olmstead National Historic Lincoln Memorial, 15, 46 Philadelphia, 7, 9, 10, 11, 37, 50, 61, 78-79 Treaty of Paris, 6, 14, 14, 70, 70-71 Battle of Breed’s Hill, 7, 53, 54-55 Coercive Acts, 7, 33, 36-38 Site, 118 Ludwig, Mary, 91 Phillips, William, 68 Trenton, 9 Battle of Bunker Hill, 7, 17, 53, 54-55 Cold War, 115 free blacks, 7, 14, 78, 79 Pickens, Andrew, 64, 67 Tuscarora Indians, 87 Battle of Camden, 12, 59, 64 Common Sense, 8, 8, 40, 40, 92 freedom, icons of, 19-25 Maine, 7, 11, 87 Plain Truth, 40 Battle of Concord, 7, 52 Concord, 52-53 French and Indian War, 6 maps, 6, 13, 69 Prescott, William, 17 U.S. Constitution, 103, 103, 114-115 Battle of Cowpens, 13, 66 Connecticut, 74-75 French Revolution, 112 Madison, James, 71 President’s Mansion, 50 Battle of Crown Point, 7 Constitution, U.S., 103, 103, 114-115 Marbury v. Madison, 107 Proclamation of 1763, 6 Valley Forge, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 23, 61-62, Battle of Eutaw Springs 67 constitutionalism, 103-108, 116 Gage, Margaret Temple, 92 Marion, Francis, 12, 64 Prohibitory Act, 39, 41 65 Battle of Freeman’s Farm, 10 Continental Army, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Gage, Thomas, 36, 51-53, 56, 92 Marshall, John, 107, 107 Valley Forge National Historical Park, 10 Battle of Germantown, 10, 10 56-68, 83 Gates, Horatio, 10, 59, 59, 60, 64 Martin Luther King, Jr. Birth Home, 100 Quartering Act, 36 Vergennes, Comte de, 61 Battle of Guilford Courthouse, 13 Continental Congress, 7, 10, 14, 37-39, 41 Georgia, 9, 11, 13, 63 Maryland, 8, 10, 14, 71 Vermont, 10, 79, 82 Battle of Harlem Heights, 9 45, 51 Germain, Lord George 58-59 Massachusetts Government Act, 36 Rawdon, Lord, 67 Vietnam War, 25 Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, 13 Continental Marines, 7, 8 Grant, Ulysses S., 114 Massachusetts, 7, 74, 82, 87 representative government, 5 Virginia, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 41, 78, 79 Battle of Kings Mountain, 12, 64 Continental Navy, 7, 8, 13 Grasse, Comte de, 68, 68 Mattachine Society, 109 Rhode Island, 11, 12 voting rights, 94-95 Battle of Lexington, 7 Corbin, Margaret, 91 Graves, Thomas 68 McCauley, Mary Hayes, 91 Riedesel, Frederika von, 59 Battle of Long Island, 8 Cornwallis, Lord Charles, 12, 13, 13, 64, 67 Greene, Nathanael, 12, 13, 67-68, 67 memorialization, 19-25 Rochambeau, Comte de, 13, 68, 68-69 Warren, Mercy Otis, 90, 91 Battle of Monmouth, 10, 11, 61, 91 68, 67, 68 military tactics, 49, 51-71 Russian Revolution, 114-115, 114 Washington, George, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, 8, 63, 63 Craft, Thomas, 20 Hale, Nathan, 9 Minute Man, 7, 18, 19, 19 14, 15, 18, 36, 48, 49-51, 56-59, 56, 61­ Battle of Paoli, 10 Cunne Shote, 84-85 Hessian troops, 8, 9, 10 Minute Man National Historical Park, 18, St. Leger, Barry, 59-60 62, 70-71, 71, 77, 80 Battle of Princeton, 9, 9 Hook, Paulus, 11 47, 97 Salem Maritime National Historic Site, 119 Washington, Martha, 88-89 Battle of Quebec, 7, 57 Darragh, Lydia, 91 Howe, Lord Richard, 57 Mohawk Indians, 10, 82-83 Salomon, Haym, 13 Washington Monument, 15, 125 Battle of Saratoga, First, 9, 10, 60-61, 60-61 Davies, William, 12 Howe, Sir William, 8, 9, 56-59, 58, 61 Molly Pitcher, 91 Saratoga, 59-61, 59-61 Wayne, Anthony, 10, 11, 13 Battle of Saratoga, Second, 9, 10, 60-61, Deane, Silas, 8, 9 Hudson River, 9, 11, 57, 59-60, 60 Montgomery, Richard, 8, 57, 57 self-government, 37-39 westward expansion, 6, 14 60-61 Declaration of Independence, 8, 20, 42-43, Hutchinson, Thomas, 41, 90 Morgan, Daniel, 10, 13, 67 Selma-to-Montgomery March, 98-99 Wheatley, Phillis, 46, 46 Battle of Springfield, 12 44-45, 44-45, 51 Morris, Robert, 13 Seven Year’s War, 6 Wilson, James, 71, 104-105 Battle of the Chesapeake, 68 Delaware River crossing, 9 icons, 19-25, 53 Morristown, 9, 11 Shawnee Indians, 14, 85-87 Wilson, Woodrow, 114 Battle of the Virginia Capes, 13 Dickinson, John, 30-31, 30, 39 Illinois, 11 Morristown National Historical Park, 12 Siege of Savannah, 11 winter camps, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18 Battle of Valcour Island, 9 diplomacy, 8, 9, 10 independence, 40-45 Murder Act, 36 Six Nations, 82-83, 85 women during the American Revolution, Battle of Waxhaws, 12 Dorchester Heights, 8 Independence Hall, 16, 23,-25, 42-43, 45, mutiny, 13 slavery, 7, 10, 14, 22-23, 72, 74-82, 74 88-92 Battle of White Plains, 9 Dragging Canoe, 85-86 96, 116 Sons of Liberty, 37 women’s rights, 8, 14 battle, last, 14 Dulany, Daniel, 28 Indiana, 11, 86 Netherlands, alliance with, 13 South Carolina, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 45, 63 Berlin Wall, 102 Dunmore, Lord John Murray, 7, 74-75, 75, 78 individual rights, 14 New Hampshire, 8, 52 64, 75 Yorktown, 13, 13, 68, 68, 69, 77, 79 Black Regiment of Guides and Pioneers, 75 Iroquois Indians, 11, 14, 63, 82, 83 New Jersey, 9, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 13, 79 Soviet Union, 115 Bland, Richard, 28 E Pluribus Unum, 117 New York, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 79, Spain, alliance with, 11, 12, 13, 63 Bolivar, Simon, 112 encampments, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Jay, John, 11, 14 83, 87 spies and spying, 9, 91, 92 Boone, Daniel, 13, 62-63, 86 equality, 5, 108-111 Jefferson, Thomas, 8, 20-21, 44, 44, 105 Ninety Six, 67 Stamp Act and Stamp Tax, 6, 26-29, 26, 27, Boston, 7, 7, 8, 20, 32, 34-35, 51, 53, 73 106, 117 North Bridge, 47, 52, 97 29, 30, 37 Boston Massacre, 7, 7, 32, 73 Falmouth, 7 Jones, John Paul, 11 North Carolina, 8, 9, 12, 13, 36, 63, 63, 87, Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 110 Boston Port Act, 36 Federal Hall 18 judicial review, 106-107 88 Statue of Liberty, 121

126 127 Image Sources

Cover, Title Page, Contents, 4 Mike Ticcino, Museum of Philadelphia; 57 Yale University MJTiccinoImages.com; 6 National Park Art Gallery; 58 Anne S. K. Brown Military Service; 7 Boston Athenæum; 7 West Collection, Brown University Library; Chester University of Pennsylvania; 59 © The Frick Collection, New York; 8 Guilford Courthouse National Military 59 Independence National Historical Park; Park; 8 Massachusetts Historical Society; 60 Saratoga National Historical Park; 9 Independence National Historical Park; 61 Dover Publications, Inc.; 62 Independence 9 Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia; National Historical Park; 63 Moores Creek 10 Valley Forge National Historical Park; National Battlefield; 65 Valley Forge 10 The American Revolution Center; National Historical Park; 66 The Collection 10 Guilford Courthouse National Military of the State of South Carolina; Park; 11 Independence National Historical 67 Independence National Historical Park; Park; 12 Morristown National Historical 67 National Portrait Gallery, London; Park; 13 National Portrait Gallery, London; 68 Independence National Historical Park; 13 Library of Congress; 14 Winterthur 69 Valley Forge National Historical Park; Museum; 15 National Park Service; 69 Independence National Historical Park; 16 Independence National Historical Park; 69 Architect of the Capital; 70 National 17 Boston National Historical Park; Archives and Records Administration; 17 Valley Forge National Historical Park; 71 Architect of the Capital; 72 American 18 Federal Hall National Memorial; Antiquarian Society; 73 National Archives 18 Valley Forge National Historical Park; and Records Administration; 19 Minute Man National Historical Park; 73 Encyclopædia Britannica Online; 20 Boston National Historical Park; 74 Maryland Historical Society; 21 Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.; 75 Scottish National Portrait Gallery; 22 Independence National Historical Park; 76-77 Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, 22 Library Company of Philadelphia; Brown University Library; 79 Virginia 23 Valley Forge National Historical Park; Historical Society; 80 Thomas Stone 23 Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia; National Historic Site; 81 Williams Center 24-25 Temple University Libraries, Urban for the Arts, Lafayette College, Easton, Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 26 Pennsylvania; 82 Independence National Dover Publications, Inc.; 27 Boston Public Historical Park; 84 Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Library; 27 The Colonial Williamsburg Oklahoma; 88 Massachusetts Historical Foundation; 28 The Royal Collection Society; 89 Mount Vernon Ladies’ © 2007, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; Association; 90 Photograph © 2008 29 Valley Forge National Historical Park; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of 30 The New York Historical Society; Winslow Warren; 91 Fraunces Tavern ® 30 Independence National Historical Park; Museum/Sons of the Revolution in the 32 Massachusetts Historical Society; State of New York, Inc.; 92 The Putnam 32 Boston Athenæum; 33-35 Library of Foundation, Timken Museum of Art, Congress 33 Library of Congress; 34-35 San Diego; 96 Independence National Hulton Archive, Getty Images; 36 National Historical Park; 97 Minute Man National Portrait Gallery, London; 36 The North Historical Park; 98-100 Library of Congress; Carolina State Archives; 37 Dover 102 Air Power Development Center, Publications, Inc.; 38 The New York Public Australia; 102 Istock Images, 103 National Library; 39 The Royal Collection © 2007, Archives and Records Administration; 107 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; 40 Guilford Independence National Historical Park; 109 Courthouse National Military Park; Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, 40 Chicago History Museum; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 110 Library of 41 Massachusetts Historical Society; Congress; 112 The Granger Collection, Ltd.; 42-45 Independence National Historical 114 Encyclopædia Britannica Online; Park; 44-45 National Archives and Records 114-115 National Archives and Records Administration; 46 Library of Congress; Administration; 116 Independence National 46 National Park Service; 47 Minute Man Historical Park; 117 National Park Service; National Historical Park; 48 The Colonial 118 Frederick Law Olmstead National Williamsburg Foundation, Gift of Mr. John D. Historic Site; 119 Salem Maritime National Rockefeller, Jr.; 50 Library Company of Historic Site; 121 Statue of Liberty National Philadelphia; 52-53 Concord Museum, Monument; 122 Fort Necessity National Concord, Massachusetts; 54-55 Yale Battlefield; 124 Castillo de San Marcos University Art Gallery; 56 Atwater Kent National Monument; 125 National Park Service. 128