The Glorious Cause, page 84
Biographies which sketch in the “times” of the subjects are often informative. J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman and Sir Robert Walpole: The King’s Minister (Boston, 1956, 1961) are superb. See also Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975) and Ross J. S. Hoffman, The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, 1730–1782 (New York, 1973). The biographies cited in my footnotes are particularly helpful, especially those by Basil Williams (Pitt) and John Brooke (George III).
Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1953), and three books by Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 1967), The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), and The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), offer penetrating analyses of the ideological basis of American resistance to British measures before independence.
The political cast of that resistance is thoroughly reconstructed in Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), and in such studies of states as Robert J. Taylor, Western Massachusetts in the Revolution (Providence, R.I., 1954), Charles A. Barker, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland (New Haven, Conn., 1940), Jere R. Daniell, Experiment in Republicanism: New Hampshire Politics and the American Revolution, 1741–1794 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), Kenneth Coleman, The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763–1789 (Athens, Ga., 1958), W. W. Abbot, The Royal Governors of Georgia, 1754–1775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), David S. Lovejoy, Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution, 1760–1776 (Providence, R. I., 1958) Ronald Hoffman, A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland (Baltimore, 1973), Oscar Zeichner, Connecticut’s Years of Controversy, 1750–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1949), Bernard Mason, The Road to Independence: The Revolutionary Movement in New York, 1773–1777 (Lexington, Ky., 1966), Larry R. Gerlach, Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J., 1976), Richard M. Jellison, ed., Society, Freedom, and Conscience: The Coming of the Revolution in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York (New York, 1976).
A brilliant essay by Perry Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” in Nature’s Nation (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), provides a valuable starting point for studying the relationship of religion to the Revolution. Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1966) is suggestive, as are Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven, Conn., 1962), Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976), Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968), James West Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven, Conn., 1977), Frederick V. Mills, Sr., Bishops by Ballot: An Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution (New York, 1978), Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York, 1962), and Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament (New York, 1977).
Other studies which aid in understanding the coming of the Revolution are Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776 (New York, 1955), Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible; Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), Jack Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963), Charles S. Olton, Artisans for Independence; Philadelphia Mechanics and the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y., 1975), Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics: The Relationship between Parties in England and Colonial America (Oxford, 1973), Roger J. Champagne, Alexander McDougall and the American Revolution in New York (Schenectady, N.Y., 1975), Aubrey C. Land, The Dulanys of Maryland (Baltimore, 1955), Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain 1765–1776 (New York, 1972), J. R. Pole, Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (London, 1966), Michael Kammen, A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), David Ammerman, In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (Charlottesville, Va., 1974), Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
The grand studies of Douglas Southall Freeman, Christopher Ward, Piers Mackesy, John Richard Alden, William B. Willcox, Franklin B. and Mary Wickwire, Ira D. Gruber, and John Shy are essential reading for an understanding of the war between Britain and America. Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (2 vols., New York, 1976) provides an excellent account of military operations. Mark M. Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Bicentennial ed., New York, 1976) is one of the most helpful works ever written about the war. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979) supplies thoughtful assessments of the officers and men of the army. See also Jonathan G. Rossie, The Politics of Command in the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y., 1975), Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774–1787 (Princeton, N.J., 1975), Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (New York, 1971), Eric Robson, The American Revolution in Its Political and Military Aspects (London, 1955), Theodore G. Thayer, Nathanael Greene: Strategist of the American Revolution (New York, 1960), and M. F. Treacy, Prelude to Yorktown, the Southern Campaigns of Nathanael Greene (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1963).
There is much about British military forces and British strategy in the books cited above. Two books on supply and logistics are especially important: R. Arthur Bowler, Logistics and the Failure of the British Army in America, 1775–1783 (Princeton, N.J., 1975) and Norman Baker, Government and Contractors: The British Treasury and War Supplies, 1775–1783 (London, 1971). On other aspects of the British effort in America see George A. Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents (New York, 1969), J.E.D. Binney, British Public Finance and Administration, 1774–1792 (Oxford, 1959), David Syrett, Shipping and the American War, 1775–1783 (London, 1970), and Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1964), an especially valuable book.
The key books on the diplomacy of the Revolution are Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1935, and Bloomington, Ind., 1957), Richard B. Morris’s brilliant The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (New York, 1965), Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J., 1961), and essays by James H. Hutson and William C. Stinchcombe in Lawrence S. Kaplan, ed., The American Revolution and “A Candid World” ([Kent, Ohio], 1977).
Society, the American economy, and politics during and immediately after the war are tangled subjects. Several books by Merrill Jensen offer suggestive starting places, though they must be read with care (and skepticism): The Articles of Confederation (Madison, Wis., 1940; paperback ed., 1959); The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781–1789 (New York, 1950); The American Revolution within America (New York, 1974). Readers of Jensen’s work on the “critical period,” a phrase John Fiske applied to the 1780s, will also find Edmund S. Morgan’s “Conflict and Consensus,” chapter 6 in The Challenge of the American Revolution (New York, 1976), suggestive. Jackson Turner Main has also contributed several valuable books on the internal revolution—The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, N.J., 1965), and Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973). Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York, 1979) is also valuable.
For thoughtful appraisals of women in the Revolution, see Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston and Toronto, 1980) and Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980); for Indians, Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y., 1972) and James H. O’Donnell III, Southern Indians in the American Revolution (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973); for blacks, Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y.,1977), and Duncan J. Macleod, Slavery, Race and the American Revolution (Cambridge and New York, 1974).
Questions concerning law entered almost every aspect of revolutionary development. James H. Kettner’s The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978) is a superb study. See also Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), John Phillip Reid’s In a Defiant Stance (University Park, Pa., 1977) and his In Defiance of the Law (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981).
On matters relating to constitutionalism in the 1780s, Forrest McDonald, We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago, 1958) is essential. Although they provide different perspectives, so are the following: E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse; A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969). There is no substitute for reading The Federalist, but in undertaking that enjoyable task, the essays of Douglass Adair, in Trevor Colbourne, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers (New York, 1974), are helpful, and Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist (New York, 1981) is stimulating and perceptive.
Bibliographical Note 1982–2004
Since the publication of this book in 1982, the number of new books and articles on almost every aspect of the Revolution has reached flood stage. The essay that follows is inevitably incomplete. It begins with studies that have implications for the entire history of the revolutionary period and then follows a rough chronology of the Revolution, with special attention to major problems and themes. Here and there I have mentioned a book that I should have included in the first edition; there are too many books in that category to list them all.
General Studies and Essays: Edmund S. Morgan’s searching Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988) offers many insights and original perspectives on a subject of primary importance in the history of the Revolution. Even broader in range are Bernard Bailyn’s splendid essays in To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (New York, 2003). Bailyn’s Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence (New York, 1990) is equally suggestive. For a fresh perspective on the “radical” side of the changes evoked by the revolutionary movement see Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), a book that should be read in conjunction with Wood’s splendid Creation of the American Republic (see above in the original bibliographical note). Though its scope is not as great as the books cited above, Theodore Draper’s A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (New York, 1996) is valuable, as is John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the American Revolution (New York, 2000).
For a sweeping comparative study of eighteenth-century revolutions, see R. R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 (2 vols., Princeton, N.J., 1959, 1964). Though each volume in the series edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, Perspectives on the American Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., 1981–) has its own focus, e.g., diplomacy, slavery, military history, Southern backcountry, the making of peace, women, the economy, religion, and constitutionalism, taken together they provide a broad survey of revolutionary problems. Jack P. Greene, Interpreting Early America: Historiographical Essays (Charlottesville, Va., 1996) focuses on historiographical questions concerning the English colonies and the Revolution and also includes much of importance on events themselves. Other collections of essays of value include P. J. Marshall, The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998) and Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1991).
English Background: Two splendid books by Paul Langford tell much about politics and society, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989) and Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1994). For the fiscal-military state, John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990) is extraordinarily helpful. For a fresh and perceptive account of British merchants and the Atlantic community, see David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995). P. J. Marshall’s volume on the empire, cited above, contains much on Britain itself. See also Elijah H. Gould’s excellent The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), and Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1985). Linda Colley’s Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707– 1837 (New Haven,Conn., 1992) is a valuable study of British national identity. John Brewer’s The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago, Ill., 1997) ranges widely over aspects of culture. Among the best of recent biographies of British leaders, these stand out: Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford, 1984); N.A.M. Rodger, The Insatiable Earl: A Life of John Montagu 4th Earl of Sandwich (London, 1993), and Peter D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty (Oxford, 1996).
The Revolutionary Movement 1763–1776: This has been a much-worked subject. Among the most useful studies bearing on aspects of the period are John L. Bullion, A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act, 1763–1765 (Columbia, Mo.,1982); two books by Peter D. G. Thomas, The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the American Revolution, 1767–1773 (Oxford, 1987) and Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776 (Oxford, 1991); Malcolm Freiberg, Prelude to Purgatory: Thomas Hutchinson in Provincial Massachusetts Politics, 1760–1770 (New York, 1990); Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore, Md., 1981); John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, Va., 1988); Ann Fairfax Withington, Toward a More Perfect Union: Virtue and the Formation of American Republics (Oxford, 1991); the early chapters in Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987); Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985); William Pencak, War and Politics in Provincial Massachusetts (Boston, 1981); David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (Oxford, 1994); Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997) which should be read with Carl Becker’s Declaration of Independence (1922); Jerrilyn Greene Marston, King and Congress: The Transfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774–1776 (Princeton, N.J. 1987).
For British supporters of the Revolution, see John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769–1782 (Kingston and Montreal, Canada, 1987), and, a broader study, James Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, Ga., 1986).
Biographies of Revolutionaries: The leaders of the Revolution can be studied in a large number of books, among them: Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn., 2002), a splendid study; H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000); Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York 2003); Robert Middlekauff, Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies (Berkeley, Calif., 1996); Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, N. Y., 1984); Paul Longmore, The Invention of George Washington (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York, 1996); Don Higginbotham, ed., George Washington Reconsidered (Charlottesville, Va., 2001); essays by a number of historians; and two excellent books by John Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988) and Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York, 2000). John Adams is ably treated in the book mentioned immediately above and in Ferling’s John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992). See also David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), a beautifully written narrative on the grand scale, and Joseph Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (New York 1993), a little gem. See also Ellis’s Founding Brothers (New York, 2001) and his American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1997), a stimulating, yet unsatisfactory appraisal. Jefferson studies abound; among the best of specialized studies is Herbert E. Sloan’s Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (New York, 1995); Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), is a collection of valuable essays.
