Unknown American Revolution

Gary B. Nash professes History at UCLA, and has published many works on class, race and minorities in America. This latest work comes to me highly recommended by my colleague, Burt Alpert. I endorse his recommendation, and strongly recommend this book.

Everyone concerned about what is happening in America today should read this book.

Prof. Nash has given us an easily readable history of what they didn't teach in High School, or even at most Universities. I learned a great deal from this work, which definitely changed my perspective on the American Revolutionary period.

The standard American History glorifies (godifies?) those well known gentlemen, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, etc. Even I came to regard them as the Founding Fathers. The national mythology is ubiquitous and seductive. Prof. Nash explodes the myth, painting those leading gentlemen as emulating the English gentry or, even, the Aristocracy. Their quarrel with England was their lack of proper recognition (as they saw it) by King and mother country. In addition to their aspirations for nobility, their desire to be the ruling class, those who owned the land and ran the businesses - often enough the same men - were exasperated by the demands of King and Parliament for more (or any) taxes to support the colonial regime. Thus we were taught from an early age that the American Revolution was all about "no taxation without representation."

Prof. Nash exposes the shabby hollowness of that American theology. In fact, the (misnamed) Revolutionary War was precipitated by a small bourgeoisie who were at odds with the British colonial Administration for two reasons: (1) the eminent colonials wanted to appoint themselves rulers of the colonies and (2) they wanted to decide what taxes would be paid by which colonials. Our Founding Fathers resented the King's appointing all the colonial officials, including Governors, Judges and other Commissioners. They were furious that the King's officials could and did simply veto, ignore or overturn decisions of locally elected (or selected) officials and legislatures. They resisted paying taxes imposed on them from afar. All of this was encapsulated in the slogan, "no taxation without representation." But, after British rule was finally thrown off, the same Founding Fathers imposed nearly the same British system on their countrymen, and increased taxes to boot. Of course, it was the classes below those founding gentry who actually lost the franchise and paid more taxes as a result of the American Revolution.

What Prof. Nash shows is that the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, not a revolt of the masses against aristocracy, monarchy or tyranny. In that respect, the American Revolution was fundamentally different from the French Revolution. The American Revolution did not radically change the system of government in the colonies. What was accomplished was the transfer of power from a British Administration to a native-born American Administration. The values and orientation of the new American rulers were not greatly different from their British predecessors. Democratic structures and inclinations expressed during the Revolutionary War were repressed and terminated by the new rulers, often without the consent of the people. For example, the so-called "checks and balances" was not an original American idea, but an evolution, or merely an explanation, of the existing English system.

During the Revolutionary War, "radicals" had introduced such ideas as universal suffrage, women's equality and rights, abolition of slavery, limitations on wealth, property and income and other egalitarian measures. Radicals believed in local control and introduced the unicameral legislature. They abolished the executive veto, and insisted upon election of judges and military officers. The radicals believed that all people were born equal and had substantially equal abilities. Unfortunately, the leading figures of the American Revolution, particularly John Adams, did not hold any of those truths to be self-evident (and said so in writing). The 1787 Constitution reflects the victory of Conservatives over the Radicals in every institution. The egalitarian democracy which inspired the soldiers of the Revolution and ordinary people was strangled to death in the decades following the 1783 Treaty of Paris by the Founding Fathers.

Except for the near miracle of Yorktown in 1781, the cause of the American Founding Fathers was otherwise lost. The British got tired of spending millions to suppress the colonials. The Brits eventually understood that the American war was really a continuation of the war with France, an understanding insisted upon by the French. (French foreign policy regarding Great Britain didn't change, despite the French Revolution.) The French intervention turned the Revolutionay War into a costly stalemate for the British. While the American gentry and bourgeoisie were declared the winners, they actually had done little to gain their prize, except negotiate with European powers under the auspices of the French.

The Revolutionary War was primarily fought by the poorest people, who were treated very badly. Congress generally avoided appropriating money to pay for food, clothes and weapons for the military, despite repeated requests. Near the end of the Revolutionary War, it took mutinies and even fragging (to use a Vietnam War term) to convince the States and Congress to do something for the soldiers. Soldiers' families were reduced to utmost poverty and begging, and were not often assisted in any way. Meanwhile, the wealthy, business and plantation owners, and the influential avoided any service in the military, even to the point of ignoring draft orders. The upper classes were either Tories, sympathetic to Tories or, if Patriots, unwilling to fight. On the other hand, the poorest were made to fight, and sometimes executed if they did not.

Suffering even more than poor whites, black people were confronted with impossible choices. They started the Revolutionary War as slaves, and most of them ended the Revolutionary War as slaves or dead. In between, the British offered freedom to those slaves who escaped their Patriot masters, fled to British lines and enlisted in the British expeditionary forces. Abraham Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation freeing Confederate slaves was just a liberalization of that British policy. Slaves owned by Patriot masters were not freed; not before, during or after the Revolution. In fact, after the Revolution, the various American governments did their utmost to help Patriot masters recover slaves who had fled. Slaves held by Tory masters were not freed by either the Patriots or the British. In fact, the American governments often sold slaves at auction that had been owned by expropriated or liquidated Tory masters. After the war, the British jilted most of their promises to the former slaves, and sent them to even worse conditions of slavery in the Caribbean. Despite the fact that 2/3 of runaway slaves died from disease and abuse during the Revolution, more than 1/3 of all slaves ran away. Prof. Nash documents that a large proportion of slaves definitely preferred to take their chances rather than remain as they were. Amazingly, in Court proceedings instituted by the British and American governments designed to return black people to their putative owners, no former slaves voluntarily returned to slavery, despite claims of the owners that their slaves wanted to be enslaved. Apparently, white slave owners believed their slaves wanted to be their property, or so they said, and were often astounded by testimony to the contrary.

In the end, a very small fraction of the enslaved African-Americans gained their freedom, either in the northern American States, Canada, Great Britain or Africa. They did not gain their freedom in the South. Georgia and South Carolina refused to join the new Union, if slavery were abolished. The other Confederate States (south of the Mason-Dixon line) were more comfortable with slavery than not. Despite the accomplishments of the few black people who were freed, the common perception among white people was that black people were intellectually inferior to whites. Thus, it was not inhumane to enslave blacks, because they needed the structure and direction whites could provide.

Prof. Nash notes that, despite white beliefs about black people, throughout the Revolutionary War slave owners were more worried about a slave rebellion than fighting the British. Slave owners sometimes sent their slaves to fight in the Continental Army, but seldom joined the fighting themselves. While slave owners were sometimes nominal Patriots, as the American government did not propose freeing their slaves, they were as easily Tories when the British promised likewise. The Southern slaveocracy was far more concerned about property than liberty.