On the Glorious Cause

As a disclaimer, I did not read 2007’s second edition, but the original version published in 1982. This is a good, although dated, examination of the American Revolution from a political and, to lesser extent, economic angle. Moreover, it’s filled with detail, which I love. That said, it fails to include the first stirrings of social and cultural history, which were just beginning to stir, as well as gender history.

This book is at its best in the first third, when Middlekauff examines both London’s America policy and its receptions in the United States. The Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, non-importation, the Boston Massacre, etc. all play out here. Great stuff, although mostly placed at the level of high politics with some dives into the mythology of the Sons of Liberty, etc. Middlekauff spends a lot of time taking Bernard Bailyn seriously when he argues that Americans really did believe that they weren’t fighting against Britain, but against nefarious figures that sought to corrupt the British constitution. As a result, the first opposition was due to the question of if parliament had the right to levy internal taxes. In the mid-1760s, virtually all British subjects in the Americas believed that parliament had the right to levy tariffs and other taxes on Atlantic trade, but they did not believe that parliament had the right to levy taxes on American goods. However, this transformed over time, until British subjects in North America imposed British external taxes as well. Moreover, the idea that nefarious figures were corrupting the British constitution—initially the King’s cabinet—spread to include the parliament and the king himself. By 1774, there was no way around Revolution and, by 1776, it’s hard to argue that the British had any chance of appease colonists.

The second chunk of the book, making up around half of the total text, is about the Revolutionary War. Some of the stuff here was interesting—I was particularly interested in the campaigns in upstate New York, but none of this is really new. More important, I’d argue that the war itself was not really revolutionary. The last 80 pages or so deal with the entire period from the signing of the Treaty of Paris to the ratification of the United States Constitution. This is a serious oversight, in my view, Confederal America and the debates over the Constitution are some of the most interesting aspects of the American Revolution, and here they’re barely touched upon. It’s an enormous shame. Additionally, civilian life and the role of women in the years from 1774-83 receive less than a chapter. African Americans get a few paragraphs, while Native Americans receive a line telling us that the Iroquois generally sided with the British. Such treatment is untenable, given that African Americans made up the majority of the population of the Carolinas, for instance, women made up nearly half of colonial North America’s population, and American Indians were constantly engaging with British subjects.

That said, I did read the 1982 version, and I know that the 2007 edition is 100 pages longer. I hope that Middlekauff has brought about a more continental view of the American Revolution, as has been especially prominent since the 1990s, while abandoning the Albion’s Seed narrative. When I make this case, I promise that I’m not just being a “social justice warrior”—the new material gives us much better scope on colonial America and the Revolution, and can’t really be ignored any longer. Nevertheless, I did appreciate that Middlekauff shies away from analysis of the Founding Fathers and chooses to instead look more closely at the big picture.