Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote
The USA is a miracle, and the revolution that made it possible could easily have gone the wrong way. These were a couple of thoughts I had after watching “The American Revolution,” on PBS.
Instead of the tidy history I learned in school, the revolution was a sprawling and complex series of events.
What the creators want us to know is that the United States was born of violence and division. And it was as much a civil war as a revolution because a great many colonists were loyal to Britain. They thought rebellion was insanity.
Britain was an empire with a standing army of thousands and a navy of 400 vessels. It traded worldwide. But after racking up debt in a global war, the king levied taxes on American colonies.
We know about the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Colonists saw themselves as good British subjects and resented this treatment by the motherland. After radicals poured tea into the harbor, England’s ham-handed responses only inflamed resistance.
Still, it would be years before the word “independence” was heard. But the bitter, often violent conflict between loyalists and Patriots, as the rebels called themselves, was a current running throughout the bloody eight-year war.
In 1774 the colonies took a step toward unity when they formed the Continental Congress, but its members tried harder to protect their own interests than to work together.
I was proud to learn that newspapers massaged public opinion toward independence. Samuel Adams, a failed businessman but successful politician, wrote frequent diatribes “reminding colonists of their grievances.” Thomas Paine (“These are the times that try men’s souls”) added his pen in 1776. They and others spread revolutionary ideas across the colonies. When the original states later wrote their constitutions, they included freedom of the press and the rule of law.
War exploded in April 1775 with the famous Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and battles at Lexington and Concord, when black and white Patriots and their Indian allies fought the British. In June the Continental Congress appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
In the pantheon of Patriots portrayed in the documentary, Washington is the most striking. The film introduces us to the man behind “I cannot tell a lie.” He was one of the richest men in America and a natural leader. He fought alongside the British in the Seven Years’ War 16 years earlier. At 6’3”, he towered over most men (the average male was 5’7”), had a martial bearing, and was an excellent horseman.
Washington’s job was to turn undisciplined local militias, frontiersmen, immigrants, felons and a lot of boys into a functioning army. A slave owner, he didn’t want black soldiers, but a persistent shortage of troops helped change his mind, and 5,000 black men would serve.
Throughout the war Washington’s army was small, inexperienced and often unfed, unclothed and unpaid. Desertions were rife, and mutinies flared up. Soldiers left at the end of their enlistment, even when he begged them to stay.
When smallpox struck his troops, Washington had his men inoculated, even though it meant they would be out of service for several weeks. It was one of his most important decisions.
Against all odds, Washington had some stunning victories, along with devastating defeats. He showed personal bravery, riding along the front lines in a hail of gunfire to encourage his men. He wasn’t a military genius, said historians, but he was clever and bold. He believed providence favored them.
Both Washington and Congress knew the Patriots couldn’t win the war alone, and when France joined the fray in 1778, followed by Spain in 1779, the Americans’ fortunes turned. Without them, we’d be speaking with an English accent.
In 1783 Washington resigned his commission and rode home to Mt. Vernon. Chosen as president, he served his term and stepped aside, establishing the nation’s peaceful transfer of power.
The film also tells us that the conflict was terrible for Native Americans. Tribes had to decide which side might protect their interests and mostly chose the British. Washington promised soldiers that if they stayed to the war’s end they would get 100 acres of Indian land. This was news to the tribes. Washington’s vision of America was continental, the first hint at the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that pushed tribes from their lands.
Ultimately, our revolution and Constitution became the templates for others around the world. Our newborn democracy limped forward, and despite predictions that it would fail, the great experiment continues to its troubled present.
Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.
