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The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America

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Lemuel Haynes, James Forten, Arthur Plumb Martin, Salem Poor, Thomas Young, Rezin Hammond, James Cannon, George Bryan, Daniel Roberdeau, Prince Hall, David Rittenhouse ...

Who? Revolutionary patriots, some of the high officers in the Continental Army, every one of whom might as easily be revered as a Founding Father as the wealthy silvermaker Paul Revere, whose role would be totally forgotten but for Longfellow's poem. Go look in the indices of general histories of the Revolution, the sort used as school texts; if any of them are listed, I'll gulp with surprise. Run a search for them on Wikipedia; there you'll find brief articles on all of them except Prince Hall, but none of the articles attribute any `founding' role to them. Why are they so little celebrated? That's one of the themes of Gary B Nash's "The Unknown History of the American Revolution," that it was the work of a good many more ardent patriots than those who eventually signed either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of 1789.

Some of the eleven patriots listed above were too radical in their democratic aspirations for the wealthy gents who sought independence without upsetting the hierarchy. Some of them were backcountry farmers or propertyless urban artisans. Some of them were "freemen" -- former slaves -- whose understanding of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was so-selfishly focused on their own. Then there were the slaves, roughly 12% of the whole population of the thirteen colonies, the Indians both praying and preying, and WOMEN! In the patriarchal society of the 18th C, all these were `children', expected to pay due respect and obedience to their `betters' as humbly as childern to parents. Hence the title of this review, Founding Children. It's worth noting that the Lords of Trade and Parliament applied the same language of proper familial subordination to the colonies, explicitly calling them `selfish, ungrateful children.'

In an oft-quoted letter of 1818, John Adams, a firm believer in deference, especially to himself, wrote: ""The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people; a change in their religious sentiments and their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."" Historian Gary Nash would certainly agree. His first 150 pages, half the book, concentrate entirely on those `hearts and minds' of ordinary, mostly now nameless people who became radicalized and unruly enough to nudge their `betters' toward independence and social upheaval. Their goal was not an autonomous Britain in America, but rather a new kind of social contract. They were the first founders of the Sons of Liberty, the first to boycott and disrupt the colonial administrations -- especially the courts -- and they were the first to take up arms, as `regulators' and as rebellious militia, well before the Continental Congress authorized a regular army. Nash writes: ""For those in the lower echelons of colonial society, elementary rights and social justice, rather than the protection of property and constitutional liberties, were the promises of the revolution.""

The lowest echelons, of course, were slaves, former slaves, and the fairly large number of indigenous peoples who lived amid the colonists of Anglo-European heritage. Their participation in the Revolution was divided, rightfully contingent upon which side seemed most likely to share some of benefits of victory. Both the British and the Americans knew as much. Indians and people of African ancestry fought on both sides and their portions of the struggle were not insignificant. That's a pair of stories which Nash interpolates semi-chronologically in the `unknown' history of the Revolution.

""Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?"" wrote Adams to his old rival Thomas Jefferson in 1815. Ironically, among the most influential historians of the Revolution would be Adams's own grandson, who perceived the whole shebang from aloft, from an abiding sense that only the Great make History. In fact, nearly all the most influential historians of the 19th C perceived the Revolution from the perspective of Beacon Hill in Boston. It's taken a major revision of scholarship in recent decades to reveal what sort of motives drove people to be either rebels or loyalists in all the other states, from upper New York to Georgia, with the two most populous states - Pennsylvania and Virginia - experiencing altogether different Revolutions from Massachusetts. That's at the core of Nash's analysis, that there wasn't just one overarching Revolution but rather at least thirteen distinct Revolutions, one in each colonial society, and in most cases a welter of sub-Revolutions, community by community, class by class. And the success of the Big-Story Revolution was perilously contingent on the outcomes of all the more local ones.

In Virginia and in all the states south of Virginia, the paramount consideration of War and Independence was slavery, even though many of the rebel gentry rhetorically denounced the peculiar institution. In his seventh chapter, Nash writes: ""In one of the greatest ironies of the American Revolution, Virginians decided that maintaining their slave property was more important tha fighting the British for independence in the seventh year of the war. If necessary, they would make terms with the British, at least temporarily, rather than see themselves stripped of slaves."" But the bloodiest violence of the Revolution, which had taken place in the South, had always been internecine, colonists against colonists, most often the wealthy Tidewater planters against the slave-poor Piedmont small farmers, who were almost as `underrepresented' in the colonial legislatures as the Colonies were in Parliament. Land hunger -- the desire to seize Ohio Valley and other western lands from the Indians, either as homesteads or for speculation -- was also a stimulus to the desire for Independence.

In Pennsylvania and the other `middle' colonies, Nash reveals, "" the yeoman farmer of revolutionary lore, shouldering his weapon and bidding his family goodbye, was mostly a myth. Mostly landless, drawn from unskilled laborers or lower artisans... and overwhelmingly drawn in service bu bounties provided by those wanting to avoid Continental service ... the majority were foreign-born, and most of them had only recently arrived in North America. ... about 127,000 immigrants had poured into the colonies between 1760 and 1775 . Most hailed from Scotland, Ireland, and England, but about 20,000 came from Germany." At times, in fact, Washington's army barely spoke English. Much of the frontline fighting of the American Revolution was not between the settled Americans and the British, but rather Britons against the refugees from Britain, King George's Hessian mercenaries against German Pennsylvanians. Do I need to say that landless immigrants with minimal English probably had different aspirations for the country taht would emerge from the Revolution? But for John Adams, Robert Morris, the Lees of Virginia and other patriots of the `better' classes, they were all `children' who would need to be disciplined once the fighting ceased.

What Nash aims to express, above all, is that the Revolution wasn't the brainchild merely of a corps of brilliant elite 'founders' but rather a ferment of radicalism among people of many different economic situations and social classes, beginning from disaffections in various sites and generating its own local leadership first. Nash's own research on such popular unrest in rural New England in the decade before the 'shot heard round the world' gives the first half of his book considerable authority. If the book has an obvious flaw, it's that Nash tries to keep too many 'balls' in the air, to juggle accounts of quite disparate movements, especially in the second half of his book dealing with the years from 1774 to 1789 and later.

No single book, nor any single historian, can elaborate the whole history of the American Revolution, though Gordon Wood has come closer than most. Nash is completely candid and forthright in acknowledging that he is `supplementing' the history more than revising it, and certainly not replacing it. There's hardly a word in this long, thoroughly fact-bound book about the meetings of the Continental Congresses in Philadelphia. There's even less about the supposedly major battles. If you check the index, you'll find that Thomas Young is mentioned as often as Benjamin Franklin, and more often than all the Lees together. But this is an important book, a text chock full of information and insights that have been ignored far too widely and too long. What Nash reveals, though he makes no reference at all to current events, has the utmost relevance to the polarized politics of the USA today. Do you think you know who the Founding Fathers were, and what they intended with their Indpendence? Well, don't BELIEVE everything you THINK, not at least until you've digested Gary Nash's account of "the Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America."

The author writes in his Introduction "In this book the reader will find, I hope, an antidote for historical amnesia (xvi)." To do so, Nash says that his book aims at "Disinterring these long-forgotten figures from history's cemeteries (xvii)," so the reader will encounter those figures the middle and lower ranks of American society ... [that] remain anonymous (xvii-xviii)." But as much as it is touted as a "new" and "fresh" approach to the "untold" history of the American Revolution, I can only say that this is so much hype.

I was primed by Professor Nash's introductory claims to expect reading some new interpretation of well-known sources, or possibly some ground-breaking research into untapped primary source materials. Instead, I quickly realized that while many of the narratives on eighteenth century America were interesting, there was little that was "new" or "innovative," except his assessment that his interpretation was somehow "radical." In fact, I soon realized that I was familiar with most, if not all, of the people and events he described: so much for being "new."

A look at Nash's source citations will show he has actually done little or no actual "research." Instead, he has produced an analysis of old narrative histories, many of which have been around for decades, as well as some more recently published secondary accounts. Quotations, more often than not, are attributed to other historians, or if historical figures, are "quoted in" other secondary sources. This is how good undergraduate research papers are constructed, but as a published work, it must be described as "analysis," and not a "contribution to the body of historical knowledge." Furthermore, many of the older sources he quotes would otherwise be those of the sort he would criticize.

It reads as if it is written more for other academic historians, rather than to educate a reading public starving for historical narrative. Nash injects "political correctness" into his analysis at the expense of really understanding the era. For example, he never describe the Six Nations of Iroquois as an "Empire," as if only Europeans can be guilty of creating such polities; although they ceded Shawnee or Mingo land claimed by right of conquest to white settlers. In another example, he implies that the captivity of white children and their adoption into Indian societies was somewhat kindly. The murders of the rest of the captives' family or the sense of loss experienced by those surviving the raids are thus minimized. That some of those who refused repatriation may have suffered from an eighteenth century version of "Stockholm Syndrome" is not explored; while those who escaped or accepted repatriation and related not so pleasant experiences in their captivity narratives are ignored or marginalized.

In Chapter 5, "The Dual Revolution," Nash indicates a lack of knowledge or understanding about the military history of the American War for Independence in general, and the war on the frontier in particular. One clue is given in his description of the Wyoming Massacre of 1778, the "grisly story of Tory and Indian brutality," of which he concludes "Modern scholarship supports none of this (255)." Yet, even the Tory commander Major John Butler's report, available in the Sir Frederick Haldimand Papers in the Canadian Archives and British Museum, recorded that the Tory rangers and their Indian allies "took 227 scalps and only five prisoners."

Overall, Nash's account just plainly gets a lot of it wrong!

As long as one enjoys history in the slightest sense, they will like this book. Gary B. Nash aims to re-think history in this book, and he does it well. After using this to teach a class, I find that some people are put off by this "people based" approach saying it's too boring. However, for most people this is far from the case. Almost everyone in the class loved it, and the discussion was great!!

I'd suggest buying it if you like American history (or just history) OR human rights (and people's stories).

The American Revolution as it is tought in schools and in the standard histories is a clean and simple thing when compared to the messy politics we see now between the Republicans and Democrats.

in this book Mr. Nash points out that it wasn't nearly so simple. There were people with views from one extreme to the other. While we focus on the 'big names' in history, the war was fought by individuals who came to join the Continental Army. We tend to ignore the impact of the slave holding states that forced words into the Declaration of Independence that were to cause a massive war 'four score and seven' years later.

Mr. Nash presents, not a revisionists history, but a view more along the lines of 'the inside scoop.' There is little here that is truly new, but it is put together in a very interesting manner that makes the history of the American Revolution more understandable, more lifelike. These were real people struggling to make things happen, some suceeded, some didn't, just like the rest of life.

Gary B. Nash's purpose for the book is, "to capture the revolutionary involvement of all the component parts of some three million wildly varying people living east of the Mississippi River." (Nash, xxviii) Nash bemoans how the "great men" still "dominate the master narrative [of the American Revolution,]" (Nash, xv) and that we are struck with "historical amnesia," (Nash, xvi) because we forgot the stories of those outside of the "great men" clique. He states that we cannot capture the essence of the Revolution without paying close attention to the experiences of the many groups that made up colonial society. These groups not only include the poor farmers, artisans, and other laborers, but also of women, blacks (both free and slave), and of the AmerIndian population.

Nash illustrated the problems and plights of the lower order through their myriad of stories. To illustrate the importance of the lower classes of white society, he showed the importance of these individuals in their role as revolutionaries, which include their participation in riots against the various taxes implemented by the Parliament. He also shows the tensions between the seaboard inhabitants and their piedmont antithesis to the west which, in his estimation, helped to spur change all along the way. In the case of the inhabitants of what would become Vermont, he illuminated their fight against the landowners located primarily in New York City. Led by Ethan Allen, the "Green Mountain Boys," as they would become known as, fought to keep the land that they cultivated with their own hands - against the wishes and land deeds that the New York City landowners had for their property. (Nash, 110 - 114) He also showed how the piedmont inhabitants of the Carolinas had to struggle for their rights to live life as they saw fit as well. (Nash, 73 - 79) In the case of the "Green Mountain Boys," their struggle proved to be more successful than the struggle of the Carolina piedmont, whose insurrection was brutally suppressed by then colonial governor of North Carolina, William Tryon.

Nash also shows how this sector of the population became mobilized politically during the course of the revolution. In Nash's estimation, these people were spurred on by the rhetoric of equality in society, as championed by the Founding Fathers in the countless tracts and pamphlets that were produced during the revolutionary war era. In Pennsylvania, the 1776 state constitution was heralded by Nash as a true revolutionary document because of its unicameral legislature, its weak executive, and its attempt to limit an amassing of wealth within the state. He also praised the fact that artisans and lower sorts also played such a vital role in the forming of the new state constitution. (Nash, 271 - 286) In states where the constitution did adhere to these premises, Nash equated it with a betrayal of the will of the people, as evident by the problems Massachusetts had in ratifying their state constitution because of its more conservative outlook. (Nash, 302 - 304)

The talk of freedom and equality also spread, according to Nash, to the black population in the American colonies. These ideals not only spread to the free black portion of the population, but also to the thousands of enslaved blacks throughout the land. This spread of ideas to the black population, particularly the enslaved portion, troubled white leaders, according to Nash (Nash, 59) What was more troubling to the white slave owners was their perception that slave restlessness and even revolt was on the rise. (Nash, 37 - 39) What else was truly troubling to many slave holders was that the British actively recruited the slaves to fight against their masters - and all other rebels to the British Crown. (Nash, 157 - 164) Nash contributed much of the awareness of the enslaved to their plight the rise rising literature of freedom that the Founding Fathers were disseminating across the land. Nash believes that this rhetoric, and its implications, were inescapable to the slaves. (Nash, 64) He also showed us the aftermath of the revolution for those slaves who sided with the British; they were transported off either to Nova Scotia or to the Caribbean Islands where they were subjected to an even harsher form of slavery than on the mainland. (Nash, 426 - 427)

Women also were praised in this work, as Nash pointed out how crucial this sector of the population was throughout the course of the conflict. First, women were important to execute the boycotts that were prevalent in the preceding years of the revolution. Nash argued that without their co-operation in the boycotts, the measures would not have proved effective. This is because women had a great deal of involvement in the running of the household and much of the purchasing power was in their hands. If they did not adhere to the boycotts, the measure would have failed, in Nash's estimation. (Nash, 141 - 144) Nash also illustrated how the women of the revolution became active during the war, specifically in response to rising prices for necessities. Nash showed us the response of many women in the Boston area to Thomas Boylston, a merchant whose prices on goods rose as the war progressed. In response to these rising prices, women marched on Boylston's shop, and the shops of other merchants throughout the colonies, to procure the basic necessities for their families at what they deemed equitable prices. (Nash, 232 - 235)

The plight of the American Indians was also great as land speculators and land hungry colonists swarmed over the Appalachian Mountain range to claim and settle upon lands that were seen as belonging to various Indian nations. Nash showed us how the natives resisted this encroachment upon their lands through a myriad of tactics, from essentially engaging in bushwhacking warfare with the colonists who encroached upon their lands, (Nash, 253 - 255) to the fact that many Indian nations chose to align themselves with the British in their cause to suppress the rebellion. (Nash, 151 - 157) What was more alarming to Nash is the colonists' "genocidal" policies towards the native population. (Nash, 377 - 381)

Although it may not seem like it, there is an underlying premise to Nash's illustrations in the struggles of all of the aforementioned groups during the American Revolution. That premise with Nash, at first alluded to, and then by the end of the book, states bluntly is class warfare. There is, however, a very real problem in this Marxist outlook on American society during the era of the Revolution, specifically that the colonists did not view the class structure in the same light that we do today, or even as class was viewed in when Karl Marx wrote his tracts on such matters. As Gordon Wood pointed out in his work, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, "The social distinctions and economic deprivations that we today think of as the consequence of class divisions, business exploitation, or various isms - capitalism, racism, etc. - were in the eighteenth century usually thought to be caused by the abuses of government." (Wood, 5) Wood also pointed out that there were complexities and variations to American society, which fell along "local, regional, sectional, ethnic and class differences." These complexities made, "any generalization about Americans as a whole," quite difficult. (Wood, 6)

Wood further illuminated the difficulties of following such a class distinction as Nash proposed in his work. Wood stated in his review on Nash's work in the "New Republic Online":
Nash's evidence for popular resistance to all this class exploitation is the incidents of rural rioting and urban mobbing that took place in the decade or so leading up to the Revolution. This mobbing and rioting is exceedingly familiar to historians, who have produced a literature about it. Unfortunately, these phenomena do not support Nash's argument. Not only did the rural rioting have little or nothing to do with the Revolution, but the urban mobs, which were indeed directed at British authority, did not represent the class upheaval that Nash assumes. The rural riots all arose out of peculiar local circumstances, and were hardly expressions of some sort of coherent class warfare. (Wood, "New Republic Online Review)


Wood, in his review of Nash's work, went on to illustrate exactly what constituted the true dividing lines in American society when he stated:
But what of all the rhetoric about the laboring people contesting the aristocratic few that Nash draws on to make his case for class warfare? There was indeed a serious division in eighteenth-century American society that reverberated through the northern states over the succeeding decades, but it was not the one that Nash describes. Instead of being divided between a rich upper class and a poor working class, as Nash sees it, anachronistically anticipating a later nineteenth-century division between employers and employees, eighteenth-century American society was in fact still divided between a leisured gentry and the mass of artisans and other laborers who worked with their hands--many of them the businessmen of the future.

In Nash's work, he viewed many of the Revolutionaries as having ulterior motives for their proclamations of equality and freedom. Nash, I would argue, hinted toward the idea that the Founding Fathers only took part in the revolutionary movement to benefit themselves. Throughout the course of the book, Nash takes great care to "expose" the double standards of the Founding Fathers, making them seem as if they merely wanted to continue their "elitists" lifestyle at the expense of the commoners below. There is no bigger whipping boy for Nash than John Adams, who, according to Nash, was essentially a closeted monarchist who was afraid of the people. To be sure, Adams did have his reservations about the people, but it was more a fear of a "tyranny of the masses" than it was an outright fear that the people would displace the leaders of the new nation.

However, what is truly ironic is that Nash relied so heavily upon the writings of John Adams to illustrate many of his points. Not only did he rely on Adams' writings, but also the writings of many of the other Founding Fathers. Throughout the course of the book, when Nash referred to any of the writings of the Founding Fathers, I found myself wondering if Nash was cropping their words to support his case. It is my belief that this is something that seriously needs to be explored in greater depth than I can provide here. What is also ironic is that Nash makes little use of the narratives of those whose stories he claimed he wanted to tell. Outside of the use of Joseph Plumb Martin's narrative of his experiences as a soldier in the Continental Army during the war and the autobiography of Ethan Allen, he does not make extensive use of the diaries and letters of many people who lived through the war experience, both in the military and in the civilian sector. To be sure, there are many diaries out there from those below who can illuminate their thoughts throughout the era. Would their writings bear out what Nash proposed?

Nash criticized the Continental Congress for not being able to pay the soldiers their salaries. This inability to pay the soldiers wages stemmed from the fact that the government was essentially broke: they were unable to levy taxes on the people of the colonies because of the weak governmental structure from which they operated and many of the colonies did not pay their fair share of the financial burden of the revolution. When Robert Morris tried to restore fiscal responsibility to the war effort and raise revenue to provide pay and necessities to the army, Nash viewed it as an attempt to "tame the social and political radicalism of the Revolution." (Nash, 367) However, I suppose Nash chose to forget the fact that Morris was trying to get revenue to provide for the war effort. Why then would Thomas Paine, one who Nash seemed to have great respect for his principles of democracy, agreed to author a pamphlet on behalf of Robert Morris in favor of his new fiscal plan. (Nash, 395) If Morris' plan was so stifling to democracy, intended to roll back the radicalism of the revolution, then why would Paine agree to be a party to it? Not all of these explanations and questions would mesh well with Nash's outlook on Morris and the Founding Fathers at large.

Further, if the Founding Fathers truly wanted rule for themselves, there was no better chance for one of them to establish it than with the "Newburgh Conspiracy." It is true that the soldiers and officers of George Washington's army were deeply distraught by the ineffectual abilities of the Congress to pay wages and provide for basic necessities. (Nash, 370 - 371) However, what Nash failed to mention is the other half of the conspiracy. The men wanted to march on the Continental Congress and put George Washington in power. Washington, through an impassioned speech and performance, quelled all of these thoughts and possibly saved the revolution once again.

Nash, as stated previously, believed the struggle of the thousands of black slaves in the colonies was heightened by the revolutionary rhetoric that littered the landscape of the era. He believed that such literature raised their awareness and caused more unrest and rebellion than at any time previously. However, I would like to offer my own take on this. Did it take pamphlets from the Founding Fathers to raise the awareness of the enslaved that there was something unnatural about their situation? I certainly think not. Frederick Douglass' autobiography indicates that from a very early age, he was well aware that there was something wrong with the situation he found himself. In an illustration, a still teenage Douglass talked with some of his young white friends on the streets of Baltimore and they complained about their lot in life. Douglass illustrated the point when he wrote, "You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life!" (Douglass, 53) While Douglass certainly is an exceptional individual, I doubt that this same premise was lost on the countless enslaved individuals in the colonies and that they wanted freedom and it did not take pamphlets for that realization to come to mind.

Nash lamented the "genocidal policies" towards the AmerIndians adopted by many colonists during the revolution. While it is true that atrocities were committed against the natives, first, this was nothing new by this point in American history. Warfare between the natives and colonists was an almost constant from the time that European settlers stepped onto the New World. In such a climate, atrocities committed by both sides in this armed and almost perpetual struggle were inevitable. However, Nash is somewhat disingenuous when he makes the native population seemingly innocent or justified in their actions. Although Nash admitted that the British courted and armed the native peoples to fight the colonists, even after the revolution was over, he cannot seem to find any justification for the colonists to meet force with force.

Lastly, as stated previously, Nash bemoaned how historians and the people at large have lost the viewpoint of those below the Founding Fathers - how the great men still consistently dominant the narrative on the American Revolution. (Nash, xv) First, I would ask Mr. Nash, "should we discount what the `great men' did during the war?" While historians do deal with the "great men" of the American Revolution, I doubt there is one serious historian out there who would discount the actions and sacrifices that were made by the people below. Their deeds do not go unnoticed in narratives of the war. We read about the Boston Tea Party, we read about the non-importation of British goods and how the participation of the common people was vital to such an enterprise. We read about the plight of the Continental soldier as they nearly starve and free to death in the service of their country.

What Nash further discounted was the explosion over the past decades in dealing with various social aspects of the history of the revolution. Bruce Chadwick's piece, The First American Army: The Soldiers of the American Revolution, he offered the reader a look into the world of the solider in the Continental Army through their diaries, letters and records. Through these written records, we are presented with the bleak situation that so many found themselves in - conflicting interests between home and duty, the want of food and clothing, and their battle experiences. Alfred Young, in The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, offers a glimpse into the world of the common man on the streets, taking part in demonstrations and actions against the British and their oppressive measures.

Women's roles in the revolution are far from ignored. Mary Beth Norton authored a book, Liberty's Daughter's: The Revolutionary Experience of Women: 1750 -1800, dealing specifically with the trials and tribulations of the women during the American Revolution, both from the Patriot side and the Loyalist side. Linda Kerber also wrote a piece on women in the American Revolution entitled, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America, which also draws upon the revolutionary experience of women through their diaries, letters and legal papers.

The Native Americans receive their fair share of print as well. Alan Taylor wrote Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, which offers a rich, sprawling history focusing on the Iroquois Six Nations of New York and Upper Canada during the era of the American Revolution. Taylor examines Indians' wise but unsuccessful attempts to hold onto their land as colonists encroached on it. Colin Calloway, in his work, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, explored the internal strife that the revolution brought to Indian nations involved with the American Revolution.

The African-American population in the revolutionary era also received a fair amount of print about their ordeals. Glenn Knoblock wrote, Strong and Brave Fellows: New Hampshire's Black Soldiers and Sailors of the American Revolution: 1775 - 1784, which explored the military careers of over 200 black military officers during the American Revolution and attempted to reconstruct their ordeal throughout the conflict. Sylvia Frey, in her book, Water from a Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age, explored the triangular relationship between the British, the Americans, and slaves in the South. Through this triangular relationship, Frey attempted to illustrate the complex and confusing options presented to the slaves in the South during the rebellion.

Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey Palsey offers readers an alternative reading in the same light that Nash presents, the conflicting desires of the myriad of peoples during the American Revolution. The political historians contained in this work showed that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few "Founding Fathers," but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class. Thus, this work is not beholden to one particular point of view on the revolution, as Nash is guilty of being caught up in.

These are just some of the books out there on the myriad of topics that Nash covered and, to be sure, there are many more. These books are not hard to find. Just do a search on Amazon's or Barnes and Noble's online stores on any of these topics and you will be presented with a cornucopia of choices - there is not quite the neglect that Nash claimed in these fields. To be sure, there will still be authors who write biographies on the "great men" of the American Revolution, but there are many who also explore the social history of the conflict. Thus, Nash is not the lone voice for these "forgotten" as he claimed.

First, a little about myself. I started with the book John Adams and became very interested in the Revolutionary war era. Since Adams most of the books I have read are about the war or the warriors, with a couple giving me background to the revolution starting just before the French and Indian war. So, I approach my reviews not as a historian or a well read scholar.

If you are interested in the revolutionary era get this book. The book has 4 main themes throughout, the struggle between rich and poor, and what the Native Americans, slaves, and women were doing and contending with at this time. He rarely mentions the war, staying with the social/economic/governmental/religious development of the colonies.

For me, there was a lot of new information about names and places and events I had read of in other books. Having just finished the book I feel I now have a completely different picture of the Revolution.

I enjoyed the book and feel it is worth the time to read but it has one serious drawback. Nash goes back and forthe between colonies at times making it difficult to understand who he is talking about. But the big problem is that although the chapters divide things into a neat timeline what is in the chapters does not. You go from 1776 to 1780 to 1783 and then to 1781 in the blink of an eye. That makes things a little hard to follow at times.

Generations of scholars have put forward a hypothesis that the American Revolution was a conservative revolution. On the surface, this hypothesis seems plausible. After all, the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia created a model of government that was very similar to the English model, a model of branches of government that had checks and balances over one another. Gary Nash's book, the Unknown American Revolution, collects and reveals information about a revolution that was truly radical -- a revolution that I had never seen revealed in any classroom, in spite of being exposed to a fair bit of liberal arts education.

Although Nash doesn't make an explicit comparison, the U.S. Constitution of 1787 was quite conservative compared to the Pennsylvania state constitution of 1776, a constitution that called for a broader franchise and government by a unicameral legislature. Elites were snubbed in this state constitution, a constitution that created a government without an executive branch or a upper house of the legislature. Up and down the seaboard, radicals argued for state constitutions such as these, although, in most cases, they had to compromise with conservatives and moneyed interests and produce more moderate governing institutions.

Nash paints a fascinating picture of angry farmers and "leather aprons" tearing down sumptuous mansions of abusive governing elites and staging jailbreaks for unjustly imprisoned leaders; Black slaves joining both sides in the conflict in a revolutionary attempt to secure their own freedom and abolish slavery; and itinerant frontier preachers challenging the established church in defense of Christ's Poor. He establishes a continuity of mob violence from the Carolina Regulator Movement to the violent reactions to the Stamp Act, all the way through Shays Rebellion of 1786. Nash's portrayal of Shays Rebellion as a continuation of the disaffection of the poor makes more sense than the traditional portrayal of Shays Rebellion as an aberration demonstrating the weakness of government under the Articles of Confederation.

Indeed, Nash's defense of mob violence as something focused and purposeful (as opposed to random and mindless) is bound to generate some controversy. Professor Nash takes up the position that a law that is unjust is no law at all, and that mobs are not unthinking masses. Is mob violence democratic? Can a mob make a reasoned decision on whether a law is just or unjust? Nash seems to think so. A little scary, since this line of reasoning could be used to justify riots, wilfull destruction of property, and lynchings.

The genius of Professor Nash's book is his ability to separate the War of Independence from the American Revolution. Separating from Britain is one matter, revolutions are another. How much did American society change in the American Revolution? More than meets the eye, argues Nash. The fledgling United States might have failed to abolish slavery, but the contradiction between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and holding people in bondage was placed firmly on center stage. Slavery WAS abolished north of the Mason-Dixon line, and the institution drew harsh condemnations even from slaveholders such as Washington, Jefferson and Madison. Radical government may have been replaced with more moderate government, but never again could wealthy elites contemptuously ingnore the political aspirations of the masses or publicly label them as "rabble."

Although the Unknown American Revolution is long and seems to ramble in some places, this book effectively challenges some myths in the account of the revolution. This is a good popular history of the American Revolution.

The history of the American Revolution is usually treated, even by professional historians, as an event out of history. It's a platitude, but accurate, to say revolutionary figures like Jefferson, Adams, Paine, and Franklin are treated as philosophers debating abstract principles of government with Olympian detachment. At the same time, it's rare to find any serious treatment of Native Americans, African Americans, and women as revolutionary actors. For this reason, Nash's treatment--with or without alleged historical accuracies and exaggerations--is well worth reading.

Nash is fairly unusual for historians of this period insofar as he introduces a broad range of social issues that were raised, but not resolved, by the war:
*women's demands for political power;
*growing calls for the abolition of slavery;
*demands for social accountability for business enterprise;
*efforts to preserve social mobility;
These are all struggles that gave the American War for Independence its revolutionary nature. During the War, the crown relied heavily on mercenaries from the Continent, militant North American loyalists, and Native Americans. The revolutionary forces relied on recent, impoverished immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and England. The patricians produced a conservative separatist ideology, but the blood and sinews of the Revolution--the spiritual transformation of American society, the fighting, the starving, and the dying--came form the dregs of the American masses. After the war, this cohort of Americans was hurled into the lurch. The Continental Congress and the nascent federal government issued few pensions, and those were paltry.

Nash also introduces the important research of Richard White on the revolution among the Native Americans. Yes, the Native peoples of North America along the Middle West and the Tidewater experienced a political revolution. Understandably, the vast majority of Native peoples had no choice but to side with the crown. But the effects on the first nations were dramatic: determined efforts by visionary leaders to forge the disparate Indian bands into a coalition against the advancing settlers, while far from successful, destroy the popular myth of a moribund people facing extinction fatalistically.

Gary Nash's history considers far more: it broaches and responds to far more questions of the revolution than other historical accounts I have seen. Its narratives are far more realistic. And Nash, departing from near-universal tradition, does not glorify the winners, something that will no doubt raise a lot of hackles.

A number of reviewers have pointed out that the information presented in this book is not new. This is certainly true. However, the author poses a juxtaposition of the information which does create something new and interesting. Should this volume comprise the sole text in your library on the history of the Revolution? Of course not. It does provide useful reminders to look beyond the obvious. The 'glorious cause' was not glorius for all. The ideals of the Revolution were not all realized with the Declaration nor with the Treaty of Paris nor with the ratification of the Constitution. Those ideals do still drive us today to get it right; to make it better; to fix it where we got it wrong. This is a very enjoyable read which should cause you to think a bit about issues which typically receive rather light attention in other histories.

Let's see. Washington was a slaveowner. Franklin was an egomaniacal womanizer. Jefferson and Adams couldn't be allowed in the same city much less the same room. The Indian Nation (for the most part) sided with the Brits. Gary. We knew this stuff.

I fear that Professor Nash is testing the marketability of his book by telling us (over and over) that this is "new," "novel," and "the real deal."

For the most part, many errors of judgment were made all over the 18th century in our treatment of women, minorities, slaves, jews, gays, children, debtors, and those impoverished masses such that that conduct can never be made compatible with the harsh light of today's 'political correctness.' Here's a flash: WE DON'T DO THAT GOOD A JOB NOW. TODAY. WITH EVERYTHING AROUND US.

So really, what Professor Nash tells us, that the 'leadership' didn't get along with themselves much less respect eachother, is old hat. That our Revolution was a bloody mess is common knowledge. I think. I hope that memo got out. Professor Nash does tie it all together nicely and for that he gets 5 *****.

But what would really be interesting would be to ask the question how did their whiteness, their maleness, their wealth, their slave-owner mentality, their anti-semitism (for the most part), and their land ownership influence the drafting and publication of the three documents that (let's face it) changed the world, The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Of course we told the pablum view of history to the kids in the 50's, 60's, 70's up to now. What's a bunch of 12 year olds going to do with information that Adams thought Franklin was a a worthless bag of wind and 'that he would do us all a service if he electrified himself with his key,' and that Jefferson slept with the slaves?

A prodigious effort. A lot of tedium over things we already knew. 3 stars. Larry Scantlebury