Unique Causes for a Unique War: America’s Revolutionary Revolution

The decades leading up to the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775 included the growth and development of both economic and political motives. Britain’s expensive imperial program of the military defense for the colonies placed a financial burden on the North American colonies: they were told that they must pay for a defense which they neither wanted nor requested.

The British had accumulated large debts from financing the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763). After the war, the ongoing expenses of maintaining garrisons of English soldiers in North America also mounted.

The colonists argued that they were capable of defending themselves and didn’t need armies sent from across the Atlantic. Such armies were not only unnecessary, but often caused problems (fights, drunkenness, rowdiness, theft, vandalism, etc.) among the people whom they were allegedly defending.

A long series of parliamentary actions, even dating back to before 1754 but increasing thereafter, amounted to repeated taxes on the colonists. The evils of taxation were amplified by the fact that the colonists were not allowed to elect any of their own representatives to Parliament.

The residents of the thirteen colonies were supposed to be British citizens, on a legal par with those living in England, but in reality, they were denied the right to freely elect their own representatives.

In addition to the brutalities of taxation, the colonists were subjected to other forms of economic terror. Regulations listed certain products which colonists could purchase only from England, not from any other countries. Certain products from the colonies could be shipped only to England and not to other countries.

Beyond economic concerns, the colonists desire religious freedom: the spiritual landscape of North America included a diverse collection of Lutherans, Jews, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, and other groups. The British government, however, acknowledged Anglicanism (Episcopalianism) as the only official church.

Politically, the colonists had two goals: first, participation by freely electing representatives to Parliament; second, freedom of speech and of the press.

The English were oblivious to the human misery which they caused. Making it even worse, Parliament inflicted an additional form of oppression on the colonists in 1763: the Proclamation Line. This boundary forbid the residents of the thirteen colonies from settling west of a line drawn on the map.

The Americans were forbidden from pioneering into the largely unsettled and uninhabited lands west of the existing colonial civilization, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

The imperial program sparked colonial resistance. In the West, Americans refused to conform to the Proclamation Line or obey the trade regulations. But on the seaboard resistance was more ominous as colonists defiantly challenged Parliament’s authority to impose taxes, especially the Stamp Act. An intercolonial Stamp Act Congress met in New York and issued protests. People adopted nonimportation agreements, uniting most Americans in an attempt to put economic pressure on England to repeal the act. Most importantly, colonists responded with violence. Groups calling themselves “Sons of Liberty” enforced the nonimportation agreements, forced stamp agents to resign, and mobilized mobs to ransack the homes of unpopular Crown officials. The Connecticut and New York Sons of Liberty even signed a treaty pledging aid if British troops tried to enforce the Stamp Act. In the face of this opposition, Parliament repealed the act but passed a Declaratory Act proclaiming Parliament’s right “to bind” the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

The colonial response to Britain’s economic aggression galvanized resistance and united the colonies. Organizations within colonies, and among colonies, created a network which would grow stronger and eventually coordinate the revolution: an organization which would more and more clearly the demands for relief from taxation, the demands for elected representation, the demands for freedom of speech and of the press and of religion, and the demands for political liberty and eventually complete political independence.

The organizations which arose in opposition to the English taxes were organizations which were a part of creating a new identity: the identity of being, not English subjects living in America, but rather the identity of being Americans.

Wars are nothing new in history, but America’s Revolutionary War was a new type of war. The wars up until that point in time were driven mainly by dynastic ambition or material greed.

America’s struggle for independence was not a “top-down” war, called for and motivated by a small leadership class, but rather was a “bottom-up” war, reflecting the political desperation of the middle and lower classes who’d suffered horribly under British taxation.

To say that the American Revolution was caused largely by taxes seems, at first glance, to imply that the colonists were greedy people motivated by material wealth. But the Americans had the insight that taxes struck at much more than one’s wallet. Taxes are an assault on human dignity. Taxation is not only a violation of property rights, but in subtle and nefarious ways, a violation of all human and civil rights.

To fight a war, not because the royal family decreed it, but because the broad lower and middle classes were seeking their human and civil rights — seeking liberty, freedom, and opportunity — this was a new and different kind of war.

A new type of war called for new types of strategies.

George Washington and the Continental Army were working, not merely to capture selected military or economic targets, but rather to expel the British military from the land, and to liberate that land, as historian Russell Weigley writes:

The paradox of George Washington’s mode of strategy wran deeper than its most obvious feature, the incongruity between a defensive strategy and the necessity to remove the British forces from North America in order to secure political independence. There existed a further incongruity between the eighteenth-century conventionality of the ideas about warfare entertained and applied by the wealthy and conservative Virginia gentleman turned Commander in Chief of a revolutionary army, and the incorrigibility revolutionary dimensions of the war in which Washington had to fight. For in terms of the eighteenth century’s conceptions of war, the War of American Independence was indeed revolutionary. It is a commonplace of history, but a correct one, to assert that in Europe the eighteenth century was an age of limited war. Until the French Revolution at the end of the century, European armies of the period carefully restrained the destructiveness of war, and they did so because European statesmen restrained the aims of war. A variety of considerations, all involving the statesmen’s and soldiers’ awareness of the delicacy of the social fabric of Europe under the ancien regime, made European war in the eighteenth century habitually a contest for limited objectives of a fortress or province or two or of favorable dynastic alliance. The War of American Independence was revolutionary in the very scope of the Americans’ objective: to eliminate British power completely from the vast extent of the thirteen rebellious colonies.

Had George Washington and the American been able to fight a true war of attrition, they would have gladly done so. But the Continental Army lacked money, supplies, and men sufficient for that strategy. Because it was not a true war of attrition, the American Revolution inflicted fewer casualties that it might otherwise have.

Washington’s strategy was, instead, a modified version of attrition. He worked to develop his forces into nimble and mobile units; the British were, by comparison, clunky and slow-moving. Washington developed strong intelligence networks, informing him of British activities.

The British forces were larger and better equipped, so Washington avoided large-scale confrontations in battle. He opted for surprise attacks and raids. In so doing, he left the British continually harassed, fatigued, and nervous.

Instead of outlasting the British in a traditional version of a war of attrition, Washington exhausted and unnerved the British.

By war’s end, Washington was finally able to enjoy numerical superiority when facing the British at Yorktown in 1781, due in part to French armies who joined the Americans. But throughout most of the war, Washington’s forces were smaller than their British opponents, and had to rely on speed, agility, and elements of surprise.

Founding a University: What Makes Princeton Different?

Starting in 1636, North America was home to a growing number of colleges and universities. For more than a century before the United States was founded, America was a flashpoint for education.

Harvard was founded in 1636 with the purpose of providing Puritan clergymen for the Unitarian and Congregationalist churches. The College of William and Mary was founded in 1693 as “a perpetual college of divinity” by royal charter, and therefore serving the Anglican Church.

St. John’s College in Annapolis began as King William’s School in 1696, and was upgraded to a college in 1784, receiving a new name in the process. Its founders were a diverse group of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics.

Yale was founded in 1701 to train Congregationalist ministers. The Kent County Free School, established in 1723, was recast as Washington College in 1782 by the Episcopal priest William Smith.

The same William Smith also founded the College of Philadelphia, better known as the University of Pennsylvania, was suggested by Benjamin Franklin as early as 1740, but its first classes began in 1751. (To complete his ‘hat trick,’ William Smith had also been involved in the founding of St. John’s College in Annapolis.)

The Bethlehem Female Seminary, better known as Moravian College, began in 1742, founded by the Moravian Church.

This impressive growth was dominated by only a few denominations — Anglican/Epsicopal, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, Congregationalist, and Moravian. But spiritual landscape of North America was more diverse: there were Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and many other groups. The next phase in founding American colleges and universities would embrace that diversity.

The University of Delaware in 1743 and Princeton University in 1746 were the first two Presbyterian institutions of higher education, as Dennis Kennedy writes:

The only clergyman who signed the Declaration of Independence was Rev. John Witherspoon, the president of the College of New Jersey, which is today Princeton University.

Although founded in 1746, the college did not move to the town of Princeton until 1756, and was not renamed until 1896. The founder’s personality shaped the institution decisively.

At that time, this college was a stalwart Presbyterian institution. Witherspoon had emigrated from Scotland. He helped to shape the political thinking of many key Americans, including James Madison, who attended Witherspoon’s college, while preparing for the ministry. Witherspoon befriended the young man and had a profound impact on Madison’s life. Obviously Madison chose a political career, but his theologian training served him well. John Eidsmoe writes: “One thing is certain: the Christian religion, particularly Rev. Witherspoon’s Calvinism, influenced Madison’s view of law and government.”

The diversity of spiritual traditions among the nation’s founders led to the incorporation of multiple perspectives into the various documents (The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights) and into the various texts (not only The Federalist Papers, but also The Anti-Federalist Papers).

This diversity included Anglicanism in George Washington, Congregationalism in Sam Adams, Roman Catholicism in Charles Carroll, and — as in the case of Princeton University — Witherspoon’s Presbyterianism.

But Madison is not the only shaper of America whose thinking Witherspoon helped shape. Eidsmoe also states: “John Witherspoon is best described as the man who shaped the men who shaped America. Although he did not attend the Constitutional Convention, his influence was multiplied many times over by those who spoke as well as by what was said.”

It is possible that the case for Presbyterianism’s influence is here overstated. The influence of Anglicanism, continuing into Episcopalianism, was also immense. The sheer numbers of Lutherans and Roman Catholics among the population meant that those two denominations were also significantly formative.

Populating the Great Plains and the Upper Midwest: Germans from Germany — and Germans from Russia

Germans had arrived in North America as early as 1683. They quickly became a significant part of the economy.

By the time the United States became an independent nation in 1776, Germans had earned reputations as excellent farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and technical innovators.

The German-Americans earned this admiration in the original thirteen colonies, and also helped America to defend its freedom in the war from 1775 to 1783.

As the nation expanded westward, German-Americans pioneered into the new regions, and continued to earn respect from their fellow citizens. German-Americans were seen as hard workers and wise managers of their assets, as Thomas Sowell writes:

German immigrants’ achievement as farmers in the United States remained outstanding in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In eastern Texas, German farmers were by 1880 producing a larger volume of output per farm — and on smaller farms — than other Texans.

Many of the Germans came to America, not from Germany, but from Russia. Large groups of Germans had left Germany, seeking economic opportunities, and gone to Russia. They settled in Russia, but found that low literacy rates and poor financial systems limited the income which they could generate from their farms. So they moved again, this time to America.

In Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, Germans who had re-immigrated from Russia established good reputations as farmers and had excellent credit ratings at banks. Germans, both from Germany and from Russia, eventually achieved prosperity in Oklahoma, after harrowing years of pioneering in a virgin territory.

Germans in the great farming states in the middle of the country helped to create the best aspects of the nation’s agriculture system, aspects which still benefit the United States more than a century later.

On the East Coast, by contrast, Germans gained their reputations from business, industry, and technological development.

Whether on the coasts or in the interior, whether in agriculture or in urban commerce, Germans maintained a stellar reputation for diligence, cleverness, and superlative work ethic.

Black Leaders Confront Woodrow Wilson: Challenging Progressivist Racism

When President Woodrow Wilson revealed the deep-seated racism that motivated his policies, civil rights leaders took action. Two leaders in particular opposed Wilson: Ida B. Wells and Monroe Trotter.

Ida Wells started as a journalist in 1894. She wrote for a newspaper called the Daily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago. This newspaper boldly and persistently denounced lynching.

Because women in the United States were voting by this time, Ida Wells also organized the Republican Women’s Club in 1894. Her efforts resulted in Lucy Flower being elected as a trustee for the University of Illinois. This was long before the 19th amendment was passed in 1920.

Although Ida Wells enjoyed expanding rights for women and for African-Americans in the 1890s and early 1900s, President Woodrow Wilson was determined to stop the Republican Party. In 1912, Wilson began taking away the civil rights which Blacks had enjoyed since 1863, as historian Dinesh D’Souza writes:

Segregation wasn’t limited to the South. Following his election, Woodrow Wilson mandated segregation for all the agencies of the federal government. This had never happened before. In a sense, Wilson was burying the ghost of Lincoln, who would have been appalled beyond measure. The black community was apoplectic. Black leaders like Ida B. Wells and Monroe Trotter Protested Wilson’s racism, but the Democratic president was unmoved.

African-Americans and Whites had worked side-by-side in integrated and desegregated federal agencies since the time of Abraham Lincoln. But Woodrow Wilson, fueling his Democratic and Progressivist movements, undermined civil rights in ways that the nation hadn’t seen in fifty years.

Monroe Trotter, a Black civil rights leader, called Wilson’s policies “preposterous,” and confronted President Wilson in November 1914 at a meeting in the White House. When Wilson dismissed Trotter’s concerns, W.E.B. DuBois remarked that President Wilson was “insulting and condescending.”

Wilson boldly argued for segregation, as Dinesh D’Souza reports:

Wilson indignantly told these black leaders that they had no reason to complain, because segregation was in fact beneficial to blacks. Wilson also echoed the argument from Plessy that segregation was just, since whites were being separated from blacks just as much as blacks were being separated from whites.

The outbreak of WW1 gave Wilson another opportunity for racist behavior. His administration dictated that, in the U.S. Army, African-American officers were segregated from White officers. Unlike President Theodore Roosevelt before him, or President Warren Harding after him, Woodrow Wilson stubbornly clung to racism throughout his administration.

Crisis Causes Creativity: Bartering, an Inventive Solution During the Great Depression

People are often at their most creative when facing urgent problems. The Great Depression was a nationwide financial collapse, and individuals, seeing that government programs were incapable of offering much help, found their own solutions.

If the monetary system was failing, people reasoned, then they would find a way to complete transactions outside of the system. The government, in the form of the federal reserve system, lurked inside any cash transaction. But bartering would sidestep the government entirely, as historian Amity Shlaes writes:

One late summer day in 1931 in Salt Lake City, the money ran out. Not just the money in the banks, and not just the money in the town coffers - the money that citizens had to spend. Locals reached into their pockets and, finding nothing, began to trade work and objects. Barbers traded shaves and haircuts for onions and Idaho potatoes. From there, the trading spread to other products. Life in Utah had always been a desert when it came to water. Now it was a desert when it came to money, as well. People in Utah knew how to survive in a desert. Maybe they could find a way to manage in the money desert as well.

The nation’s economy, under the influence of various programs designed to improve it, would deteriorate further, conditions in 1937 being worse than in 1931. But ordinary citizens invented ways to avoid government influence and maintain some element of productive economic activity.

Government efforts, however well-intentioned, generated the opposite of the desired effects: President Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ made the misery of the Great Depression worse.

Bartering, and in some cases even ‘black market’ activity, provided the necessities of life - food, clothing, housing, medical care - despite government strategies.

The Barbary Pirates: The U.S. Navy Matures in the Face of Terrorism in the Mediterranean

The United States became an independent nation in 1776, and the war to defend that independence against British attacks ended the early 1780s. A young nation, the United States had little money and little military power. Whatever money and power it did have, it had spent defending against the British.

Other nations could easily see the American weakness. Weakness is provocative: soon pirates focused their attention on American seagoing vessels. These particular pirates were from a collection of Muslim nations known as the Barbary States. The governments of those nations didn’t do anything to stop piracy, and sometimes even encouraged it.

The pirates wanted money: the would stop an American ship, steal the cargo, and take the sailors as captives. The pirates would sell the cargo and keep the money. They also sold the sailors into slavery. They would also keep the American ship and use it to attack other cargo boats.

Any sailor who resisted would be killed.

England and France had strong navies, and could defend their commercial shipping vessels better. Occasionally, the pirates attacked English and French ships, but rarely. The Americans were a much easier target, because the United States had a new and very small navy.

The Islamic pirates had been attacking unarmed American ships as early as 1784 or 1785, but frequency of the attacks increased after 1793.

The word ‘corsair’ refers to pirates or their ships.

The French and British had been policing the pirates, but when those two nations got into a war with each other, they stopped watching the pirates, who began to attack the Americans even more frequently. As historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write,

The Barbary States - Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli - traditionally engaged in piracy, but the European powers bottled up their activities inside the Mediterranean Sea. After 1793, with the Europeans preoccupied, corsairs from Algiers, the most powerful of the petty North African nations, entered the Atlantic and preyed upon American shipping.

The Islamic nations would sometimes demand tribute. The word ‘tribute’ refers to a payment from a weaker nation to a more powerful nation. The United States gave thousands of dollars to the Barbary States; in return, the Barbary States promised to stop attacking American ships. But the promise was broken immediately.

This cycle of paying tribute to get promises, and then seeing the promises get broken, happened several times. Sometimes the promises made by the Barbary States were documented in treaties which they signed, but they still broke their promises.

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson decided that it would be dangerous if other nations considered the United States to be weak. Congress voted to start building armed ships to strengthen the U.S. Navy. While those ships were being built, the Barbary States increased their aggressiveness, as historian Russell Weigley writes:

The Barbary States of the North African coast increased their piratical attacks upon American commerce and demands for American tribute, because the European wars made the United States the most conspicuous neutral shipping nation.

Meanwhile, the Muslim pirates also began attacking Swedish ships. Sweden and the United States worked together to begin to defend their merchant boats against attacks.

As the U.S. Navy increased the number of ships it had, the Barbary States began to realize that they could not continue attacking American ships, stealing American cargo, and enslaving American sailors. Although the conflict never turned into a full-scale war, there was fighting between the U.S. Navy and the Islamic pirates.

The Battle of Tripoli, in 1804, became famous in a song, and was a major turning point in history.

By 1805, the Barbary States, realized that they had to stop harassing Americans. They signed another treaty. But by 1807, they started again.

By 1815, the Barbary pirates were enslaving as many sailors as ever. The United States, this time teaming up with the British, had by this time an even stronger navy. The Barbary States, including Algeria, finally surrendered permanently, and after 1815 there was little piracy in the Mediterranean.

Imperialism is the Violation of Free Markets: Colonialism is the Disruption of Individual Political Liberty

Although colonialism and imperialism existed in the ancient world, the modern political paradigm of imperialist colonialism was sired primarily by the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Correspondingly, the modern paradigm of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism arose in North America in the mid-1700s.

The oppression against which the Americans rebelled manifested the essential imperialist and colonial traits of violating the free market. The colonies were abused inasmuch as they were not allowed to participate in a free market. British regulations dictated which goods they could, and could not, buy. The rebellion consisted in part of smuggling.

The English rules dictated, e.g., that the colonists could purchase only tea from Britain, not from other countries, and that the colonists must sell certain goods only to England and only at the prices dictated by the English.

This violation of free market principles constituted an abuse of human rights by the British, as Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

The Revolution began in 1765, not 1775. The events of 1765–1775 marked the first phase in a colonial war of national liberation. Only a handful of colonists advocated outright independence in 1765, but they vigorously championed their cause and slowly gained adherents over the next decade. During this initial stage colonial leaders organized themselves politically while subverting the established government’s authority through terrorism and propaganda. The Stamp Act Congress, followed by the two Continental Congresses, reflected the emergence of a national political organization.

Imperialist oppression, and colonialist oppression, operate by violating the free market. Colonies are held in poverty, and denied fair prices for their products and raw materials, by keeping them from offering their products in an unregulated market.

The North American colonies were regulated by the British about what they could buy, what they could sell, to whom they could sell, and from whom they could buy.

Key actions in the early phases of the revolution were economic actions: smuggling, boycotting, and the Boston Tea Party. Millett and Maslowski continue:

At the local level the Sons of Liberty evolved into a network of committees of correspondence and of safety. These extralegal bodies coordinated the opposition against Parliament, prevented the Revolutionary movement from degenerating into anarchy, and intimidated individuals who supported England. Radical leaders also organized riots against important symbols of British rule. Mob actions were not spontaneous but instead represented purposeful violence by what were, in essence, urban volunteer militia units. Supplementing the violence was a propaganda campaign portraying every English action in the darkest hues.

The American Revolution featured ideological freedoms like those of press, speech, and religion. It also featured economic freedoms, like deregulation and significant reduction in taxation.

These two sets of freedoms are so closely intertwined that they can’t be thoroughly separated. Various individual specific liberties are organically related.

Imposed taxes are a violation of free speech. Economic regulations are a violation of the free press.

The American Revolution demonstrated the inseparable unity of various specific rights.