The American revolution: The military conflict considered as a revolutionary war

Essays on the: American Revolution

Volumn , Issue , 2014, Pages 121-156

  Shy, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 5844349302     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (96)

1. Don Higginbotham, “American Historians and the Military History of the American Revolution," American Historical Review, LXX (1964), 18-34
2. Higginbotham’s recent book, The War of American Independence (New York, 1971), more than any previous general account, seeks to relate the military and nonmilitary segments of the war; basic research in this direction, however, has hardly begun.
3. J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (Princeton, 1926).
4. Frederick B. Tolies, “The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Re-evaluation," AHR, LX (1954), 1-12
5. reprinted in the paperback edition of Jameson (Princeton, 1967), surveys the critical attack on Jameson’s argument. Two unjustly neglected books that seek to relate the direct pressure of warfare to major political developments are Bernhard Knollenberg, Washington and the Revolution (New York, 1940)
6. Curtis Nettels, George Washington and American Independence (New York, 1951).
7. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)
8. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, iTj6-iy8j (Chapel Hill, 1969)
9. Jackson T. Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, 1965), finds, on the whole, relatively little perceptible change in socioeconomic structure and so is not disposed to consider the possible effects of the war.
10. Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Partington (New York, 1968).
11. Peter Paret, “The History of War," Daedalus, C (1971), 376-396.
12. Bernard Brodie, “Strategy as a Science," World Politics, I (1949), 467-488.
13. Thomas C. Barrow, “The American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXV (1968), 452-464.
14. J. H. Hexter has some wise thoughts on the tricky question, for historians, of “relevance” in his essay “The Historian and His Day," in his Reappraisals in History (New York, 1961), 1-13.
15. Allan Nevins, The American States During and After the American Revolution, 1775-1789 (New York, 1924), 574;
16. E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 7776-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1961), 63, 69.
17. Charles S. Grant, Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent (New York, 1961), 96-103;
18. James T. Lemon and Gary B. Nash, “The Distribution of Wealth in Eighteenth-Century America: A Century of Change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1693-1802," The Journal of Social History, II (1968), 1-24;
19. Allan Kulikoff, “The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston," WMQ, 3d Ser., XXVIII (1971), 375-412.
20. Arthur Marwick, “The Impact of the First World War on British Society," Journal of Contemporary History, III (1968), 51-63.
21. Chalmers Johnson, “Civilian Loyalties and Guerrilla Conflict," World Politics, XIV (1962), 646-661
22. Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria (Princeton, 1964), are still the best introductions.
23. Robert C. Pugh, “The Revolutionary Militia in the Southern Campaigns, 1780-1781," WMQ, 3d Ser., XIV (1957), 154-175.
24. Russell F. Weigley, Towards an American Army (New York and London, 1962), 1-9
25. Peter Paret, “Colonial Experience and European Military Reform at the End of the Eighteenth Century," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXXVII (1964), 47-59
26. “Charles Lee: The Soldier as Radical," in George Athan Billias, ed., George Washington’s Generals (New York, 1964), 22-53.
27. The outstanding recent works on the British side of the war are Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775-1783 (London, 1964);
28. William B. Willcox, Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence (New York, 1964);
29. Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill, 1964).
30. Ira Gruber, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution (New York, 1972)
31. Robert D. Bass, The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (New York, 1957)
32. George Athan Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents: British Generals and Admirals in the American Revolution (New York, 1969);
33. Franklin and Mary Wickwire, Cornwallis: The American Adventure (Boston, 1970).
34. Troyer Steele Anderson, The Command of the Howe Brothers During the American Revolution (New York, 1936), a carefully reasoned study based on limited evidence, is still very much worth consulting.
35. The final crisis, and the thinking that shaped it on the British side, can be traced in Bernard Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War 1777-1775 (London, 1964);
36. Benjamin W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (New York, 1964);
37. John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, 1965), chap. 9.
38. Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 7772-1774 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
39. Gage to Secretary at War Barrington, “Private," June 26, 1775, Clarence E. Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage … 7765-1775 (New Haven, 1931-1933), II, 686-687.
40. Mackesy, War for America, 35, 4a;
41. Wiflcox, Clinton, 55, 58;
42. Smith, Loyalists, 41.
43. Jon M. White, Marshal of France [London, 196a], 272-273
44. O. J. Matthijs Jolles [Washington, D.C., 1950], 210;
45. O. J. Matthijs Jolles [Washington, D.C., 1950], 27, 123
46. Leonard Lundin, Cockpit of the Revolution: The War for Independence in New Jersey (Princeton, 1940), 157ff.
47. E. H. Tatum, ed., The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe (San Marino, Calif., 1940), 155;
48. “Journals of Lieut.-Col. Stephen Kemble," The Kemble Papers, I (New-York Historical Society, Collections, XVI [New York, 1884]), 160.
49. W. A. Whitehead el al. eds., Archives of the State of New Jersey, 1601-1800, 2d Ser., I (Trenton, 1901), 276.
50. Eric Robson, ed., Letters from America, 7773-1780 (Manchester, 1951), 38-42.
51. Adrian Leiby, The Hackensack Valley in the American Revolutionary War (New Brunswick, N.J., 1962), 20.
52. Mackesy, War for America, 103-124;
53. Smith, Loyalists, 44-59.
54. Bernard A. Uhlendorf, ed., Revolution in America: Confidential Letters and Journals, 1776-1784, of Adjutant General Major Baurmeister of the Hessian Forces (New Brunswick, N.J., 1957), 95-113
55. Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Time (Philadelphia, 1846), 285, 306.
56. Uhlendorf, ed., Revolution in America, 134-139, 148, 157, 162, 169, Baurmeister gives a graphic account of guerrilla warfare around Philadelphia during the following winter and spring.
57. Mackesy, War for America, 121-144.
58. Historians continue to explain the failure of the campaign almost solely in terms of the famous “forgotten despatch," though, as Mackesy, 117-118
59. Stanley M. Pargellis, “Brad- dock’s Defeat," AHR, XLI (1936), 253-269
60. Lord Loudoun in North America (New Haven, 1933)
61. C. P. Stacey, Quebec, 1759 (New York, 1959).
62. The Wickwires, Cornwallis, go, refuse to accept at face value the testimony of Cornwallis when he said, concerning Howe’s failure to destroy Washington’s army at Long Island in August 1776, “that I never did hear it suggested by anyone that those lines could have been carried by assault."
63. Mackesy, War for America, 156-158, 252-256;
64. Willcox, Clinton, 260ff.
65. Smith, Loyalists, 79-99
66. Mackesy, War for America, 252ff.
67. The king to Lord North, June 11, 1779, John W. Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of King George the Third . . (London, 1927-1928), III, 351.
68. Mackesy, War for America, 267-268;
69. Smith, Loyalists, 100-105, 142.
70. Quoted from the Clinton Papers, Clements Lib., in Wickwire, Cornwallis, 427, n.55. On the success of British irregular tactics
71. see Cornwallis., 132-133, 164-165
72. Bass, Tarleton.
73. “Colonel Robert Gray’s Observations on the War in Carolina," South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, XI (1910), 153.
74. Wickwire, Cornwallis, 169-195.
75. Willcox, Clinton, 352-353
76. Mackesy, War for America, 343-345.
77. Mackesy, War for America, 404-436, 473-477, 487-494. On p. 512, the author suggests that the British might reasonably have continued the war
78. MSS of Stopford-Sackville, II, 105.
79. Frederick Mackenzie, Aug. 5, 1781, Diary of Mackenzie, 581-582.
80. Stedman, The History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War (London, 1794), I, 242-243.
81. Stuart-Wortley, ed., Prime Minister and His Son, 132.
82. Barrow, “American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence," WMQ, 3d Ser., XXV (1968), 459
83. Uhlendorf, ed., Revolution in America, contains the most revealing account of British and Allied day-to-day awareness of rebel militia.
84. Evelyn M. Acomb, ed. and trans., The Revolutionary Journal of Baron Ludwig von Closen (Chapel Hill, 1958), 75.
85. Uhlendorf, ed., Revolution in America, esp. 353-354
86. See also the “Journal of John Charles Philip von Krafft, of the Regiment von Bose, 1776-1784," N.-Y. Hist. Soc., Colls., XV (New York, 1883), 43-142.
87. Charles J. Hoadly, ed., The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, I (Hartford, 1894), 91ff.
88. The Public Records of the State of Connecticut., 259-260.
89. H. E. Egerton, ed., The Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists, iyS to iySy (Oxford, 1915), 49; also 10, 32, 35, 41, 43-44, 48.
90. V. H. Paltsits, ed., Minutes of the Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies in the State of New York: Albany County Sessions, 1778-1781 (Albany, 1909), 1,369.
91. Minutes of the Commissioners for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies in the State of New York: Albany County Sessions, 1778-1781., II, 735.
92. Minutes of the Council of Safety, Pennsylvania Archives, 1st Ser., XI, 381 54-55, 94;
93. Edmund Pendleton to William Woodford, May 24, 1779, David J. Mays, ed., Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton (Charlottesville, Va., 1967), I, 285-286.
94. The Penobscot episode can be followed in the reports to Clinton in Hist. MSS Comm., Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London, 1904-1909), I, 458-460, II, 14-18, 45, 52, 66, 83, 144, 258.
95. Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 65-70.
96. Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961), vi, 333-337,357-358