According to Ray Raphael, there are various
general descriptions that summarize how common Americans faced the challenges
of the American Revolutionary War.[1] In total, these descriptors portray a list of
very human reactions by those Americans that while heroic in many ways, they seem
to be in line with reasonable, self-interests.
The last posting shared the first four of these descriptors.
Those
descriptors are that these average Americans, first, faced workloads that dramatically
increased, second, the war was a time that forced them to cut back on the
availability of consumer goods, third, that native Americans and African
Americans exploited the opportunities the war provided, and, of course, fourth,
that they took on the burdens of fighting the war. The reader is encouraged to look back and
read that posting if he/she has not done so, but this posting looks at
Raphael’s last four take-aways of his historical study.
The next point he makes is how quickly the support for the
British Crown disappeared among the colonists.
As late as the mid-1700s, it was common among the colonial communities
to celebrate the birthday of the monarch – King George III. But then, as the 1700s wore on and while
hesitant to outwardly demonstrate disdain for the monarch, the colonists could and
did withhold celebratory demonstrations of support. In their way, this constituted a denial of overall
support for their status within the British empire.
By the way, initially many
slaves and native Americans hoped that they could gain advantages by fleeing or
offering support to the British. This
did not work out and as a result many engaged in work slow-downs. This demonstrates – in how these various
groups reacted – that while defiance is not always available, lack of consent
is. By boycotting, “common people as
well as leaders withheld support from the royal government. Whether by acting or declining to act, men and
women who were not rich made their presence felt.”[2]
Common in the colonies and
then states, was a general testing of how effective the colonial authorities’
power was during the war. As a recurring
mode of behavior, people in subservient positions would “trash talk” their
superiors, but as the war began, these Americans progressed from subtlety
expressing their opposition to British rule to outward movements of
defiance. And some of these acts were
quite violent – a common enough practice was tar and feathering loyalist
targets.
And such demonstrations led
to a cycle of defiance and then repression by the authorities. And this take-away is that this back and
forth became more intense as both sides approached the outbreak of war. For example, the British acts led to mob
actions in Boston and New York. In
short, the war itself was a reaction to rebellious acts by common people.
These acts of “defiance”
took various forms. For example,
plantation owners, the least likely to be lured toward rebellious behavior,
found themselves so motivated when they feared the British were attempting to incite
their slaves to insurrection. They of
all people became rebellious.
Ironically, once the fighting began, potential fighters among the plantation
owners stayed home to look after their slaves and guard against any possibility
of them fleeing their captivity.
This led to the last take-away. That would be that this defiance-repression
cycle undermined whatever British authority existed and with it any chance of
establishing an aristocracy in America.
“Common people rose up as never before, questioning the special
privileges of their ‘betters.’ After a
decade of political ferment and eight more years of war, free white Americans
ceased to bow.”[3]
The role that the common
people played turned out to be complex.
They were not all united on one side or the other, but generally behaved
to further their individual situations.
Surely, many played critical roles in advancing the American cause for
independence, but many others found their situation advanced by remaining loyal
to the Crown. One such case occurred when
they found their “betters” as patriots – pro-independence – and these lower-class
Americans thought of them as oppressive agents in terms of their social and
economic conditions. One such area was
the New York’s Hudson River Valley.
Either way, a general spirit
of rebellion prevailed regardless of which side these common folks took. And in this, little thought was given to the
eternal questions of liberty. Instead,
these people were reacting to their immediate conditions; conditions that determined
how common people took up their roles on whichever side of the conflict they
supported.
In doing so, they took up a
vast variety of roles and functions during the years of conflict from as early
as 1765 to 1783. And within the war
itself, the level of democratic practice within the American military structure
cannot be undervalued from electing noncommissioned officers to refusing to
obey orders. For example, “… try as he
might, George Washington was never able to force his men to kick women camp
followers out of the wagons.”[4]
To pick up on a question
the last posting poses – is Raphael a critical historian? – this blogger feels
that while he is attracted to that mode of thinking, he is more of a myth
buster. As such, the judgement here is
that he serves a useful role. Whatever
one’s historical vision is, it should be based on truth. And the truth is that the role average
Americans have played has not been given its appropriate level of
attention. Raphael’s work addresses this
shortcoming and gives that essential segment of the Revolutionary generation
its proper due.
As for some of his
conclusions, he generally seems to represent any federalist motivations – in the
form of allegiance common Americans had for federal values – as overstated in
most accounts of the war. The case for
their role in spurring the sacrifices of these people needs to be realistic. And here one needs to be cognizant of the
difference between espoused theories and theories-in-use.[5]
Simply stated, the argument
Raphael seems to make is that if people do not behave in certain ways, they
therefore do not really share in some ideal(s).
And even using his descriptions of what the common folks faced during
the war, one can readily understand why those folks did not sustain that level
of commitment toward the values that they initially cited at the beginning of
the war. Even Raphael describes these common
folks holding initially highly patriotic fervor at that time.
Who among any population
would sustain the level of sacrifice the war extracted from those people and
remain so motivated? Perhaps among fanatics
as one is led to believe, for example, the Taliban have. Surely, even back then, Americans were not
known to being so socialized as to adopt and sustain that level of tunnel
vision such fanaticism entails. And does
one really want that level of single-mindedness?
The suggestion here is that
one does not. The reason for that can be
the topic for another posting. But,
given the initial response Americans exhibited and their willingness to sustain
the effort for so many years, one can judge that among them they shared high
levels of federal values. That was exhibited
by their ongoing communal, collaborative, and cooperative dispositions and
behaviors that they exhibited for the duration of that long war.
[1]
Ray Raphael, A People’s History of the
American Revolution: How Common People
Shaped the Fight for Independence (New York, NY: Perennial, 2001).
[2] Ibid., 385.
[3] Ibid., 386.
[4] Ibid., 386.
[5]
See
Kenneth D. Benne, “The Current State of Planned Changing in Persons, Groups,
Communities, and Societies” in Planning
of Change, eds. Warren G. Bennis, Kenneth D. Benne, and Robert Chin (New
York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1985), 68-82. Espoused theories refers
to ideals and theories-in-use is how a person sees and plans to react to the
realities the person perceives. The
latter does not undo the former. Both
are important in determining how people behave.