Five Things All Americans Should Know About 1776
The proud, defiant and liberty-loving Americans overthrow the repressive, tyrannical and alien British in a titanic, against-the-odds struggle for freedom and justice. This is the narrative of 1776 that is cherished by generations of Americans and one that still forms the bedrock of the national story and identity. However, this version greatly misrepresents what actually happened between Britain and its thirteen colonies.
At a time when the United States is finally re-evaluating many aspects of its history, perhaps the moment has come to re-assess the most enshrined American narrative of all — the nation’s foundation. Below are five insights that better explain 1776 and present a more realistic understanding of events.
1. 1776 was a dispute between Englishmen not countries
The British colonies in late eighteenth-century America were largely self-governing and had been for generations. Nevertheless, there were occasional disagreements between the colonies and the mother-country, invariably over the regulation of trade. The dispute that presaged 1776 involved the introduction of direct taxation to help pay for the French-Indian War and the subsequent upkeep of a standing army. However, colonial resistance to the new taxes was expressed not through a desire to break from Britain but, quite the opposite, to be more formally integrated into it. The refrain ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ invoked the 1689 English Bill of Rights, which disallowed taxes to be raised without due democratic process. Therefore, the colonists were not rebelling against a political system but against their exclusion from it, requesting nothing more than the political privileges enjoyed by many of their fellow citizens across the Atlantic. As argued in the ‘Declaration of Rights and Grievances’ of 1765, the colonists “possessed all the rights of Englishman” and taxes passed without representation violated those rights. Indeed, it is crucial to acknowledge that most citizens in the colonies were Englishmen, and proud Englishman at that. Francis Hopkinson, signatory to the Declaration of Independence and designer of the first American flag and first American coin, asserted that, “we in America are in all respects Englishmen.” This stands in contrast to the rather strained notion that Britain in her own colonies was an alien oppressor and foreign interloper.
Despite constant and passionate appeals from the colonists for a solution to the dispute and one that would allow them to remain British, perhaps most famously by Benjamin Franklin, who personally testified in the British parliament, they were to be in vain. It was the obstinate and belligerent refusal by the crown and successive British governments to allow American parliamentary participation and the exacerbation of colonial grievances through further legislation (including the Townshend Act of 1767, Tea Act 1773 and Intolerable Acts 1774–75) that broke the trust between colony and mother-country, pushed the colonists into an untenable position, and ultimately ensured the outbreak of hostilities. Hans Kohn concludes that, “the Anglo-Americans fought England not because they felt themselves un-English but because they were English. They did not fight for rights not possessed before; they were upholding English constitutional rights, based upon the English revolution of the seventeenth century.”
2. Support for independence was mixed on both sides of the Atlantic.
The idea that the war was between Britain and America is a simplistic construction that ignores that in 1776, as noted above, Britain and America were not discrete nations or separate peoples. Moreover, the war was not even between the colonists and Britain. Both narratives overlook the complexity and nuances of the conflict, particularly the fact that allegiances were divided within the thirteen colonies as well as in Britain itself. On the eve of the conflict, for example, John Adams noted that, “one-third of the colonists were Loyalists, one-third Patriots and the remainder indifferent.” Contemporary scholars now tend to agree that those figures actually exaggerate the number of Patriots. Either way, it is clear that almost as many colonists fought for Britain as fought against her.
This more complicated reality was mirrored by mixed opinion in Britain. Although exact numbers are elusive, it seems that no more than one-quarter of the mother-country supported the government’s position in the war, one in ten opposed it (a large number of whom, most prominently the radical parliamentarian John Wilkes, supported American independence), whilst the rest of the country were as indifferent as many of their colonial brethren. To most Britons it was a conflict about which they knew little, if anything at all, and cared even less. Thus 1776 was not Britain against America but simply pro-independence Englishmen pitted against anti-independence Englishmen. In the words of historian Cushing Strout, it was “less a popular revulsion against an alien tyranny than it was a tragic civil war.”
3. It was not much of a war
The narrative of a gargantuan struggle between despotic oppressors and heroic rebels is also undermined by the distinctly limited nature of the war. The colonial army and allies never exceeded 20,000 men and at times dwindled to less than 3,000 in a colony of two and a half million (a fifth of this total were slaves), whereas the British army and allies rarely totaled more than 30,000.
In addition to the small number of combatants, the war itself was barely more than a series of skirmishes. This is reflected in the relatively meager losses suffered by both sides. The data is unreliable but it is estimated that, aside from those who died from disease and malnutrition, the colonists and allies had approximately 6,800 men killed in action whilst the British and allies lost about 10,000. During the seven-year conflict this equates to 2,500 each year. To put that in perspective, the American Civil War averaged approximately 100,000 combatants killed in action every year.
4. The French won the war
As longstanding global rivals of the British and having recently suffered defeat at their hands in the Seven Years’ War, the French were enthusiastic to support the pro-independence colonists in America. It was the French who supplied trained men, arms, money, gunpowder, a navy and military leadership to the colonial forces. At the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, for example, not only were the French field guns vital for victory but it is estimated that nine out of ten colonial soldiers carried French weapons and used French gunpowder.
Although George Washington had other important leadership traits, military generalship was not one of them. Engagements at Long Island, Fort Lee and Brandywine at the beginning of the war highlighted his inability to make quick decisions and use reconnaissance effectively, as well as exposed his limitations as a strategist. The subsequent loss of the South proved pivotal and ensured that the French would become the main strategists for the continental army. As scholar John Ferling writes, “much of the war’s decision-making was hidden from the public. Not even Congress was aware that the French, not Washington, had formulated the strategy that led to America’s triumph.”
5. 1776 was not a revolution
A revolution is the sudden and forcible overthrow and replacement of a political system. This did not happen in 1776. Not only was Englishness at the core of colonial culture and identity, it was also at the heart of the political heritage. Consequently, the political system adopted by the newly independent United States was based firmly on British democracy. If Britain would not integrate the colonies into its political process then the colonies would simply recreate Britain’s political process in America.
Thus, the Magna Carta and, especially, the English Bill of Rights provided the inspiration and template for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the U.S. Bill of Rights. The new political system included key features of the mother-country’s, such as representative democracy; a head of state (though in America it was to be an elected male president rather than a hereditary, male or female, constitutional monarch); a bicameral legislature; the separation of powers; and a first-past-the post electoral system based on single-member electoral divisions.
Certainly the American constitution, although modeled on Britain’s and incorporating other Enlightenment principles that were popular across Europe at the time, was a far more comprehensive and codified framework, and one that provided a significant step forward in the development of western democracy (even if it was still far from perfect, as evidenced by the numerous subsequent amendments). However, a revolution it was not.
