Reflections on the Revolution in America

Reflectionson the Revolution inAmerica Wallace Coyle and William M. Fowler, eds. The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1979. 231 + xiv pp. W.Robert Higgins, ed. The Revolutiona,y War in the South: Powe,: Conflict, and leadership: EJ.1m·s in Honor o(Jolm Richard Alden. Durham, N.C.: Duk~ University Press, 1979. 291 + xxii pp. Linda K. Kerber. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Re\'o/11tiona1yAmerica. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (For the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virgmial, 1980. 304 + xiv pp. Leopold S. Launitz-Schiirer, Jr. loyal Whigs and Revolutionaries: The Making of the Revolution in New York, 1765-1776. New York: New York Uniwrsity Press, 1980. 225 + xiv pp. Bruce Tucker Seven years after the flood of studies which accompanied the American Bicentennial in 1976, the American Revolution continues to command the intellects and energies of historians. An array of monographs and interpretive studies has poured from the presses, chipping away at the neo-Whig analysis of the origins of the Revolution established by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood in the 1960s. While some scholars have tried to offer alternative interpretations, others have studied neglected topics, intending to fill in gaps in information. Of the four books under review, Higgins' The Revolutiona ,y War in the South and Kerber's Women of the Republic address issues which have long awaited imaginative treatment. Coyle and Fowler's The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives, a collection of essays, summarizes recent scholarship on the Revolutionary era, and Launitz-Schtirer's Loyal Whigs and Revolutionaries looks afresh at the relationship between provincial factional struggles and the forging of revolutionary loyalties in New York. All four volumes make solid contributions to the study of the American Revolution, but Women of the Republic stands out as a book which could substantially alter the questions asked by both historians of the Revolution and of women. The scholarship represented in The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives, Gordon Wood writes in the foreword, has not simply reinterpreted old data, it has "actually been creating new historical facts" (p. x). Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1983,49-59 50 Bruce Tucker Minorities previously left out of the study of the Revolution- blacks, women and native Americans- have now become central objects of analysis. Other articles cover the consequences of the rapid growth in population and the impact of the Revolution on American cities. In addition, redcoats, loyalists, Imperial officials and even King George III are accorded the same sympathy long reserved for patriot heroes. The contributors to this volume offer an impressive range of topics and approaches, but it must be said that their interpretive achievements are rather modest. The collection beginswith an unsuccessful attempt by Linda Grant DePauw, (with the help of a model borrowed from the pollster Elmo Roper) to explain the mobilization of the politically inert. Roper divides the population of any political body into six concentric circles, including Great Thinkers, Great Disciples, Great Disseminators, Lesser Disseminators, Participating Citizens and the Politically Inert. DePauw accepts these categories and proceeds to identify the actors in the American Revolution according to their location in the scheme. Thus she explains how revolutionary ideas emanated from the center to the periphery where a seemingly apathetic majority awaited its moment of decision. Historians are becoming increasingly wary of models which purport to explain behavior in all places and at all times because they are more interested in the peculiarities of time and place which distinguish an event, idea or movement from what came before or after. Thus the attempt to divide the American population into six concentric circles seems like a pointless exercise. DePauw compounds her problem with an uncritical acceptance of the term "politically inert." ''Like the majority of people in all ages," she writes, "they found that the personal problems they faced in their daily lives absorbed all of their attention. Making a living, raising their children and trying to avoid succumbing to one of the many diseases that ravaged eighteenth-century America were enough problems for most people to worry about" (p. 7). DePauw describes a vast majority of people who have...