The continental colonies were growing too fast and as Paine pointed out there was something ridiculous about an island ruling a continent. Almost nothing is inevitable in history. One can easily envision counterfactual scenarios in which the American colonists, like their northern neighbors, resolved to remain within the British Empire and then achieved peaceful separation from Great Britain during the nineteenth century.
For those who would argue for inevitability, the question becomes, when does a lasting independence become inevitable? October ? May ? April ? June ? Or, for that matter, ? At any of these points, circumstances might have turned out very differently, or historical actors might have behaved differently and achieved some sort of peace and reunification. Certainly not in or or Nobody — not Samuel Adams or anyone else —spoke of independence in those years.
Myth alert: the notion that Adams did was trumped up by a Tory trying to frame him. After the Tea Party, colonists differed over paying for the tea — and still no talk of independence. Only after King George declared the colonies in open rebellion late in , hired foreigners to shoot at Englishmen in America, and burned coastal towns was the idea of independence mainstreamed. Independence was NOT inevitable. Quite the contrary. A British victory would have enabled them to turn the American colonies into another Ireland, with a fake aristocracy and a standing army to keep order.
They were a mix or a muddle of races, Irish, German etc. This was the kind of propaganda that they used to crush Ireland. But those other colonies gained autonomy in a world with a U. Had the British made the overtures for peace even as late as and made the colonists full participants in the Empire the drive for independence would have faltered. After that it was going to be harder to put the genie back in the bottle, but we must always remember that the final results of the war could very easily had a different look had many things not occurred as they did.
Without French aid the Americans would not have won anything remotely close to what they did if even one colony had broken free which is extremely doubtful. Nothing in history is inevitable. Different decisions by key individuals at crucial points can have major consequences. Georgia and South Carolina lacked the resources to repel such an invasion, and the Americans would have been deprived of the five years in which they developed the infrastructure that supported partisan resistance in Also, southern Loyalists would not have been demoralized by persecution and thus more willing to assist the British.
Longer enlistments radically changed the composition of the Army. But few who owned farms were willing to serve for the duration, fearing loss of their property if years passed without producing revenue from which to pay taxes.
After , the average Continental soldier was young, single, propertyless, poor and in many cases an outright pauper. In some states, such as Pennsylvania, up to one in four soldiers was an impoverished recent immigrant.
Patriotism aside, cash and land bounties offered an unprecedented chance for economic mobility for these men. Accounts of shoeless continental army soldiers leaving bloody footprints in the snow or going hungry in a land of abundance are all too accurate. Albigence Waldo, a Continental Army surgeon, later reported that many men survived largely on what were known as fire cakes flour and water baked over coals. But that was not always the case. So much heavy clothing arrived from France at the beginning of the winter in that Washington was compelled to locate storage facilities for his surplus.
In a long war during which American soldiers were posted from upper New York to lower Georgia, conditions faced by the troops varied widely. While one soldier in seven was dying from hunger and disease at Valley Forge, young Private Martin, stationed only a few miles away in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, was assigned to patrols that foraged daily for army provisions.
Some , men served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Probably twice that number soldiered as militiamen, for the most part defending the home front, functioning as a police force and occasionally engaging in enemy surveillance.
If a militia company was summoned to active duty and sent to the front lines to augment the Continentals, it usually remained mobilized for no more than 90 days. Some Americans emerged from the war convinced that the militia had been largely ineffective.
Militiamen were older, on average, than the Continental soldiers and received only perfunctory training; few had experienced combat. At Camden, South Carolina, in August , militiamen panicked in the face of advancing redcoats. Throwing down their weapons and running for safety, they were responsible for one of the worst defeats of the war.
Yet in , militiamen had fought with surpassing bravery along the Concord Road and at Bunker Hill. Nearly 40 percent of soldiers serving under Washington in his crucial Christmas night victory at Trenton in were militiamen. In New York state, half the American force in the vital Saratoga campaign of consisted of militiamen. In March , Gen.
Nathanael Greene adroitly deployed his militiamen in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse fought near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina. In that engagement, he inflicted such devastating losses on the British that they gave up the fight for North Carolina. The militia had its shortcomings, to be sure, but America could not have won the war without it. On October 17, , British Gen.
The defeat persuaded France to form a military alliance with the United States. Previously, the French, even though they believed that London would be fatally weakened by the loss of its American colonies, had not wished to take a chance on backing the new American nation. But Saratoga was not the turning point of the war. In addition to Saratoga, four other key moments can be identified.
The first was the combined effect of victories in the fighting along the Concord Road on April 19, , and at Bunker Hill near Boston two months later, on June But in those two engagements, fought in the first 60 days of the war, American soldiers—all militiamen—inflicted huge casualties. The Digest: No. Share Twitter LinkedIn Email.
A Note on the American Revolution. Also in this issue:. Explaining the Growth of the Alternative Workforce. Alan J. Auerbach, the Robert D. Despite the last-minute release of the " Report," the initiative will end as Joe Biden plans to dismantle the Commission in one of his first acts as president. Derrick Clifton is an award-winning writer and journalist based in Illinois focusing on identity, wellness, culture and social justice.
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