The American Revolution is the name usually given to that strange and unique conflict that
developed in the American colonies of Great Britain and lasted from about 1775 to 1782.
The reason that I say it is the name usually given to that is because you must understand
The American Revolution falls short of providing us with a prototype of anything. It is completely
are really unique in the history of human civilization.
Now, I must point out that by no means is this the only time that people have started
a revolution against their government, nor is it, say, a unique period in that sense.
The French revolted against their government and there have been many, many people revolting
against their various governments from time immemorial.
Conflict against government has been more or less a standard operating procedure, but
in our own case there is a uniqueness that ascribes to it that I think we should understand.
It would be important that we do.
You see, when historians examine conflict, they tend to classify it generally in two
to Broadways. Either it is an international conflict, or it is an internecine conflict.
Now if it is an international conflict, there has to be two governments, two military forces,
two services of supply, two resources that can be drained, and you have a war between
An international war is a war that takes place within a given country.
Theory.
And here you would have certain characteristics that would be primarily as follows.
You would first of all have a certain group of people in power.
We often refer to them as the ins or the in group.
And then there is another group that would like to have power.
And these are the outs or the out group, the people who are out of power.
And it works out so that the people who are out of power cannot figure out how to get
power unless they do so by means of violence.
And so they institute an internecine war in which the outs attack the ins and try to capture
the seat of power.
Now that was typically what happened in the French Revolution.
It is particularly what happened in the Russian Revolution, and at the outset it is undoubtedly
what many historians thought had happened in the American Revolution.
So here is, you see, another characteristic that accompanies internecine war.
An internecine war is traditionally fought around the throne room.
The purpose is to throw out the existing holder of power and replace him with another ruler.
That's the reason for the fight. If you didn't have that in mind, why in the world would
you be fighting? So revolutions of an, or rather, let me restate it, internecine wars
have taken on the characteristic of revolutions, and most internecine conflict has been called
a Revolution if it Succeeds. Now, if a revolution doesn't succeed, it is called a hanged. So,
actually, you don't really call it a revolution unless it succeeds. Now, in our own case,
the historians first thought that they were dealing with a revolution—that is to say,
an international conflict—rather than an international war, because clearly this was
was a contest between the British subjects within a given country.
But if it followed the rules that the historians tend to follow, then the war had to take
place in Great Britain.
It had to be aimed at upsetting the king, and there had to be a crown prince in the
waiting room waiting to take power.
Well, of course, that didn't happen at all.
So in a very real sense, this was not an internecine war. You see, within an internecine war,
you have one government, but you have two groups of persons, both of which want power.
And the fight is over which group is to get the power. In a sense, an internecine war
is nothing more than a violent election. It is an election conducted with bullets rather
Other Than Ballots. That's all it is. Or you could state it in reverse in that an election
is a kind of legalized revolution conducted by ballots instead of bullets. And in essence,
that's what it is. Now, however, when you consider an international war, you have to
have two governments. And so some historians, in taking a look at the American experience,
presume that it was a war between the American government and the British government. But
And in point of fact, we didn't have a government.
We were under the British government.
So it couldn't be an international war and therefore it had to be an international war.
But if it was an international war, then it had to happen in Great Britain and it didn't
happen in Great Britain.
So it doesn't fit the mold.
The American Revolution was the only one of its kind, I doubt profoundly if we will ever
have another one like it. And this is perhaps one of the reasons why I tend to look upon it,
certainly not with favor in the sense that I view any kind of bloodshed or violence favorably.
But I think that there was a spirit in it that is an important thing for us to grasp and understand.
Here we had for the first, and I think the only time in history, a group of people who were engaged
in conducting a kind of militant operation not for the purpose of overthrowing a government but
simply for the purpose of getting out from under it. Many, if not most, of the actual men who fought
in the revolution didn't have in mind that they were going to create another government.
What they had in mind was that they were going to get back to the condition of non-regulation
that had preceded the emergence of George III.
And so the concept was that taxation wouldn't be permitted unless we were represented, but
we didn't want to be represented, we didn't want to pay taxes, and therefore we could
be free.
And all we wanted was to be free.
We wanted George III and his whole government to get off our backs.
And after that, God love him, he could do anything he wanted to, just get off our backs
and leave us alone.
Now that was the spirit of the American Revolution. It was exemplified at Lexington and Concord.
It was exemplified at Bunker Hill. It was exemplified at Valley Forge and Morristown.
Here you had a group of people who were engaged in a military operation against their own
government. This is all it was. It was a raggle-taggle band of guerrillas who were improperly housed,
where every man could own his own property and mind his own business and he didn't have
to pay some steward or some tax collector for the privilege of being alive.
Now that was the essence of the contest that unfolded in a very strange way.
The American Revolution, as you examine it, is completely improbable.
If it had never occurred and some novelist had set down to write about it as it actually
did occur, we would call him the most wild-eyed fanatic that you could ever imagine.
Let me just briefly outline what happened.
In the first place, when the fighting began—well, to be entirely precise, we don't really know
when it started.
There are any number of dates where hostilities broke out.
There was the Boston Massacre.
There was the burning and sinking of the gas pee.
There was an incident where a couple of British schooners or a British schooner attempted
to take over some lumber boats up off the coast of Maine and shooting started over that.
There were any number of incidents where bloodshed occurred, where actual violence ensued and
yet we didn't really have a war going.
We just had acts that could be called riots and vandalism and things of this sort.
They were not happy events and the people in this country were very excited about it.
And of course, the Tories were calling for law and order and suppressed the rebels.
And the rebels were saying that those Tories ought to be hanged and tarred and feathered.
And you had a real split in the thinking in the country because although we were primarily
Wigs. There had come over a large contingent of Tories, too, who believed that the king was right,
no matter what the king did. So here you have this kind of a situation going on.
Now in 1775, the Battle of Lexington occurred, and the incidents leading to that battle are so strange
that I would suggest that you take the time to study it. I won't have the time in this brief
exchange to go into the detail, but it really is a fascinating incident. I can only tell you
that the contest probably got started because the men on Lexington Green on that early frosty morning
on April 19, 1775 had had too much to drink. Now that's really the case. It sounds as though
I'm trying to downgrade it. I'm not. I simply marvel at these fellows who got out there in this
This Early Morning, and they were a little high, I understand.
I visited the Buckman's Tavern there on Lexington Green, and the woman in charge assured me
that this was the case, that all of the men there that opened fire on the British or got
engaged in the hostilities, whoever opened fire, had been in the tavern and they'd all
had a drink of what is called a rum flip.
And if anyone's really curious about that, I can provide the recipe.
in any case they'd had a rum flip and they felt pretty good and when the
British showed up somebody pulled the trigger and the war was on. Now the
interesting thing is here is a war or at least it's been called a war and there
was no formal declaration of war ever made. Now the reason is because of course
in this sense it was internecine. There was no American government. We were
are American's who are taking on our government, which was the British government.
And we were upset about it, primarily because it was trying to tax us and regulate our businesses.
This was a middle-class revolt.
We didn't like this.
We wanted to operate our businesses our own way.
And so we started fighting.
And I have no doubt at all that many of the people who were engaged in the battle at Lexington
and Concord and then the ensuing hostilities simply got into the fight because there was
is a fight handy. We Americans have always tended to be a little bit pugnacious and belligerent.
And if there's a fight going on, we like to jump into it. And so when something happened,
and I think it happened because spirits were high of both kinds, and tensions had mounted
and somebody pulled the trigger and we're off and running. So it got started that way.
If there is a man who declared that the hostilities had begun, it would be Captain John
John Parker, in charge of the Minuteman contingent on Lexington Green that morning, who said,
if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. If that's a declaration of war, make the
best of it. That's the only one we had. From that moment on, the American colonies in Great
Britain were fundamentally at war with Great Britain. And that's how it started.
Now the general view was a mixed one. As I say, I'm sure a great many people just got
into the fight because they like to fight. Then undoubtedly there were a few, I don't
think there's any doubt of this, there were a few who were thinking about this hostility
as something that might be exploited to their advantage later, that some other time in the
future perhaps we'd have a government and they could be in the forefront. This would
would be a group of elitists, men who thought in terms of political control, but by no means
was this the general view of the population. Probably most of the people were simply looking
to the idea that taxes could be stopped and we would go back to the way we'd been before,
in a condition where we weren't being regulated in tax. There may be a few who were actually
hoping that we would obtain some kind of recognition in Great Britain and end up with members in
in Parliament, and then of course we could pay taxes legally because we would be properly
represented in Parliament.
There may have been such people, I don't know.
Certainly the opinions in the people who were engaged in the fighting would have varied
all the way from one end to the other.
Some who were just doing it for the fun of it and some who had a noble purpose in mind,
including those who felt that the rights of man were supreme and that no other man had
any right to impose rule on them. In any case, the fight started. Now, we didn't have a general,
we didn't have a government, we didn't have a service as a supply, we didn't have anything.
We are, as I've indicated, just a raggle-tangle bunch of gorillas and Washington wanted to be
the general. Well, Washington had been trying to get to be the general for a long time. He had
attended every public function and he wore his uniform as well. He was a handsome man
and a big man and he had medals that he'd won in the French and Indian War. So he appeared
at many public functions and he said, you know, the hostilities are coming and I am the
man that really ought to be in charge of the military end of this. And there was no opposition.
Everybody agreed. But Washington couldn't get an appointment. How could he get an appointment?
The only government was the government in Great Britain. They weren't about to appoint
," to start fighting them. Well, we had had a convention. It was called a congress, but
the word congress at that time meant a convention. We had had what was called the first Continental
Congress, which was just a convention of well-meaning people who wanted the Great Britain to pull
back. There had been some ad hoc committees appointed at this convention, including one
One of the people that John Hancock chaired, and Washington finally met John Hancock and
some of these people in the committee, and he said, how come I'm not the general?
Couldn't I be appointed?
And Hancock said, sure, you're obviously the man for the job, you're the general.
So he said, well, can't I get a letter to this effect?
They said, sure.
They had no more authority to write a letter appointing a general than I have, but they
did it.
You see, the real political authority was in Great Britain.
We didn't have any over here, and they weren't about to try to set it up.
They weren't ready for that yet. This is in 1775, you see. Anyway, Washington finally
got a letter and he entered into an arrangement with these people, which is really cute, and
that is that they knew they didn't have any money to carry on the war, but Washington
was rather well off. So he agreed to help finance the war, providing at the end he would
be repaid. And they promised this, thereby in essence committing people that they didn't
know anything about to pay for the costs of the war, whatever those happen to be, as Washington
might run up the bill.
Now, of course, we know that Washington never told a lie because he couldn't, but his expense
account has come to view in recent years and it's a fascinating expense account.
For instance, the first day after he got his letter of appointment, he went out and he
He bought five horses and he needed them, of course, for his military activities.
The cost of the five horses is listed as $7,000, which even today would be a pretty good price
to pay for a horse.
Anyway, his costs were fairly substantial.
You know he went, he lost all his money during the war, but he made it back afterwards.
So really, he did a tremendous thing.
No one can fault Washington on his courage and his persistence.
Here is a man who had a jaw that jutted out like the rock of Gibraltar, and when he started
on a course, he followed it through.
In fact, so much so that you couldn't believe some of the things that he undertook to do.
But you have to understand that we had the Battle of Lexington, the Battle of Concord,
The Battle of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Bunker Hill. All of these took place before
we had a general. Now try to find a situation like that someplace else in history. Washington
accepted his appointment after the Battle of Bunker Hill had been fought, and he took
charge of things then, and he went on all through the balance of 1775, retreating usually,
winning an engagement here and there. Finally, the winter of 1775 brought the Battle of Dorchester
of Money.
Now, it was in January of 1976 that a fellow named Tom Payne got into the act.
Nobody had ever heard of him before.
He was a bridge builder, and now he wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense.
And Common Sense stated in very specific, explicit terms what the real purpose for the
fighting was.
What Paine said was that we, although we had originally been British subjects, were and
of right ought to be a free and independent people.
Now prior to Tom Paine's Common Sense, there had been a
divergency of view about what we were fighting for. We just knew we were fighting. But now
Paine wrote Common Sense and everywhere that that pamphlet was read, people heaved a sigh
of relief and said, oh, well, this does make sense. I guess this is what we're doing.
Washington finally got a copy of Tom Paine's Common Sense and wrote in his diary, at last
I know what I'm fighting for. He was the general. It took Tom Paine, a bridge builder, to tell
him what he was fighting for because, you see, he wasn't representing a government. There was
no government to tell him what he was doing, so he was doing it anyway. And now Paine said this.
In fact, Washington became so excited about common sense when he read it that he bought enough copies
so that every member of the army could get a copy and he had it distributed to them. Then he found
and the American Army. The Reading of Tom Paine's Common Sense.
Well, after that had become popular, then those persons who were somewhat elitists and who felt that they were the movers and the shakers getting things done, they discovered that Tom Paine had actually run off with the intellectual leadership.
and they said we can't let that happen and so these people got together in July of 76 to write
the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is in essence a paraphrase of
many of the things that Payne said in common sense but now nobody knew anything about Payne
and these were the important people in this country such people as Jefferson, Hancock, Adams,
programs, Patrick Henry, etc. These people got together and they wrote and signed the
Declaration of Independence. It's an extremely interesting and a very vital document. Of
course, it has no legal standing. Remember, this was all done before we had a government
and I might assure you that there is no legal standing to the Declaration of Independence
today. There are many people in this country who don't know that, strange as it may seem.
Many people presume that what the Declaration of Independence tells them, that that is a
part of the government of the United States.
It isn't at all.
It has no legal standing and I know of people who have tried to take some kind of legal
action based upon the Declaration of Independence and they found of course that no court will
listen to it because the declaration was simply a private document.
It was signed by 56 people who had no legal standing and knew that they didn't and they
The only people pledged to do anything about the Declaration were the people who signed
it, and that's all it was.
I happen to have great respect for it because, number one, I like what it said, and number
two, I like the fact that the fellows who said it were man enough to put their names
to it.
I would respect it even if I didn't like it on that basis, and I happen to like what
it said, so I'm very sympathetic to the Declaration of Independence and to the ideas it enunciates.
Anyway, we got the Declaration of Independence in July of 1976. Shortly thereafter, France came
in as our ally. When France discovered that the leading citizens in this part of the world were
ready to officially state to Great Britain that we were going to separate and go our own way,
that gave France a good reason to get into it. France didn't have any particular love for the
of the American Colonies.
But she was still smoldering in resentment from the last war she'd had with Britain wherein
she'd lost Canada.
So this gave her a good opportunity to get back at Great Britain, and she came in as
our ally.
And it's a good thing she did because she paid most of the bills and provided most of
the troops from that time on until it was over.
In fact, all that Washington was able to muster here in this country was just a small band,
," and sometimes possibly as many as 8,000 to 10,000 Native Americans who were in the
fight, but there might be twice that number of French who were our allies and who were
carrying on the war with us.
So we went on from that point, Washington retreating and losing battle after battle,
once in a while winning one, but staying with it, no matter what happened, through thick
In 1781, this had happened. All during the process of the conflict, the separate colonies
that had been colonies under Britain threw out their governors back home and seized the
the power of that particular colonial government.
So that by 1781, all of the colonies had become states, and they were now calling themselves
states.
We started the war as thirteen separate colonies.
By 1781, we were thirteen separate states, and we were all independent of each other
and of Britain.
In 1981, we put together what was called the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation were drawn up more or less as a kind of umbrella under which
all of the thirteen states could get together and act in concert.
It was done with the idea of creating a kind of strength through the union of all of the
states.
What it was feared was that one or another state might find it to its advantage to make
make a separate treaty with Britain and thus come out of the conflict and so they wanted
to hold this together and that's what the purposes of the articles were for.
Then in 1782 we had the last battle and the war ended.
But now how do you stop this one?
It had never been officially declared.
We didn't have a government.
We still didn't have one.
We had 13 separate governments bound together under the articles.
So we sent representatives to England to make a treaty.
You know, we found we couldn't.
The British would take a look at whoever we sent over and ask who he was and who he represented
and all of the people coming over said, well, I represent my particular state, Virginia,
Massachusetts, whatever.
And of course, the British authorities would properly say, well, we weren't fighting you.
We were fighting the represents the whole country.
We didn't.
You know how we finally got the treaty?
... the job over to France, France demanded that the British envoys go to Paris, and the
treaty is called the Treaty of Paris, and it's a treaty between Britain and France.
And in there, there's a clause that says that in process, you see, the American colonies
got their freedom, and that's how it came about.
So that's the story, or at least that part of the story, of the American Revolution.