THE COMMON RESPONSE
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.