Our First Civil War: Patriots And Loyalists In The American Revolution, by H.W. Brands

In general, one sees that in the history of successful revolutions that those who oppose the resolution are often delegitimized in history as being, at best, counter-revolutionary forces or toadies of corrupt and illegitimate authorities. In the history of the United States, for example, there has long been far more gentle treatment handed out to the defeated rebels of the Confederacy than to the loyalists of the American Revolution, who in at least some cases had good reason to fear for their life at the hands of the victories patriot forces. What this book, and others like it, manages to accomplish is that it sets the American Revolution in the context of a civil war over the hearts and minds of the American people, demonstrating that people who could agree in the importance of colonial unity and who protested some of the abuses of British authority on the American colonies could nevertheless violently disagree on whether the United States should have rebelled in order to become an independent nation. This book is remarkably generous-minded towards loyalists, but also very harsh on the incompetence of the British imperial government whose insults to Patriot leaders like Washington and Franklin prevented compromise solutions from being proposed and accepted before the friction of war removed the feeling among many Americans that they were fellow Britons with those in the United Kingdom.

This particular book is almost 450 pages long, and is a somewhat detailed read, at least in parts, though it admittedly skips over some parts of the narrative relatively quickly as well in order to keep its length to a manageable one-volume one. After a prologue where the author introduces his point about the dividing line in America’s colonial elite between patriot and loyalist that has often not been sufficiently recognized, the book consists of seven parts that cover the period between 1754 and 1783. The story begins, appropriately, with Washington’s efforts on behalf of Virginia and Franklin’s on behalf of Pennsylvania in the crisis that began the French & Indian War. (I). While the later successes of the British war effort managed to temporarily overcome the crisis of confidence in the British, it did not last (II). Soon, postwar British policy that sought to deny American claims to Western lands and claimed the power to decide all things without the consent of American colonists, along with taxation arguments, led to increasing hostility between the colonies and the British government (III). This is followed by a discussion of British efforts to humiliate and destroy the proud identity of increasingly militant colonists in New England and elsewhere (IV), which led to the full-blown justification of revolt and revolution that led to the outbreak of the American Revolution (V). After this comes a discussion of the ineffectual efforts at peace from the British–too late–and British efforts to take New York (VI) and Philadelphia (VII), while Americans sought an alliance with France. A short chapter discusses the fate of Galloway’s wife, who finds a sort of freedom in the midst of losing her Pennsylvania property while her husband and daughter to go England to seek help (VIII). This is followed by a discussion of Benedict Arnold’s treachery in the context of the stalemate of the latter parts of the war (IX), as well as the bitter recriminations that followed the hanging of prisoners at the instigation of William Franklin (X). The last chapter of the book, in its grim destruction of the warfare against ordinary people practiced both for and against America’s Iroquois people in the Appalachian country of Pennsylvania and New York (XI), is a reminder that there is never a good war.

One of the things that this book does particularly well is blend a lot of stories into a coherent narrative. We see the relationship of founding fathers with each other, but also with their former loyalist colleagues and even relatives (in the case of Franklin), with whom cooperation turned into violent hostility. We see the subtle factors of personal slights and prickly senses of honor that led some people to be intensely offended by British arrogance towards colonials even as others remained loyal to Britain despite Britain’s lack of appreciation for Loyalists in the postwar world, where such people were better best forgotten as reminders of a lost war and a lost empire. The author even manages to integrate stories of freed slaves and indigenous elites into the picture as well as that of elite women like Mrs. Galloway, Abigail Adams, and the corrupt French aristocratic ladies of the ancien regime who interacted but did not always appreciate each other. These stories demonstrate the complexity of people, their identities, and their struggles, as their own personal desires for honor and advancement led them to complicated actions which included rebellion and sometimes even treachery. How it is that people sought to serve their own interests while also serving larger causes makes for a thoughtful and complex reading experience, and this book is certainly a worthwhile book to read about the American Revolution and the larger context of revolutions and civil wars.