>From Don B. Kates
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 8:02 AM
Subject: FROM DON KATES: AMERICAN REVOLUTION - POPULARITY???
In the moments of nonsense in which he was often found, John Adams
popped off that the American Revolution was something one third of the
colonists favored, one third opposed, and the final third was neutral.
Historians have been repeating this nonsense ever since. There were no
public opinion polls, but people can vote w/ their feet, and what that
vote reflected is this division:
A lot of the colonists were willing to fight and die for the Revolution.
A lot were not. Many (especially among the elite in NYC and
Philadelphia) were willing to hobnob with the British as long as they
held those cities. And many, including financially strapped farmers sold
food stuffs to the British for hard cash when the Revolutionaries could
offer only worthless American "continentals." But the crucial truth was
that almost no one was willing to fight and die for King George.
The British Crown opposed the Revolution under the delusion that
among Americans there was a vast undercurrent of support for the Crown.
King George and his advisers never intended to fight several million
colonial rebels from England with British troops and hired mercenaries.
George and his advisors thought that, given the chance, hundreds of
thousands of Americans would rally to the Crown. But that never
happened! Instead the British faced the disastrous situation that they
could endlessly defeat the colonists and physically occupy their cities
– but as soon as the occupying British troops left the cities would go
over to the rebels!
Eventually the British realized that to retain captured American
territory they would have to occupy it from England 3,000 miles away.
And the British were not willing to finance the occupation to that
extent. So they gave up and unhappily allowed America to be free of them.
###
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****************************************************************************************************************
Professor Joseph Olson, J.D.,
LL.M. o
651-523-2142
Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037)
f 651-523-2236
St. Paul, MN
55113-1235
c 612-865-7956
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