The unknown American Revolution: the unruly birth of democracy and the struggle to create America

The Founding Fathers may have lead the charge, but the energy to raise the revolt that culminated in the victory of the American Revolution emerged from all classes and races of American society. The Unknown American Revolution plunges us into the swirl of ideology, grievance, outrage, and hope that animated the Revolutionary decades. It tells of the efforts of a wide variety of men and women who stepped forward amidst a discouraging, debilitating, but ultimately successful war to inscribe on a clean slate their ideas for the kind of America they hoped would emerge from the blood-soaked eight-year conflict. Millennialist preachers and enslaved Africans, frontier mystics and dockside tars, disgruntled women and aggrieved Indians--all had their own fierce vision of what an independent America could and should be. According to Nash, the American Revolution was truly a people's revolution, a civil war at home as well as an armed insurrection against colonial control. " No one who reads this compelling book will ever again call the American Revolution a conservative affair orchestrated by great white men in great white wigs ....[Nash] reveals the churning cauldron of political and social discontents--white, red, and black, rich and poor, male and female--that was 18h-century North America. From it flowed the many and often contradictory streams that created the United States. Nash's is a real revolution, with winners as well as losers, with as many dreams dashed as dreams fulfilled ." -- Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania "A unique and captivating interpretation of American independence, and one that is more democratic than traditional histories of the period." -Chicago TribuneIn this audacious recasting of the American Revolution, distinguished historian Gary Nash offers a profound new way of thinking about the struggle to create this country, introducing readers to a coalition of patriots from all classes and races of American society. From millennialist preachers to enslaved Africans, disgruntled women to aggrieved Indians, the people so vividly portrayed in this book did not all agree or succeed, but during the exhilarating and messy years of this country's birth, they laid down ideas that have become part of our inheritance and ideals toward which we still strive today. Contents List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Roots of Radicalism 2. Years of Insurgence, 1761-1766 3. Building Momentum, 1766-1774 4. Reaching the Climax, 1774-1776 5. The Dual Revolution, 1776-1778 6: Writing on the Clean Slate, 1776-1780 7. Radicalism at Floodtide, 1778-1781 8. Taming the Revolution, 1780-1785 Epilogue: Sparks from the Altar of '76 Acknowledgments Notes Index An exploration of the ideas and radical sentiments that prompted the American Revolution argues that the war was a people's revolution and civil war, as well as an insurrection against colonial control. "CAN AMERICA BE HAPPY UNDER A GOVERNMENT OF HER OWN?" asked Thomas Paine, the thirty-seven-year-old immigrant, just sixteen months after arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.