TRANSLATE
Wars are relatively easy to define. They begin with opening shots, include battles and skirmishes, sometimes guerrilla action, and often some sort of peace deal to end the conflict. Wars sometimes drag on for years, but it is not hard for a historian to put a start date and an end date to a war. Traditionally, the War for Independence, or Revolutionary War, is said to have begun at Lexington on April 19, 1775 and ended with General Washington’s victory over Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 17, 1781. There was, of course, violence between Americans and British troops before 1775, and two years passed after Yorktown before the final treaty was signed, but the War for Independence is a distinct and definable historical event.
Much harder to define, however, is the American Revolution. Revolutions are changes that cannot be undone, and in this case we are talking about a change in American thinking. As far as the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies thought of themselves as British, but by the mid-1780s, they were American.
Certainly the war itself was part of this shift, but it began well before the shooting started. What made so many people change their thinking? What changed? Who led the cause, and who resisted? And what did this revolution mean to different people in the colonies-turned-country?
What do you think? What was the American Revolution?
CONTINUE READING