WAR LESSONS

The War of Independence was the central event in the lives of a generation of Americans. For nearly a decade it entangled them in experiences of a remarkable intensity, shaping their thoughts about themselves, their society, and their government. Of the approximately 400,000 adult white men who lived in the colonies in 1775, probably about 175,000 fought in the war - 120,000 as Patriot soldiers or militia, 55,000 as Loyalists. Thus, husbands or sons from nearly half of all white families were part of the “shooting” war. Many others - black as well as white, women and children as well as men - were shot at or suffered personal harm. Thousands of homes were looted or burned, and tens of thousands of people were detained, molested, or forced to flee from the cities occupied by British or Patriot troops and the intensely contested battle zones around New York City, throughout central New Jersey, and nearly everywhere in Georgia and the Carolinas.

For all these families the war was a political education. They learned, first, that one had to choose sides; it was more dangerous to remain neutral, without friends, than to join the Patriot militia or declare for the British cause. The war itself created loyalty to the new state governments and to the United States.

Second, they learned to question social and political authority. Once ordinary people had sensed the power of their united strength - whether in mobs, or militia, or armies, or popular conventions - they were less willing to defer to men of wealth and high status. In this sense, the war was a democratizing experience that solidified support for republicanism and began to overturn the deeply ingrained deferential habits of the colonial era.

Finally, some of the American people learned that success in war, and presumably in peace, required not only a loyal and purposeful population but also direction by a strong central government. The economic trials of the war, especially the difficulty of raising money without the power of taxation, encouraged them to enhance the powers of Congress at the expense of those of the states. Thus, the war developed sentiment for national political institutions.

The legacy of the war was a volatile mix of forces: patriotic fervor, democratic energy, republican values, and nationalist sentiment. Their interaction would determine the fate of the new nation.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 817