1. It’s that time of year again; time to teach about the lead-up to the American Revolution and do my best to make it look as non-ridiculous as possible. My philosophy, as a teacher, is that my job is not to teach them my opinions, but to teach them what happened and let them decide for themselves what they think (eventually: these are 7th graders we’re talking about here, so I don’t expect too much independent thought). So I always try to present both sides, and whenever one seems to be coming off as too clearly in the wrong, I try to re-emphasize their point of view to balance things out.

Here it’s all my opinion all the time, so brace yourselves; the Revolution is on my mind again.

2. Incidentally, some people make a real issue of whether to call it the ‘American Revolution’ or the ‘American War of Independence.’

Myself, I don’t think it matters much what you call it (except that ‘War of Independence’ sounds clunky and affected to me). But, on recent reflection, I realized there’s a problem with ‘War of Independence.’ In other wars so designated – e.g. the Greek war of Independence – the nation fighting for independence had had a prior existence and an independent identity before being absorbed into the larger body. Greece was Greece before the Ottomans. Ireland was Ireland before the English. But America was not America before the British: America, as a nation, is a British creation. And I don’t mean in the sense that India is a British creation (because there was no unified ‘Indian’ identity before the British came); the rebelling states quite literally would not exist had the British not created them, supported them, defended them, etc. over the course of the past century and a half. That means, to my mind, that the term ‘War for Independence’ is a little misleading. It was not the reclaiming of an old identity, but the creation of a new one, the overthrowing of one government (as far as the colonies were concerned) and the installment of a new one which had to be created out of whole cloth based on entirely new priniciples. Therefore, it was a Revolution.

Personally, I prefer to call it ‘The First Civil War’. If you don’t like that one, ‘The American Mutiny’ would also work.

3. Something that has stood out to me, as I read more, is the question of just how politically astute the Founding Fathers really were. We are taught, of course, that they were political geniuses non-pareil who created the greatest governmental system ever yet devised, and all that was best of right and left met in their aspect and their eyes.

Which of course we are; the Post-Revolutionary American identity is heavily tied to its political system, so it is necessary to believe that that political system is uniquely excellent in order to sustain our quasi-religious reverence for it.

But looked at objectively (and I admit I haven’t made a close study of this yet, so take it with a pinch of tyrannical tea-leaves), that really doesn’t seem very credible. These were not men of vast experience, or who had made a survey of many different lands and forms of government. By and large, the Founding Fathers had very little political experience; they were essentially just local politicians and academics. They had plenty of experience managing low-population, ideologically-uniform communities, but not in governing large, diverse societies filled with competing interests, much less finding common ground with foreign governments or alien cultures.

4. And the facts seem to me to bear this out: their first go at creating a government – the Articles of Confederation – was a disaster. Their diplomacy before and during the Revolution was amazingly clumsy: amounting to just re-issuing the same demands over and over and expecting the British government to be convinced by their arguments (politics is not about making good arguments, it is about balancing competing interests). Or making amateurish mistakes like trying to form an alliance with the Quebecois at the same time they were abusing them and their religion in the letter to the English people (as if they thought no one would read both).

The Revolutionaries seem to have been hung up on the idea that they were in the right, and therefore the government needed to recognize that and just give them everything they wanted, which, again, is not at all how politics works.

There is no consideration of the idea that the Crown or Parliament have their own legitimate interests which might need to be allowed for, no thought give to why the Crown should recognize the Congress as a legitimate body at all (or that it’s obviously in its interest not to do so, as the Congress essentially amounts to a rival government), no attempt at compromise, not really even any strategy; just run at the brick wall over and over and hope it breaks this time.

Heck, these are men who were apparently shocked to find that they had been declared in rebellion after their forces had fought several battles and killed over a thousand of the King’s soldiers, not to mention spending years firing up the population against the government. That is not the mark of men who excel in foresight (foresight being the core trait of skilled politicians).

In hindsight, there were any number of moves the Congress could have done to put themselves in a better bargaining position, but which don’t seem to have occurred to them (e.g. pay for the tea in the name of the Continental Congress. This lowers the temperature and gets Boston open again while forcing the Crown either to recognize the Continental Congress as a legitimate body or look bad by refusing a ‘good faith’ offer).

In any case, I am deeply skeptical of the characterization of the Founding Fathers as especial political geniuses. Not to say they were ignorant, of course: no one could say that. Only that they were, frankly, well-read amateurs in over their heads.

5. It’s similar to the fact that George Washington, though undeniably a great leader, was not a great general (especially compared with someone like Robert E. Lee). He made enormous strategic errors which, in almost any other war, would have gotten him crushed in short order (e.g. trying to hold Manhattan island against the British Navy). He rarely won a battle where he didn’t have a clear advantage in numbers (and sometimes not even then), and his most famous victory involved ambushing an inferior force of sleeping men.

He wasn’t a bad general, of course (you don’t survive eight years of warfare against a superior foe – even one that’s only fighting half-heartedly most of the time – and win the undying love of your soldiers if you’re a bad general), but he didn’t win the war because of his strategic brilliance.

Again, Lee is the obvious comparison: he was always outnumbered, against a far more committed foe right on his doorstep, and had no foreign allies, yet he almost pulled it off while winning most of his set-piece battles through brilliant and daring maneuvers.

6. I’m sure some of you are fuming about my characterizations here, but I actually find this to be one of the saving graces of the American Revolution. It was stupid, unnecessary, and never should have happened; more or less stumbled into by the amateurish incompetence and emotional incontinence of the Americans (though the British government does deserve its share of the blame). But where it differs from almost every other revolution in the world is that those incompetent amateurs did not remain so. By a combination of natural talent and what seems to be genuine good will, they were able to recognize the problems and pitfalls of their situation and reform their new government into something functional. This is really what sets them apart and makes them (mostly) admirable.

That is to say, the American Revolutionaries deserve condemnation for getting into that situation, but commendation for how they handled it (even Jefferson, if only for the fact that he didn’t try to use his Presidency to undo everything he didn’t like about the new government). By analogy, it’s rather like a teenager who got carried away with his girlfriend and ended up a father-to-be. Only, unlike most revolutionaries, who would have ditched the girl or murdered the child in order to maintain their footloose and fancy-free lifestyle, the said teenager did the right thing by marrying her, getting a job, and generally making honorable lemonade out of a shameful set of lemons.

(For reference, the French Revolution would be more on the lines of “her lips said non, non, but her eyes said oui oui…”)

7. Speaking of which, I recently reviewed the story of John Adams’s meeting with King George (after the war, of course), which is a marvelous tribute to both men. Adams was, not unreasonably, very nervous about meeting the man he had publicly denounced as a tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people. He also wasn’t sure whether the king would accept him as a legitimate ambassador, given the nature of the recent events. To make matters worse, he learned that he was expected to give a short speech to the King upon meeting him.

Complicating everything, of course, was the fact that Adams was not naturally adept at dealing with people.

Adams arrived and, as he suspected, the other ministers in the court looked at him “like a beast in a menagerie” as he described it. Then came his meeting with the King.

Unlike his ministers, however, King George received Adams with the same respect that he paid to any visiting dignitary. They exchanged their respective speeches, expressing their hopes for good relations going forward. The King admitted that he had been the last to consent to the separation, but that he accepts it as an accomplished fact.

Then the King made a quip about Adams’s dislike of the French, which Adams agreed with, before adding that “I have no attachment but to my own country.”

To which the King answered: “An honest man will never have any other.”

Which shows that both sides were at least infinitely preferable to today’s leaders, most of whom openly loathe the countries they’re supposed to be in charge of.