Why did the thirteen American colonies revolt?  Why did farmers lay down their plows, pick up their muskets and march off to war?  The conventional story is that heroic leadership, fiery rhetoric and passionate arguments from people like Washington, Paine and Jefferson inspired the people to risk their lives in battle against the mighty British Empire. 

But maybe that's all wrong.  In American Insurgents, American Patriots, T.H. Breen, a history professor at Northwestern University, argues that ordinary Americans - farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen, townsfolk and others - deserve the lion's share of the credit for conceiving, nurturing and realizing America's dream of independence years before any of the Founding Fathers imagined that it was even possible.

After laying some introductory groundwork, Breen describes how the Boston Tea Party - an isolated protest rather than an act of rebellion - caused parliament to pass The Coercive Acts, closing the entire port of Boston and crushing the economy of the third largest colonial city.  Outraged by this overreaction and despite the challenges of limited communication and economic hardships of their own, hundreds of towns throughout Massachusetts and the other colonies - as far away as Wilmington, North Carolina - pooled their often meager resources to assist their Boston brethren.  In great detail, Breen describes how this network of charity was formed by ordinary citizens and how it united them up and down the coast, creating the structure that would prove crucial as tensions increased over the ensuing years.

This work really isn't about The American Revolutionary War, but about everything that led up to it, explaining how even before the small skirmish at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the die was already cast and the new Americans were ready for open bloody rebellion.

Basing his thesis on thousands of documents, diaries and newspapers from hundreds of insignificant colonial hamlets and counties, Breen includes the tiniest intriguing details from places like East Haddam, Connecticut; New Castle, Delaware; and Bennington, Vermont - places not frequently encountered in most history books.   In the detailed endnotes, he gives much credit to Peter Force (1790-1868) a Revolutionary War fanatic who made it his life's work to transcribe and organize every surviving war document to create a massive nine volume catalog. 

While Breen's writing style is a bit dry and professorial, I found his primary argument quite convincing.  Before the revolution, the Founding Fathers were wealthy land and slaveholders, living comfortably and feeling no need to foment rebellion from Mother England.   It was the small town ordinary folk who became the insurgents that created the atmosphere that made it unwise for the Founding Fathers to do anything but follow along.  They deserve credit for being wise enough to do just that, but Breen makes the case that the idea that they were the leaders of the revolution is most appropriately labeled as myth.

One of the things I find so interesting about these pre-war years is how it could have all gone so wrong.  Breen describes how each town had its own "Safety Committee" which was tasked with making sure any British loyalists were "convinced" of the error of their ways.  Their tools included tar, feathers, trial without counsel, loyalty oaths, shunning and blatant censorship amongst others - not exactly what one expects in a battle for freedom and liberty.   But somehow the committee members were able to keep it from spiraling out of control, avoiding the extremist terrors of the subsequent French Revolution. 

Breen also makes it clear that God's opinion mattered.  While men like Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and Madison may have been luke-warm deists, the insurgent town folk were heavily influenced by their Protestant religion and Breen quotes numerous influential clergy who pushed for bloodshed and rebellion against the British tyrants, claiming that the war was a religious obligation. 

In the end, American Insurgents, American Patriots is an absorbing and compelling tale of the unsung thousands who made the American Revolution possible and successful.  A strong recommendation for anyone who thinks they've read everything about America's birth. 

Recommended: Yes