Kinuachdrach@14 said ”The standard view is that the American Revolution was a minority success — about 1/3 of people in the Colonies actually supported the Revolution; the remainder were split about evenly between those who opposed the Revolution, and those who simply kept their heads down. Something miraculous happened to let a minority take the lead.”
Nothing miraculous happened – it should come as no surprise to readers here that “the standard view” in this regard is a lie – a century deep lie which has been exposed numerous times over the years, but which still exists as “the standard view”.
The source of the persistent lie is a misreading of a letter written by Adams in 1813 in which he described American attitudes toward the French revolution and the resulting conflict between France and English which took during his term as President. It was clear both from the context and the substance of Adam’s letter that his breakdown applied to American attitudes toward the French revolution, not the American.
Consider Adam’s words. Referring to the neutral third, Adam’s wrote “The middle third, composed principally of the yeomanry, the soundest part of the nation, and always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France….” Now ask yourself ‘Why would Adams, of all people, praise the neutrals as the soundest part of the nation if he was referring to the American revolution?’
However, because Adams was himself neutral with regard to the French revolution and the war with England which followed, it makes perfect sense that he would describe the neutral position on the part of the citizens as “the soundest” relative to that conflict.
The evidence from all sources of the period is of overwhelming support for the patriots over the english among the general population. To be sure, there were tories and other loyalists, unevenly distributed. Still the record shows that nowhere outside the cities were the english forces safe from harassment and ambush – there were no loyalist strongholds to provide support. Documents from the period uniformly show confidence by Washington and others of strong majority support together with a remarkable lack of concern about local loyalists. Tidbits abound in individual stories. One which amused me came from Tory Anglican preacher Jonathan Boucher, who wrote of keeping two loaded pistols at the pulpit as he preached. Hardly indicative of a man confident of strong support even within the church one might think would be most loyal to the crown.
At one point Adams is on record at estimating that one in six was a tory. When applying for a loan from the Dutch, Adams estimated tory strength at one in twenty. So, perhaps the more accurate ballpark in which we might search for the truth about tories in America during our revolution lies between five to fifteen percent.
On the other hand, since marxists and academics seem to like the idea of elite minorities driving hegelian revolutions, we might expect the lie to continue as “the standard view.”
