The cause The American Revolution and its discontents, 1773-1783

Distinguished historian Ellis (American Dialogue, 2018) briskly summarizes the crisis provoked by the British government's attempt to tax its American colonies and recounts the fateful ramifications of the British response to the Boston Tea Party, the military coercion of Massachusetts. The colonies' reaction, to assembly in 1774 as the First Continental Congress, instigated the replacement of royal colonial governments with American states. This became known as The Cause. The phrase's "inherent ambiguity," as Ellis aptly observes, allowed for elasticity. At first it meant restoring American liberties; two years later, independence; over the course of the war, establishing the government for the United States; and in the peace treaty, ending the war and leading to territorial expansion. Essential to the evolution of The Cause was George Washington. But as indispensable as he was, he also personified The Cause's glaring hypocrisy when it came to slavery. Ruing Washington's postwar hesitance to set an example by freeing his slaves, Ellis underscores the moral failings and deferrals that were then deemed necessary to ensure political unity. In all, a fresh and astute analysis of the American Revolution.

The colonists didn't describe their war for independence as the American Revolution, Pulitzer winner Ellis (American Dialogue) points out in the preface to this richly detailed, multivoiced history. The term they used was "The Cause"--"a conveniently ambiguous label that provided a verbal canopy under which a diverse variety of political and regional persuasions could coexist." Ellis skillfully charts those divergent interests as they coalesced in the 1770s to oppose the British parliament's "new imperial policy" toward the colonies and details early military clashes in the North, struggles to secure funding for the Continental Army, and the decisive victory at Yorktown in October 1781. Peace negotiations in Paris "expanded to include the addition of a western domain with all the ingredients of a looming American empire" while the former colonists' resistance to "any form of consolidated power" became an enduring point of political tension. Ellis credits the deferral of democratic reforms by "prudent revolutionaries" such as John Adams and George Washington with helping the American Revolution to succeed where the French Revolution failed, but forcefully argues that ending slavery should have been the exception to the rule. Profiles of lesser-known figures including Continental Army soldier Joseph Plumb Martin and Mohawk chief Joseph Brant add depth and nuance to a familiar story. This expert account highlights the "improvisational" nature of America's founding. (Sept.)

Ellis examines the American Revolution (known by American insurgents as "the Cause") through the events, motives, participants, and consequences that have often been mythologized, minimized, or forgotten. He relates the history from often conflicting viewpoints on both the British and American sides and warns readers to study the circumstances of the imperfect humans involved before judging them from a 21st-century perspective. Ellis argues that nationhood was not the generally accepted goal of the Cause, contrary to modern misconceptions. Instead, the Colonies' mistrust of a strong, centralized imperial British government both fueled and jeopardized independence, resulting in a deliberately weak coalition of 13 independently managed states that couldn't effectively fund and execute the war or plan a fiscally or politically viable future. Ironically, Ellis argues, leaders of the Cause tried to maintain precarious national unity and win independence for white people by delaying freedom and equity for Black people, Indigenous peoples, and women. He concludes that the legacy of these strategies was antithetical to the Cause, the goals of which have yet to be fully realized. VERDICT Ellis's witty style and astute analysis make this essential reading for historians and enthusiasts at all levels who want to disentangle the complex historiography of the American Revolution.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

With his characteristically graceful prose, Ellis offers a short, straightforward history of a critical decade in the nation's youth. Unlike most of the author's previous work--mostly reflective book-length essays on various aspects and leading figures of the Revolutionary era--this work is more in the line of traditional narratives about American history. While both elite leaders and average people populate these pages, no reader will mistake it for a social or cultural history or history-from-the-bottom-up. Nor is it a history of the entire Revolution, which usually starts no later than the 1765 Stamp Act crisis. Instead, Ellis digs in with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and ends with the Treaty of Paris of 1783. His focus is on the Revolution's male leaders, its politics, the colonists' inner civil war, and military campaigns. Little here is new by way of interpretation. The author's sole general argument--that the colonists' victory was "foreordained"--won't go unchallenged. This is, quite simply, a well-known story told by a master storyteller known for perceptive detailing. As is always the case with Ellis, he is brilliant at short takes--events, decisions, individuals. Here, he foregrounds four often overlooked men--diplomat John Jay, thinker and pamphleteer John Dickinson, military leader Nathanael Greene, and financier Robert Morris--without whom the Colonies might not have forged a nation. George Washington duly commands center stage, his character and genius indispensable for American victory. True to his own skills at bringing people alive, Ellis also includes sympathetic miniprofiles of normal, unsung participants in the period's fraught events: loyalists, women, Native Americans, Joseph Plum Martin ("the Zelig of the American Revolution"), and, perhaps the most captivating, Washington's personal slave, Billy Lee. The book's only disappointment is its abrupt close. It's hard to imagine a better-told brief history of the key years of the American Revolution. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.