By Paul Carrier
We all know that the American Revolution began in 1776, when the Continental Congress finally got around to writing, adopting and signing the Declaration of Independence, setting the stage for our eventual break from Britain.
Or so we thought.
If Kevin Phillips is to be believed, that supposedly indisputable marker in the annals of American history is questionable. Or just plain wrong. Sure, 1776 was pivotal in the march toward independence, Phillips argues in 1775: A Good Year for Revolution. But the preceding year was bigger still.
Phillips focuses on what he calls “the long year” that began in 1774 and stretched into the opening months of 1776. He argues that the revolution’s underpinnings, and even its very birth, date from that earlier period. The Declaration of Independence simply formalized a preexisting, de facto insurrection.
By the end of 1775, Phillips writes, the United Colonies had created a war government, an army, a navy and a marine corps. American regiments had invaded Canada. Coastal defenses were springing up from Philadelphia to Georgia. Royal authority had effectively been replaced by American self-rule.
“The British were not able to keep control of much of anything through 1775,” Phillips explained in a December 2012 interview with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN. “The (royal) governors fled to (British) ships. The only fort that was in British hands at the end of 1775 was the fortifications on Boston neck.” When reinforcements arrived in 1776, Phillips told Lamb, “they were too late.”
Phillips believes we have mischaracterized 1775 as merely a precursor to the watershed year that followed. He persuasively marshals mountains of evidence to buttress his thoroughly researched argument. There is no denying the sweep, breadth and depth of his case. Unfortunately, his writing is not as blunt and plainspoken as the language he uses during television interviews.
Or so we thought.
If Kevin Phillips is to be believed, that supposedly indisputable marker in the annals of American history is questionable. Or just plain wrong. Sure, 1776 was pivotal in the march toward independence, Phillips argues in 1775: A Good Year for Revolution. But the preceding year was bigger still.
Phillips focuses on what he calls “the long year” that began in 1774 and stretched into the opening months of 1776. He argues that the revolution’s underpinnings, and even its very birth, date from that earlier period. The Declaration of Independence simply formalized a preexisting, de facto insurrection.
By the end of 1775, Phillips writes, the United Colonies had created a war government, an army, a navy and a marine corps. American regiments had invaded Canada. Coastal defenses were springing up from Philadelphia to Georgia. Royal authority had effectively been replaced by American self-rule.
“The British were not able to keep control of much of anything through 1775,” Phillips explained in a December 2012 interview with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN. “The (royal) governors fled to (British) ships. The only fort that was in British hands at the end of 1775 was the fortifications on Boston neck.” When reinforcements arrived in 1776, Phillips told Lamb, “they were too late.”
Phillips believes we have mischaracterized 1775 as merely a precursor to the watershed year that followed. He persuasively marshals mountains of evidence to buttress his thoroughly researched argument. There is no denying the sweep, breadth and depth of his case. Unfortunately, his writing is not as blunt and plainspoken as the language he uses during television interviews.
Far from offering a lively examination of the pivotal 1775 battles at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill and elsewhere, Phillips has produced a meticulously documented but ponderous tome that is overly demographic, with a numbingly detailed look at religious and ethnic statistics. There is much minutiae and splitting of hairs over the course of more than 500 pages. This is the kind of book that may sit well with academic historians while doing little to excite the rest of us.
Phillips does make highly pertinent and fascinating observations on many topics, such as which “vanguard” colonies led the pre-revolutionary struggle (Massachusetts, Connecticut, South Carolina and Virginia); and whether it’s true that the Patriots who fought at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 were farmers relying on self-taught skills. (The answer is no. The Massachusetts militia was large and well-trained by then.)
He explains that the American Revolution was a civil war, particularly outside of New England; that with better timing and stronger leadership, the Patriots’ failed 1775 invasion of Québec could have seized that colony from the British; that the valuation of paper currency was maddeningly inconsistent among the American colonies; and that Congregationalists and Presbyterians often held more radical political views than did Anglicans.
But in the latter case, Phillips belabors the link between religion and politics in turgid passages such as this one: “Presbyterian ecumenicalism extended to the theologically kindred evangelical wings of the German Reformed and Dutch Reformed churches.” Here’s another: In New Jersey, “bitter divisions set Patriot Dutch Reformed adherents of the Coetus faction against Conferentie-faction congregations who took the Loyalist side.”
Phillips provides compelling mini-portraits of Samuel Adams, Benedict Arnold and other major players from the period. But 1775 is not, for the most part, narrative history. To a great extent, it’s a painstakingly analytical look at multiple facets of colonial life during the opening pages of the revolution. Compelling descriptions of events, lively anecdotes and character sketches are in short supply in a book that is long on data but short on flesh and blood.
A former Republican strategist turned independent, Phillips is a well-known political analyst who first made his mark as a writer in 1969 with The Emerging Republican Majority. He has written more than a dozen books that focus on current events or history, including a 2003 biography of William McKinley and The Cousins’ War (1999), in which Phillips explains how the kinship between the United States and Britain created a globally dominant “Anglo-America.”
