Class Warfare Comes to the American Revolution? . Gary B. Nash's purpose for the book is, "to capture the revolutionary involvement of all the component parts of some three million wildly varying people living east of the Mississippi River." (Nash, xxviii)  Nash bemoans how the "great men" still "dominate the master narrative [of the American Revolution,]" (Nash, xv) and that we are struck with "historical amnesia," (Nash, xvi) because we forgot the stories of those outside of the "great men" clique.  He states that we cannot capture the essence of the Revolution without paying close attention to the experiences of the many groups that made up colonial society.  These groups not only include the poor farmers, artisans, and other laborers, but also of women, blacks (both free and slave), and of the AmerIndian population.      Nash illustrated the problems and plights of the lower order through their myriad of stories.  To illustrate the importance of the lower classes of white society, he showed the importance of these individuals in their role as revolutionaries, which include their participation in riots against the various taxes implemented by the Parliament.  He also shows the tensions between the seaboard inhabitants and their piedmont antithesis to the west which, in his estimation, helped to spur change all along the way.  In the case of the inhabitants of what would become Vermont, he illuminated their fight against the landowners located primarily in New York City.  Led by Ethan Allen, the "Green Mountain Boys," as they would become known as, fought to keep the land that they cultivated with their own hands - against the wishes and land deeds that the New York City landowners had for their property.  (Nash, 110 - 114)  He also showed how the piedmont inhabitants of the Carolinas had to struggle for their rights to live life as they saw fit as well.  (Nash, 73 - 79)  In the case of the "Green Mountain Boys," their struggle proved to be more successful than the struggle of the Carolina piedmont, whose insurrection was brutally suppressed by then colonial governor of North Carolina, William Tryon.    Nash also shows how this sector of the population became mobilized politically during the course of the revolution.  In Nash's estimation, these people were spurred on by the rhetoric of equality in society, as championed by the Founding Fathers in the countless tracts and pamphlets that were produced during the revolutionary war era.  In Pennsylvania, the 1776 state constitution was heralded by Nash as a true revolutionary document because of its unicameral legislature, its weak executive, and its attempt to limit an amassing of wealth within the state.  He also praised the fact that artisans and lower sorts also played such a vital role in the forming of the new state constitution.  (Nash, 271 - 286)  In states where the constitution did adhere to these premises, Nash equated it with a betrayal of the will of the people, as evident by the problems Massachusetts had in ratifying their state constitution because of its more conservative outlook.  (Nash, 302 - 304)    The talk of freedom and equality also spread, according to Nash, to the black population in the American colonies.  These ideals not only spread to the free black portion of the population, but also to the thousands of enslaved blacks throughout the land.  This spread of ideas to the black population, particularly the enslaved portion, troubled white leaders, according to Nash (Nash, 59)  What was more troubling to the white slave owners was their perception that slave restlessness and even revolt was on the rise.  (Nash, 37 - 39)  What else was truly troubling to many slave holders was that the British actively recruited the slaves to fight against their masters - and all other rebels to the British Crown.  (Nash, 157 - 164)  Nash contributed much of the awareness of the enslaved to their plight the rise rising literature of freedom that the Founding Fathers were disseminating across the land.  Nash believes that this rhetoric, and its implications, were inescapable to the slaves.  (Nash, 64)  He also showed us the aftermath of the revolution for those slaves who sided with the British; they were transported off either to Nova Scotia or to the Caribbean Islands where they were subjected to an even harsher form of slavery than on the mainland.  (Nash, 426 - 427)     Women also were praised in this work, as Nash pointed out how crucial this sector of the population was throughout the course of the conflict.  First, women were important to execute the boycotts that were prevalent in the preceding years of the revolution.  Nash argued that without their co-operation in the boycotts, the measures would not have proved effective.  This is because women had a great deal of involvement in the running of the household and much of the purchasing power was in their hands.  If they did not adhere to the boycotts, the measure would have failed, in Nash's estimation.  (Nash, 141 - 144)  Nash also illustrated how the women of the revolution became active during the war, specifically in response to rising prices for necessities.  Nash showed us the response of many women in the Boston area to Thomas Boylston, a merchant whose prices on goods rose as the war progressed.  In response to these rising prices, women marched on Boylston's shop, and the shops of other merchants throughout the colonies, to procure the basic necessities for their families at what they deemed equitable prices.  (Nash, 232 - 235)    The plight of the American Indians was also great as land speculators and land hungry colonists swarmed over the Appalachian Mountain range to claim and settle upon lands that were seen as belonging to various Indian nations.  Nash showed us how the natives resisted this encroachment upon their lands through a myriad of tactics, from essentially engaging in bushwhacking warfare with the colonists who encroached upon their lands, (Nash, 253 - 255) to the fact that many Indian nations chose to align themselves with the British in their cause to suppress the rebellion.  (Nash, 151 - 157)  What was more alarming to Nash is the colonists' "genocidal" policies towards the native population.  (Nash, 377 - 381)    Although it may not seem like it, there is an underlying premise to Nash's illustrations in the struggles of all of the aforementioned groups during the American Revolution.  That premise with Nash, at first alluded to, and then by the end of the book, states bluntly is class warfare.  There is, however, a very real problem in this Marxist outlook on American society during the era of the Revolution, specifically that the colonists did not view the class structure in the same light that we do today, or even as class was viewed in when Karl Marx wrote his tracts on such matters.  As Gordon Wood pointed out in his work, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, "The social distinctions and economic deprivations that we today think of as the consequence of class divisions, business exploitation, or various isms - capitalism, racism, etc. - were in the eighteenth century usually thought to be caused by the abuses of government."  (Wood, 5)  Wood also pointed out that there were complexities and variations to American society, which fell along "local, regional, sectional, ethnic and class differences."  These complexities made, "any generalization about Americans as a whole," quite difficult.  (Wood, 6)    Wood further illuminated the difficulties of following such a class distinction as Nash proposed in his work.  Wood stated in his review on Nash's work in the "New Republic Online":  Nash's evidence for popular resistance to all this class exploitation is the incidents of rural rioting and urban mobbing that took place in the decade or so leading up to the Revolution.  This mobbing and rioting is exceedingly familiar to historians, who have produced a literature about it.  Unfortunately, these phenomena do not support Nash's argument.  Not only did the rural rioting have little or nothing to do with the Revolution, but the urban mobs, which were indeed directed at British authority, did not represent the class upheaval that Nash assumes.  The rural riots all arose out of peculiar local circumstances, and were hardly expressions of some sort of coherent class warfare.  (Wood, "New Republic Online Review)      Wood, in his review of Nash's work, went on to illustrate exactly what constituted the true dividing lines in American society when he stated:  But what of all the rhetoric about the laboring people contesting the aristocratic few that Nash draws on to make his case for class warfare?  There was indeed a serious division in eighteenth-century American society that reverberated through the northern states over the succeeding decades, but it was not the one that Nash describes.  Instead of being divided between a rich upper class and a poor working class, as Nash sees it, anachronistically anticipating a later nineteenth-century division between employers and employees, eighteenth-century American society was in fact still divided between a leisured gentry and the mass of artisans and other laborers who worked with their hands--many of them the businessmen of the future.     In Nash's work, he viewed many of the Revolutionaries as having ulterior motives for their proclamations of equality and freedom.  Nash, I would argue, hinted toward the idea that the Founding Fathers only took part in the revolutionary movement to benefit themselves.  Throughout the course of the book, Nash takes great care to "expose" the double standards of the Founding Fathers, making them seem as if they merely wanted to continue their "elitists" lifestyle at the expense of the commoners below.  There is no bigger whipping boy for Nash than John Adams, who, according to Nash, was essentially a closeted monarchist who was afraid of the people.  To be sure, Adams did have his reservations about the people, but it was more a fear of a "tyranny of the masses" than it was an outright fear that the people would displace the leaders of the new nation.    However, what is truly ironic is that Nash relied so heavily upon the writings of John Adams to illustrate many of his points.  Not only did he rely on Adams' writings, but also the writings of many of the other Founding Fathers.  Throughout the course of the book, when Nash referred to any of the writings of the Founding Fathers, I found myself wondering if Nash was cropping their words to support his case.  It is my belief that this is something that seriously needs to be explored in greater depth than I can provide here.  What is also ironic is that Nash makes little use of the narratives of those whose stories he claimed he wanted to tell.  Outside of the use of Joseph Plumb Martin's narrative of his experiences as a soldier in the Continental Army during the war and the autobiography of Ethan Allen, he does not make extensive use of the diaries and letters of many people who lived through the war experience, both in the military and in the civilian sector.  To be sure, there are many diaries out there from those below who can illuminate their thoughts throughout the era.  Would their writings bear out what Nash proposed?    Nash criticized the Continental Congress for not being able to pay the soldiers their salaries.  This inability to pay the soldiers wages stemmed from the fact that the government was essentially broke: they were unable to levy taxes on the people of the colonies because of the weak governmental structure from which they operated and many of the colonies did not pay their fair share of the financial burden of the revolution.  When Robert Morris tried to restore fiscal responsibility to the war effort and raise revenue to provide pay and necessities to the army, Nash viewed it as an attempt to "tame the social and political radicalism of the Revolution."  (Nash, 367)  However, I suppose Nash chose to forget the fact that Morris was trying to get revenue to provide for the war effort.  Why then would Thomas Paine, one who Nash seemed to have great respect for his principles of democracy, agreed to author a pamphlet on behalf of Robert Morris in favor of his new fiscal plan.  (Nash, 395)  If Morris' plan was so stifling to democracy, intended to roll back the radicalism of the revolution, then why would Paine agree to be a party to it?  Not all of these explanations and questions would mesh well with Nash's outlook on Morris and the Founding Fathers at large.    Further, if the Founding Fathers truly wanted rule for themselves, there was no better chance for one of them to establish it than with the "Newburgh Conspiracy."  It is true that the soldiers and officers of George Washington's army were deeply distraught by the ineffectual abilities of the Congress to pay wages and provide for basic necessities.  (Nash, 370 - 371)  However, what Nash failed to mention is the other half of the conspiracy.  The men wanted to march on the Continental Congress and put George Washington in power.  Washington, through an impassioned speech and performance, quelled all of these thoughts and possibly saved the revolution once again.    Nash, as stated previously, believed the struggle of the thousands of black slaves in the colonies was heightened by the revolutionary rhetoric that littered the landscape of the era.  He believed that such literature raised their awareness and caused more unrest and rebellion than at any time previously.  However, I would like to offer my own take on this.  Did it take pamphlets from the Founding Fathers to raise the awareness of the enslaved that there was something unnatural about their situation?  I certainly think not.  Frederick Douglass' autobiography indicates that from a very early age, he was well aware that there was something wrong with the situation he found himself.  In an illustration, a still teenage Douglass talked with some of his young white friends on the streets of Baltimore and they complained about their lot in life.  Douglass illustrated the point when he wrote, "You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life!"  (Douglass, 53)  While Douglass certainly is an exceptional individual, I doubt that this same premise was lost on the countless enslaved individuals in the colonies and that they wanted freedom and it did not take pamphlets for that realization to come to mind.    Nash lamented the "genocidal policies" towards the AmerIndians adopted by many colonists during the revolution.  While it is true that atrocities were committed against the natives, first, this was nothing new by this point in American history.  Warfare between the natives and colonists was an almost constant from the time that European settlers stepped onto the New World.  In such a climate, atrocities committed by both sides in this armed and almost perpetual struggle were inevitable.  However, Nash is somewhat disingenuous when he makes the native population seemingly innocent or justified in their actions.  Although Nash admitted that the British courted and armed the native peoples to fight the colonists, even after the revolution was over, he cannot seem to find any justification for the colonists to meet force with force.       Lastly, as stated previously, Nash bemoaned how historians and the people at large have lost the viewpoint of those below the Founding Fathers - how the great men still consistently dominant the narrative on the American Revolution.  (Nash, xv)  First, I would ask Mr. Nash, "should we discount what the `great men' did during the war?"  While historians do deal with the "great men" of the American Revolution, I doubt there is one serious historian out there who would discount the actions and sacrifices that were made by the people below.  Their deeds do not go unnoticed in narratives of the war.  We read about the Boston Tea Party, we read about the non-importation of British goods and how the participation of the common people was vital to such an enterprise.  We read about the plight of the Continental soldier as they nearly starve and free to death in the service of their country.      What Nash further discounted was the explosion over the past decades in dealing with various social aspects of the history of the revolution.  Bruce Chadwick's piece, The First American Army: The Soldiers of the American Revolution, he offered the reader a look into the world of the solider in the Continental Army through their diaries, letters and records.  Through these written records, we are presented with the bleak situation that so many found themselves in - conflicting interests between home and duty, the want of food and clothing, and their battle experiences.  Alfred Young, in The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, offers a glimpse into the world of the common man on the streets, taking part in demonstrations and actions against the British and their oppressive measures.    Women's roles in the revolution are far from ignored.  Mary Beth Norton authored a book, Liberty's Daughter's: The Revolutionary Experience of Women: 1750 -1800, dealing specifically with the trials and tribulations of the women during the American Revolution, both from the Patriot side and the Loyalist side.  Linda Kerber also wrote a piece on women in the American Revolution entitled, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America, which also draws upon the revolutionary experience of women through their diaries, letters and legal papers.    The Native Americans receive their fair share of print as well.  Alan Taylor wrote Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, which offers a rich, sprawling history focusing on the Iroquois Six Nations of New York and Upper Canada during the era of the American Revolution.  Taylor examines Indians' wise but unsuccessful attempts to hold onto their land as colonists encroached on it.  Colin Calloway, in his work, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, explored the internal strife that the revolution brought to Indian nations involved with the American Revolution.    The African-American population in the revolutionary era also received a fair amount of print about their ordeals.  Glenn Knoblock wrote, Strong and Brave Fellows: New Hampshire's Black Soldiers and Sailors of the American Revolution: 1775 - 1784, which explored the military careers of over 200 black military officers during the American Revolution and attempted to reconstruct their ordeal throughout the conflict.  Sylvia Frey, in her book, Water from a Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age, explored the triangular relationship between the British, the Americans, and slaves in the South.  Through this triangular relationship, Frey attempted to illustrate the complex and confusing options presented to the slaves in the South during the rebellion.    Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey Palsey offers readers an alternative reading in the same light that Nash presents, the conflicting desires of the myriad of peoples during the American Revolution.  The political historians contained in this work showed that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few "Founding Fathers," but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class.  Thus, this work is not beholden to one particular point of view on the revolution, as Nash is guilty of being caught up in.    These are just some of the books out there on the myriad of topics that Nash covered and, to be sure, there are many more.  These books are not hard to find.  Just do a search on Amazon's or Barnes and Noble's online stores on any of these topics and you will be presented with a cornucopia of choices - there is not quite the neglect that Nash claimed in these fields.  To be sure, there will still be authors who write biographies on the "great men" of the American Revolution, but there are many who also explore the social history of the conflict.  Thus, Nash is not the lone voice for these "forgotten" as he claimed
Output: NEG