Independence Lost-Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution by Kathleen DuVal - 2015

Independence Lost-Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution by Kathleen DuVal - 2015

Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year for 2015

Essential Reading for those into American history

An Autodidactic Corner Selection 

The American Revolution was not just an event in the 13 original states but part of a world wide conflict between empires.  With Spain hoping to regain what it lost to England during the Seven Years War and France fighting to keep her North American interests.  Indian societies were very involved in the struggle, either picking a side or seeing it as a “white war” and remaining neutral.   Kathleen DuVal in Independence Lost-Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution opened up my eyes to the complexities of the war in British controlled West Florida as well as New Orleans, already fought over by the French and Spanish. The cities most involved besides New Orleans were the West Florida Capital Pensacola and Mobile Alabama.  From the perspective of American leaders, any thing that spread the English forces out was to their advantage. Spanish and French support was ultimately very important in the victory of the Americans.

Spain and France, both wanted the English to lose though they did have 

concerns about colonial wars and monarchies being overturned.

DuVul structures her book around the lives of seven residents of the now Southeastern United States as their destinies collide in constant warfare in the lands adjacent to the tribal areas of Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Choctaws.  Tribal people 

 outnumbered European and enslaved residents. 

Included is an Acadian(with much reason to hate the British for driving them from their homeland) in Louisiana, a Chickasaw tribal leader, a British bureaurcrat, a Whig profiteer in New Orleans, a Creek-Scot Tory, a Spanish governor/general and an African slave. All are introduced in the 1760s when Spanish, French and British monarchies control the futures of the land and the people.

Tribal societies are very well covered.  We learn how they are organized and relate to other social groups.  Traditionally Indian expected gifts for help. 

Each tribal group has their own priorities.  They weighed what would be most to their advantage,an American victory, the continuing of the Spanish imperial control or a British victory.  There were extensive attempts to buy the loyalty of tribal groups.  The Indians were very effective in warfare in heavily wooded areas.

We also follow the business interests of a Whig living in New Orleans who hoped a British victory would make him rich. Enslaved and Free Black people played a significant part in the combat. All sides promised freedom to slaves who fought for them. We learn a lot about how the conflict impacted the life of a slave. (There is a good bit of space devoted to slave holding practices among Indian tribes.). The slave was very valuable to both sides as he had a great knowledge of the trails and woods in Alabama.  He was paid to spy for the Spanish.  Slaves knew their fates would be impacted.

A dominant theme of the book is that people had their own, tied to their material and family needs,reasons for picking a side or staying neutral.

We learn about the extensive fighting over control of Pensacola and methods of warfare.

The war was very much both an economic opportunity or a disaster, depending on which side you bet on.  

DuVal shows us after the war the steady expansion of American land areas, the taking  of Indian territorial areas.  She also very interestingly tells us how the lives of enslaved people became generally worse as small farms were replaced by cotton plantations. We learn of the doubling of the size of American territory through the Louisiana purchase made possible by Napoleon’s war costs.

There is much more in this book.  The lead characters are well developed, we learn about their marriages and business interests.

We additionally spend time in Havana, Charleston, and Savanah.  George Washington, generals on all three sides, tribal leaders and British politicians all are brought on stage.

“Kathleen DuVal is Bowman & Gordon Gray Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her field of expertise is early American history, particularly interactions among American Indians, Europeans, and Africans on the borderlands of North America. She is currently writing a book on Native dominance of North America from the eleventh to nineteenth centuries.

DuVal’s awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, the 2008 best article in the William and Mary Quarterly, the best article in southern women’s history from the Southern Association for Women Historians, and book prizes from the Journal of the American Revolution and the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South. She is an Elected Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society and the Society of American Historians.

Visit Kathleen DuVal’s official website at the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill here.”

I highly endorse this book to anyone interested in early American history.  

Mel u

 

 

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy - 2013 - 720 pages

 The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy - 2013 - 720 pages

An Autodidactic Corner Selection.

A few months ago, i began another permanent Reading Life Project,Revolutionary Readings devoted to works of non-fiction on the order shattering revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th century in South America, Haiti, France and the United States.  

There are hundreds, probably 1000s of books just on the American Revolution.  In school in the long ago pre-internet days I was taught the standard hagiographical account of the American Revolution.  In this  no mention was made of the British military and political leaders other than to denigrate them.  Of course no mention was ever made of slavery or the role of native Americans in the revolution.  No factual account of why slaves were to be counted as 3/5ths of a person was given or why the now ridiculous electoral College system was adapted.   Of course the teachers did not themselves have any real knowledge. 

One of, probably the best, sources of books on The American Revolution is The Journal of The American Revolutions list of 100 Best Books on The American Revolution and their annual book awards list.  About half of The books are availables as Kindle Editions, my preferred teading format.  I added these books to my Amazon Wish List and monitor them for flash sales, often at 80 percent discount.  I was glad to see The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire priced at $2.95, now back up to $10.95.

The book is structured as a series of ten interlocking biographies.  Starting with King George III the common view of him as laughably incompetent and later insane is corrected.  Before the onset of his dementia as depicted in the movie, The Madness of King George, he was very knowledgeable about public affairs.  King George was very much against American independence.

Among the other men featured are the Howe Brothers, Lord George Germain,Henry Clinton, General Burgoyne, George Rodney, Charles Earl of Cornwallis, and Jeremey Twitcher the Earl of Sandwich.  Top military positions were relegated to nobility.  Often second sons from noble families had positions  as officers purchased for them.  This was totally the case in the British Navy.  The leaders knew each other socially, often had kinship ties and even married each other’s sisters.

Enough space is devoted to each person to give us a real sense of them.  

Many in England, including some of the British leaders, felt the war could not be won.  The supply lines were way to long, England was also fighting against the French in the Caribbean and with other colonial powers in India. The English generals were used to wars fought on open battle fields, not wars of skirmish and in deep woods.  The British lost almost all loyalty in America by the brutal tactics they used in capturing towns.  Also they enlisted Indian tribes who sometimes scalped women and children to turn the scalps in for rewards.  The British did in some very bad decisions fail to follow up on early victories which might have ended the revolution.  They did not anticipate the massive help America would get from the French.  The French navy’s actions in the Caribbean and Indian Oceans nullified the naval advantage of the British.  The author lets us see how the American Revolution was really a world war fought in Europe, India, Gibraltar, Canada as well as in America.  

After the war, O'Shaughnessy follows the leaders up until their deaths.  The Generals remained active in the military, they were not shamed or condemned.  Some fought with distinction against Napoleon.

This book will fascinate anyone into the American Revolution.  All teachers of American history should read this book.  

Andrew O’Shaughnessy is Vice President of Monticello, the Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and Professor of History at the University of Virginia.  He is the author of An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).  His most recent book The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) received eight national awards including the New York Historical Society American History Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, and the Society of Military History Book Prize.  He is a co-editor of Old World, New World. America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010) and a co-editor of the Jeffersonian America series published by the University of Virginia Press.  A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of American History.  From https://www.monticello.org/

His  An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean is on my Amazon Waiting List

Rush: Revolution, Madness and The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father by Stephen Fried - 2018

Rush: Revolution, Madness and The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father by Stephen Fried - 2018 

An Autodidactic Corner Selection

(Information from Rush: Revolution, Madness and The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father)

January 4, 1746 - Philadelphia

April 19, 1813 - Philadelphia


1768 - Receives a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland,  then most prestigious medical school in the world. While there he learned French, Italian and Spanish.  He met Benjamin Franklin who was  very impressed by him and was a great positive influence in his life.

July 4, 1776 - Signed the Declaration of Independence, representing Pennsylvania.  He would late represent Pennsylvania at The Constitutional Convention

1776 to 1881. Surgeon General for the Continental Army.  He introduced numerous reforms designed to promote the health of soldiers. Death rates were often higher on both sides from disease than battle.  He never participated in combat but he was often under fire while doing battle field work.  George Washington praised his courage and they became close friends

1797 to 1813 - Treasurer of the US Mint

Benjamin Rush was a pioneer in greatly improving the treatment of the seriously mentally ill.  When he first began practicing Bedlam like conditions were the norm.  Patients were chained to the ground.  He began programs of good food, pleasant outdoor periods and simple work.  He began talking to patients, trying to see what might have caused their issues.  In his medical practice he treated freely the poor, which was most people.  During a terrible Yellow Fever out break in Philadelphia most doctors left the city.  Rush stayed behind and making no fees, treated many people.  The cause was not yet known and their was no cure but good food and rest saved many.
He wrote many articles on his medical research as well as several books.  As everyone did, he bled his patients.  He was the personal physician of Thomas Jefferson, sometimes George Washington and other prominent persons. He never tried to profit from his connections.  He taught at several medical schools, young doctors were eager to apprentice with him.

Rush was anti-slavery, always voting as an abolitionist.  However he did purchase a fourteen year old boy who was a household servant until he was nineteen at which time Rush signed documents of Manumission.  The suggestion of Fried is that Burns bought him to keep him from being sent to a sugar plantation and freed him as soon as he could take care of himself.  The man became a merchant marine and anytime he was not at sea he stayed at the house of the Burns, a relationship that continued even after Burns passed.

Freid goes into lots of details on the political career of Burns and his time as a Surgeon General.

He married at thirty and was a faithful husband and good father.  Freid talks a lot about Burn's marriage.  As was common, they lost several children early on.


Two of his sons became very successful.  One was troubled by alcoholism and killed his best friend in a duel over their differing interpretations of a play by Shakespeare.  Rush was very opposed to dueling. Fried traces out the impact of this event, which he deeply regretted, on the life of the son and Rush.  He bonded and became very good friends with John Adams who also had a dysfunctional alcoholic son.  They maintained a very lengthy correspondence.

I endorse this book to anyone into the era of the American Revolution.

"Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and New York Timesbestselling author who teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of the historical biography Appetite for America, and the coauthor, with Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of A Common Struggle. His earlier books include the biography Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia and the investigative books Bitter Pills and The New Rabbi. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, and Philadelphia Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres". From Penguin Random House


Mel u