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American History Books
Steve Wiegand
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Published:
September 24, 2019

American Revolution For Dummies

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Overview

Become an expert on the Revolutionary War

American Revolution For Dummies capitalizes on the recent resurgence of interest in the Revolutionary War period—one of the most important in the history of the United States. From the founding fathers to the Declaration of Independence, and everything that encapsulates this extraordinary period in American history, American Revolution For Dummies is your one-stop guide to the birth of the United States of America.

Understanding the critical issues of this era is essential to the study of subsequent periods in American history … and this book makes it more accessible than ever before.

  • Covers events leading up to the war, including the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and the Boston Tea Party
  • Provides information on The Declaration of Independence
  • Offers insight on major battles, including the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and Yorktown
  • Reviews key figures, including George Washington, Charles Cornwallis, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Alexander Hamilton

    • If you want or need to become more knowledgeable about the American War of Independence and the people and period surrounding it, this book gives you the information necessary to become an expert on the essential details of the revolutionary period.

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    About The Author

    Steve Wiegand is an award-winning political journalist and history writer. Over a 35-year career, he worked as a reporter and columnist at the San Diego Evening Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sacramento Bee. He is the author or coauthor of seven books dealing with various aspects of U.S. and world history.

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    One of the remarkable aspects of the American Revolution is the staying power of the basic structure of government the founding fathers laid down. That doesn’t mean, however, that the structure was either simple or perfect.To help you understand a bit more about the complexities — and flaws — in the governmental building blocks they used, here are “backgrounders” on three of those blocks: the Electoral College, reapportionment (gerrymandering), and amending the U.
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    Here are quick looks at ten ordinary Americans who did extraordinary things during the American Revolution: Joseph Plumb Martin, Molly Pitcher, James Forten, Daniel Morgan, Roger Sherman, Nancy Hart, Jeremiah O’Brien, Daniel Bissell, Salem Poor, and Deborah Sampson. Joseph Plumb Martin Joseph Plumb Martin began the Revolutionary War as a 15-year-old private from Massachusetts and ended it as a 22-year-old private.
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    The Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony actually landed somewhere unintended and lacked any legal right to establish a colony where they were. They named the bay (minus any rock) Plymouth and established the colony based on the Mayflower Compact.In 1608, about a year after the founding of Jamestown, an 18-year-old farmer’s son named William Bradford sneaked out of England with a small group of Separatists and settled in the small Dutch city of Leiden.
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    One of the remarkable aspects of the American Revolution is the staying power of the basic structure of government the founding fathers laid down. That doesn’t mean, however, that the structure was either simple or perfect.To help you understand a bit more about the complexities — and flaws — in the governmental building blocks they used, here are “backgrounders” on three of those blocks: the Electoral College, reapportionment (gerrymandering), and amending the U.
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    If one group was destined to lose no matter how the American Revolutionary War came out, it was Native Americans. If the British won the struggle, they were no more likely to be successful in keeping the colonists from encroaching on lands promised to the tribes than they had been before the war. If the Americans won, the push west would only be accelerated.
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    The American Revolution was drenched with deep and bitter ironies, and none was deeper or more bitter than conducting a fight for personal liberties while continuing to embrace the institution of slavery. It was a contradiction of which the Founding Fathers were well aware.“The Plant of Liberty is of so tender a nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery,” warned Dr.
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    America’s independence was ultimately won not by the actions of a few extraordinary individuals, but by the efforts and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” people. The impact of the struggle on various groups within the country, however, and their reactions to it, varied widely and often set neighbor against neighbor.
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    The American Revolution has had enormous effects on the development of world history since that time. We can learn a lot from exploring other events that happened following the American Revolution and from considering the reasons that this revolution, unlike many others, was a successful endeavor.It was a revolution like no other, “a revolution,” in the words of the 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke, “made not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing states (nations), but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe.
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    The Conventions of a number of the States having, at the time of adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added, and as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution; ©By Charles Haire/Shutterstock.
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    During the mid-1760s, America and Britain had managed to confine their differences to rhetorical battles and bloodless economic boycotts. But the conflict took a decided turn after the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. ©Tony Baggett / Adobe StockAn engraved illustration of George Washington crossing the River Delaware during the American Revolutionary War, from a Victorian book dated 1886.
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    One of the lessons colonists learned in fighting Native Americans was that it was a lot more effective to coordinate their efforts than to fight as individual colonies. But deciding unification was a good idea and actually unifying turned out to be two very different things. Confederating in New England Almost as soon as they were done all but wiping out the Pequots, several New England colonies began talking about banding together in some sort of common-purpose group.
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    It is an inescapable fact that there were no “Founding Mothers,” at least not in the sense the term "Founding Fathers” is used to describe the male leaders of the American Revolution. No women served in Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, or helped draft the Articles of Confederation or US Constitution.
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