Journal of the Early Republic

T. H. Breen's latest work expands upon arguments he made nearly a decade ago in American Insurgents, American Patriots.¹ That book centered on feelings—mainly outrage—as an underappreciated factor in historians' explanations of why the Revolution began in 1775.

Its subtitle was "the Revolution of the People." This one, The Will of the People, also is organized around emotions, with chapters entitled "rejection," [End Page 328] "assurance," "fear," "betrayal," and "revenge," and it explores not just the coming of the Revolution but the range of passion and feelings that Americans experienced throughout the entirety of the conflict.

Breen poses an interesting question at the book's outset: "Where exactly did the American Revolution take place?" (3) As he did in American Insurgents, Breen argues that historians need to pay much closer attention to local communities rather than London, Boston, or Philadelphia to see the real process of revolution. Only there, he believes, can we witness the political mobilization, the evolution of governance, and the struggle over what the conflict meant. This essential labor was worked out in local communities and, Breen argues, it was there that the American Revolution turned into something that was unique in human history.

Paying close attention to newspapers and sermons, Breen details how high emotions ran in local communities, from their feelings of rejection and fear of secret enemies early on, to a growing sense of betrayal as some Americans began to take advantage when the economy fell apart, and, lastly, the prospect of whether to seek vengeance on returning loyalists at war's end. That this didn't end in rivers of blood like it did in other revolutions was thanks to local committees who successfully channeled and defused these tensions, according to Breen. The town and county committees kept the real threat of disorder at bay, showed remarkable restraint and occasional compassion toward enemies, and brought lots of local ordinary people into the political process.

Breen already made this point in American Insurgents, referring there to the committees as "schools of revolution," but he extends this analysis deeper into the 1770s.² He is right to spotlight the work of local organizations that were adapting on the fly, although he often asserts more than he proves in the later years of the war. Readers piqued by Breen's emphasis on local committees should consult Christopher Pearl's new book for more analysis on their role in the essential process of Revolutionary state formation.³

While the insurgents/patriots Breen focused on in 2010 were almost exclusively white farmers, in this book he shows more awareness of the recent scholarship that has detailed the centrality of race to the Revolutionary experience. But, unfortunately, Breen brings these issues up only [End Page 329] as caveats. "At the same time, we must acknowledge that many revolutionaries held disturbingly negative beliefs about African Americans and Native Americans," Breen acknowledges in the introduction (9). Later on, when celebrating the Revolutionaries for favoring "moderation over martyrdom and terror," he again offers the "notable exceptions" of how they treated enslaved and Native peoples (154). Breen gives these as reminders only; they serve more as checked boxes rather than something that shapes and affects his argument as a whole. They are beside the point.

That point is about political culture. By the "revolutionary birth of America" he means the origins of a broad-based, participatory political culture that was headed toward democracy. The way local communities dealt with revolutionary change "transformed political culture by allowing large numbers of people who had been previously excluded to come forward," Breen asserts, and "to speak up, and to shape the flow of events" (11). This was a "radical development" that "opened new opportunities for local men" to be involved in all sorts of political activity (11). That culture is with us still, Breen contends. It is the essence of why we must recover the stories of ordinary people dealing with revolutionary change.

Breen makes explicit that this is about us as much as it is about them. The book's opening sentence discusses ordinary revolutionaries being all around us. "We encounter them daily, if we care to look," and by this he means "these are the revolutionaries of our own times, mostly nameless individuals" who fight for "personal security and social justice" (1). Breen intentionally frames his story as one that should provide comfort in our current lives. Using the present tense, he says the Revolutionaries "promoted and secured a political culture that endures even as waves of partisan anger threaten to negate their achievement" (2). But his begrudging refusal to integrate wholly how important race was to the entire Revolutionary project—by continuing to herald white farmers who set us on a heroic path—should give us pause. Breen ends his book with the contention that "the American people . . . gave voice to the possibility of an open, more tolerant society" (226). "Deep-seated racial bias limited the appeal," he admits, "but the original vision has echoed through the generations" (226). This insistence that we could or should set race aside to see the real radical achievement of the Revolutionaries, to insist that they were really tolerant and inclusive, is only an incomplete rendering of that so-called "original vision."

Since Breen wants this to be an analgesic to the troubles of today, the reader in 2021 wonders whether many of those ordinary farmers who he [End Page 330] argues in 1776 insisted on a wider, more inclusive political participation wouldn't today be just as likely found among those encouraging the suppression of democracy. We encounter them, too, daily, even if we don't care to look. Breen argues that there was one birth, and that singular revolutionary political culture was what made America great. But a partial, heroic rendering of the Revolution and the political culture it introduced doesn't help us understand how there were actually multiple siblings born in 1776, not one. To focus on the inclusive, understanding, and honorable son with only a passing acknowledgement of his vicious, punishing, and vengeful twin isn't really the story we need about America's past or present.