Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution

Historian Brands (The Zealot and the Emancipator) delivers a page-turning account of the “bitter fight” between Americans “who wanted nothing to do with independence” and those who rebelled against British rule before and during the Revolutionary War. Characterizing Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, who both achieved considerable success under the British regime, as “the unlikeliest of rebels,” Brands chronicles their military and diplomatic efforts to advance the British cause in the French and Indian War. Britain’s endeavors to recoup its war debts by taxing the colonists, the passage of the Intolerable Acts, and “a continued disregard for American rights” helped push Washington and Franklin to call for independence, according to Brands, while loyalists including Massachusetts politician Thomas Hutchinson and Franklin’s “illegitimate” son, New Jersey governor William Franklin, believed that the colonies were best served by remaining part of the British empire. Brands also profiles Grace Growden Galloway, who “discovered a certain freedom in having nothing more to lose” after her Loyalist husband fled Philadelphia and Patriots seized her house, and documents the experiences of enslaved Africans who fought on both sides of the war. Gripping prose and lucid explanations of the period’s complex politics make this an essential reconsideration of the Revolutionary era. (Nov.)