Class Struggle and the American Revolution

HE Richmond Enquirer of May io, i86i, commenting on a statement in a recent Washington Star to effect that General Winfield Scott, at age of seventy-six, true to principles of declared so-but whose principles of '76? Certainly not those of Virginia, or any one of 'old thirteen,' for they fought for right of self-government-a right which Gen. Scott denies, and is endeavoring to prevent exercise of, by sword. At age of 76, Gen. Scott is precisely where every American Tory was found in '76, on side of enemies of his own State and people. He is, indeed, true to Tory principles of '76. A century has elapsed since Fort Sumter, but nature of American Revolution is still unsettled. If, with Richmond Enquirer, we concede that American Revolution was a war for political independence, self-determination, and states' rights, we cannot summarily divest it of its nationalistic and centrifugal character. Similarly, granting its legalistic and constitutional base, we cannot so casually strip it of its egalitarian and democratic impulses. It is two hundred years since James Otis made his renowned writs of assistance speech, since day when John Adams, with perhaps pardonable exaggeration, declared the child Independence was born.' Two hundred years should have brought us perspective and some degree of objectivity toward venerable events. Certainly it seems appropriate that an age swept by political, social, and technological revolution should reexamine that fountainhead of modern revolutionary experience, American War for Independence, and test anew, on basis of most recent evidence, validity of hypotheses which varying schools of historiography have fashioned to explain this complex struggle. We have been enlightened by a variety of interpretations of American Revolution: Whig and Tory, national and imperial, Populist-Progres

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