The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution

by Robert G. Parkinson

When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Robert Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and fears about insurrectionary slaves and violent Indians. Manipulating newspaper networks, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow agitators broadcast stories of British agents inciting African Americans and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion. Using rhetoric like "domestic insurrectionists" and "merciless savages," the founding fathers rallied the people around a common enemy and made racial prejudice a cornerstone of the new Republic.

In a fresh reading of the founding moment, Parkinson demonstrates the dual projection of the "common cause." Patriots through both an ideological appeal to popular rights and a wartime movement against a host of British-recruited slaves and Indians forged a racialized, exclusionary model of American citizenship.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, American History, American Revolution, The United States Of America

742 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2016

Reviews

[Richard]

A recommendation from the New York Times “What We’re Reading” email, 7-Feb-2017:

A well written and provocative essay on a no less provocative book, “The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution.” It argues that the founding fathers embarked upon a concerted plan to place blacks and Native Americans firmly outside the boundaries of America’s experiment with democratic republicanism.

From the linked NY Books essay:

“Men like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Washington,” Parkinson writes, “developed a myth about who was and was not a part of the Revolutionary movement; about who had an interest and who did not.” Other esteemed advocates of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine and the Marquis de Lafayette, joined the effort. According to Parkinson, these men chose to prosecute the American war for independence in a way that put race at the heart of the matter. They used—actually helped foment—racial prejudice as the principal means of creating unity across the thirteen colonies in order to prepare Americans to do battle with Great Britain. The base sentiments they promoted for “political expediency” survived the fighting, and the “narrative” that dismissed blacks and Native peoples as alien to America—and conflated “white” and “citizen”—“lived at the heart of the republic it helped create for decades to come.” It kept both groups from “inclusion as Americans.” Parkinson is blunt about the results of this program:

This refusal to extend to African Americans and Indians the benefits of emerging concepts of liberal subjectivity in the form of citizenship had ghastly consequences, for it legitimated and excused the destruction of vast numbers of human beings.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book five stars plus a MUST READ NOW flag. Based upon extensive research in colonial and revolutionary documents (especially newspapers), Parkinson reveals that the United States was actually FOUNDED on fake news. Beginning almost with the first shot fired at Lexington in April 1775, patriot leaders were concerned that they would not be able to get the colonists to back and participate in a war (and they were right to be concerned), so they used a combination of spin and invention to motivate them, with the newspapers as the means of communication. The tool by which they whipped people up and kept them whipped up? fear of native people and African slaves. The British did actually invite slaves to join them in exchange for freedom, and they did send out envoys to the native tribes; that wasn't enough for the patriot publicists, they also had to embellish and frankly make up stuff. Whenever they thought the commitment to the war was flagging, they recycled or created new stories about runaway slaves, African regiments, and savage Indians to remind people what the danger was. Parkinson must have spent years in archives because he's clearly read every issue of every newspaper (more than 30) in existence in America between 1775 and 1790. Not only does he make an overwhelming case for his argument from primary sources, he also points out that because the newspapers didn't cover native people and Africans who fought for the patriots (that would dilute the message required to keep the people engaged), it became virtually impossible to suddenly say, after the war, "OK now these people can be members of our nation." (The British seldom did anything for their brown cohorts when the war was over, either.) The consequences, we know, and live with to this day. I've been increasingly convinced over the past few years that the US is rotted with racism at its root, and this book is filled with evidence for that idea, filled with incidents that you'll never have learned in your history classes. Anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of why we are the way we are in this country should take the time to read it.

[Jacob Pimentel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution by Robert G. Parkinson, is a mandatory book on the American Revolution in order to fully understand this event in American history. Parkinson challenges other historians’ arguments (ideological reasons, economic factors, etc.) on what pushed the colonists to declare independence by effectively arguing independence was achieved through the making of a “common cause.” This common cause that galvanized the thirteen colonies was all about the atrocities committed by the British. The colonists asserted British agents incited “domestic insurrectionists” (slaves), hired foreign mercenaries and encouraged “merciless savages” (Native Americans) to take up arms against the patriots. Patriot leaders Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others propagated stories (real, exaggerated, or imagined) of these individuals committing heinous acts against the colonists. As a result, these patriot leaders exploited deep-rooted prejudices of colonists to unite all thirteen colonies at the same time to declare independence. As a direct result of these actions, whether it was intentional or not, Native Americans and African-Americans were excluded from American citizenship and belonging to this new nation for decades to come.

This scholarship has greatly shaped how I think about the American Revolution, the use of propaganda, and the power of print in our nation’s history. I cannot recommend this book enough to anybody interested in the subject.

[Wendy Wong Schirmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book can and should be put in conversation with Holger Hoock's "Scars of Independence."

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for honors thesis

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good.

[Douglas Pierre · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book to read if one wants too see how the revolution formed society as it exists in the United States today. This book indicates the tremendous role of printers of weekly newspapers in informing readers and spreading propaganda that affected the attitudes of patriots.

Perhaps the most salients points conveyed is the marginalization of Native Americans and African Americans. Both groups were painted as the "other" and their role was not recognized in the war except in a negative way. A lot of Native Americans and African Americans fought with the British because they considered that was to their advantage. A lot also fought with the Patriots but these Patriots did not get their due and suffered as though they had fought for the British. Contrast this to the Hessians, A White German people that fought against the Patriots but were assimilated during and after the war.

I do not believe you will look at the United States in the same manner after reading this book. In so many ways, it renders the phrase, "All men are created equal" into just words.

[Dutch10k · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, adds a new perspective to different motivations causing/continuing the Revolutionary War. Parts seemed a bit repetitious but especially further on in the war it was quite enjoyable.