Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America > Status Update

The war's over, the peace has been signed, and now it's time to sort out the status of the Loyalists who didn't flee. Should they be required to make some kind of loyalty oath? Should they get their seized property back, and if so, under what terms? Bitterness on both sides could result in an endless cycle of reprisals.

The role of ordinary Americans finding workarounds and solutions to the problem of hyperinflation during the middle part of the Revolutionary War, when it would've been easy to give up on the whole enterprise. Often overlooked by histories that focus on the policy-makers with formal training in finance, etc.

Although there were some extremes, by and large revolutionary justice maintained the norms of the English Common Law. Judges such as Hanson were by and large the exception to the norm of restraint when dealing with lack of enthusiasm. But then there was the problem of outright betrayal.

Compared to the French or Russian Revolutions, the American Revolution was relatively free of terror and mass reprisals. However, that doesn't mean it was completely free of attacks upon suspected subversives. Instead, those tended to be focused upon groups that were already considered outsiders, particularly those of African and indigenous origins.

Drawing upon the Old Testament, and especially upon the era of the Judges and its end, to argue that fighting for freedom is an obligation. To do otherwise would be a sin. These preachers reached far more ordinary people than all the various pamphleteers with their Enlightenment philosophy.

How we think of the patriots as being motivated by high-minded ideals. Yet their sacrifices may actually have been more a matter of practical issues of being part of a community that was getting the short end of the stick from the Crown.

The Coercive Acts or Intolerable Acts as a key tipping point in which Americans began to lose hope that the differences with the Crown could be peaceably resolved.

Looking at some of the sources of the shift in mindset that made the Declaration of Independence possible.