(bright music) - I am Steve Kendall.

Hello and welcome to "The Journal".

the Ken Burns documentary series "The American Revolution" begins next week on WBGU-PBS.

Here to give us some additional insight and kind of context to the Revolutionary War is Dr.

Andrew Schocket, Professor of History and American Culture Studies here at Bowling Green State University.

Thank you for being here to talk about the American Revolution.

- Well, thanks for having me on.

I'm delighted to be talking about this, both because of the series that's gonna be on, starting at 8:00 PM, here and other PBS stations, right, and also because we're on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

So it's an exciting time to be thinking about the American Revolution.

- Yeah, and I think it's interesting because, you know, we referenced fact, we think of 1776 as when the Declaration of Independence took place.

A lot of people think, to some degree, that's when the Revolutionary War began.

But the reality is, for Great Britain and its colonies, especially the American colonies, opposition began well before the Declaration of Independence.

So talk about the run-up to that event you just mentioned in July of '76, because there was lots of activity long before that.

- Oh, absolutely.

I mean, even from 1763, after the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War, in which the British government spent gobs of money.

And what they decided was their prize for winning that war was North America and Canada.

And they decided, well, maybe the American colonists should pay a little bit more of the war debt and their defense costs.

And that's when they decided that maybe they should have, well, for example, a tax on things like newspapers, and some legal documents, anything printed.

By the way, the way you'd prove that you paid for this tax is you'd have something, a piece of paper, or if it was printed, it would be printed on, affixed to it, a stamp.

- [Steve] So that was the Stamp Act.

- Absolutely.

And after that, in 1764, sugar acts and other taxes to try to raise money to defray these costs of running the empire.

And by the way, just about all of these taxes were repealed by 1768, to the extent to which, King George was so popular that in New York, they erected a statue to him.

So this is not like a straight process, it's like goes up and goes down.

And then of course there's, starting in 1768, because of unrest, the British sent troops, not to necessarily protect colonists, but to Boston, where they thought that the Bostonians were resisting, and Massachusetts was resisting imperial authority.

And of course, there are a range of events, from what we call the Boston Tea Party and Massacre, until by, really now historians are saying, depending on where you are, by mid 1764, and certainly early 1765, in almost all of the colonies, Imperial Order has just disintegrated.

- [Steve] Wow.

- And local, they're sometimes called committees of correspondence, or committees of safety, things like that are sort of running this dual government.

And so yes, absolutely.

We talk about this date as July 4th, which is the official date that we ascribe to the Declaration of Independence, the establishment of a nation.

But it's this very messy process in which civil authority is breaking down, people are deciding, okay, so how are we gonna run society and government if we're not obeying a governor?

Depending, of course, on the colony, I mean, Connecticut's a little different.

They were semi-independent all along.

-[Steve] Already.

- But yeah, and there are all these different events, some that we know, some that popularly we know a little bit less about that will come up in the series.

For example, Dunmore's proclamation the Governor of Virginia in 1775, in the fall, he's already on a ship in the Chesapeake.

And he decides that the best way to shore up imperial authority, because he doesn't have any troops coming as far as he knows, is to issue a proclamation inviting anyone to rally to the King's standard, including enslaved people who will be free.

- [Steve] Oh, wow.

- If they join.

- [Steve] With the British.

- If they join with the British!

Many do.

They end up fighting with shirts or smocks that say freedom.

And not surprisingly, that actually scared a lot of Virginians into.

- Taking the other side of them.

- Absolutely, against the crown.

So they're all, depending on where people were, what they were reading or talking about, what was going on in their colony, people supported the revolution at different times.

But we estimate that depending on the time or place, maybe overall no more than maybe 40% of people supported the revolution.

Maybe a quarter percent, excuse me, a quarter, 25%.

- Sure.

- Were loyalists.

And that leaves a little more than a third of the people who, at the time, were often referred to as disaffected people who, for various reasons, chose neither side.

- They were in the middle.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And that's interesting because I think a lot of times we believe that, oh, everybody got on board right away.

And that wasn't the case, as you just described.

There was a percentage of the population that was pro George III, percentage that were not at all interested in being with George III, and then that group in the middle was like, we're just trying to figure out what is going on here, kind of.

One of the things you mentioned too is the fact that we think of the way media works now, that you'd hear this thing, it's instant all over the country.

There, it probably took time for things to move from, if something happened in New York or Boston or wherever, they didn't find out about it in Georgia until probably what, weeks or months later, possibly?

- Yeah, weeks, absolutely.

Weeks later.

Today we think, of course, news happens instantly, and we think that news maybe then sometimes happened by horseback, just as often on ships, newspapers would print the news that they got from other newspapers, or people would come off a ship and say, "Oh, I've got this letter from someone in someplace."

And they'd print the letter that had the news right in the newspapers, because even then newspapers were partly, you know searching for content - [Steve] Content.

along with all the ads that they had.

So today, the front page is where you see the news.

Then often, depending on the newspaper, the front page might be and the back page might be advertisements, and the real news was in the middle.

- [Steve] Stuck in the middle.

- Because they printed that last.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, so it would take time, and the news was, as it always is, the news was imperfect.

-[Steve] Right But one of the things that historians recently have written about is how good the Patriot side, the American side was at what today we might call propaganda.

- [Steve] Oh, okay, we'll come back, but let's stop there.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- [Steve] We'll come back and you can talk about that, because obviously it was winning the message battle, just like today.

- Absolutely It absolutely did.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, when we come back, more with Dr.

Andrew Schocket, professor of History and American Culture Studies here at BGSU as we talk about the American Revolution back in just a moment.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr.

Andrew Schocket, professor of History and American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.

Dr.

Schocket, we lost that last segment.

We were talking about the fact that communication was different then.

Obviously there wasn't the electronic world that we live in now.

And you were mentioning the fact that even then, winning the hearts and minds, winning the messaging battle was just as important in those days, maybe even more important than it is today.

- Absolutely, and so people got news partly through word of mouth, partly through correspondence, but a large part of it through newspapers.

And not that many people actually subscribed to newspapers, but they would be passed around.

Taverns or inns would subscribe to them, and people would read, or coffee houses, people would read them out loud, or have access to them there.

But most of the printers, certainly by 1775, 1776, supported the Patriot cause.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- And the ones who didn't after that were mostly chased out or realized, oh, maybe I'm better off in New Brunswick, or excuse me, not New Brunswick, but in Nova Scotia or somewhere.

So part of it was more of a monopoly on friendly coverage, but also the way that, say members of the Continental Congress or other leaders of the Patriot cause sent out, distributed this information, often about what they would portray as say, the atrocities of native peoples on the frontier, or the fear of slave revolts.

And they'd say, "Hey, look at all these scary things that the king, who's supposed to be protecting you, and look what he's doing."

- [Steve] He's advocating.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And that scared a lot of people.

And that ended up shoring up a lot of support for the nation - [Steve] So some people came to it for reasons other than the ones we think, that it wasn't about necessarily independence, it was, again, placing a little bit of fear of what the other guys are gonna do.

- Absolutely, and because it's important to remember that it was certainly a war of national independence.

I mean, that's why that July 4th is so important, a Declaration of Independence, right?

But it's also, and this is something that viewers will see in the documentary, that it's also a civil war among Americans, and people join up, or support, or are against the war for all sorts of reasons.

So for example, in 1768, there was a revolt in North Carolina, usually referred to as the regulators, because the colonial governor, and his cronies, and tax collectors were basically taxing people and not giving the money to the colony, or using all sorts of chicanery to take people's land away from them.

And so they revolted in 1768, they were put down in a battle, and it's called the Battle of Alamance in 1768.

But most of the governor's supporters actually, ironically, ended up becoming Patriots.

And so a lot of these people who revolted ended up supporting the Crown.

They're like, "Hey, we're against whoever they're for."

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A friend of my enemy is no friend of mine.

- Absolutely.

So it's really complicated and fascinating.

That's why when we think about three to four million people, Americans during this period, there are three or four million stories, and they're all fascinating.

- Yeah, and they've been passed down in various ways.

Now, one of the things you mentioned too is the fact, obviously the French and Indian War precedes this.

Those activities on where we sit right now was the western frontier.

- [Andrew] Absolutely.

- Here in Ohio, those continued during the Revolutionary War, the various Native American tribes warring against each other because they were fighting their own war to hold onto their land and do whatever.

Some of them supported the British, some of them supported us, the Americans.

So that played out as well.

And of course that was a frontier, almost sort more like a guerilla war, than we think of the emplacement battles of everybody marching in line.

Those were war, like total war almost, that thing that went on in the frontier.

How did that factor in?

I mean, obviously there were people trying to get this group of Native Americans on their side versus the other side, but old things probably cropped there.

People fought for, not necessarily because they supported independence, they just didn't like the other, the tribe across the river, basically.

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

It's every, especially among these Native nations, everyone is making exactly the kinds of calculations that you're talking about.

And again, one of the stories that's gonna come up in Ken Burns' "American Revolution," I think, is the story of Joseph Brant, a military leader of, in this case, the Mohawk Nation, which was one of the six nations of the Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee, and this happens to be in central and upstate New York.

And ultimately they decide to side with the British because they're concerned about American expansion - [Steve] Expansion, yeah.

into their land.

On the other hand, the Catawbas in South Carolina decide to side with the Americans because they think, okay, well we live with them.

What's gonna happen?

I don't know these other people.

- [Steve] We don't know the other people.

- Right, right.

And so.

- [Steve] Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.

- Absolutely, and so they're all making these calculations about survival and where's the best place for our people?

- Who do we think is gonna win, basically.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- We wanna be on the winning side.

Who do we think that's gonna be?

Jumping far ahead now, one of the things that makes a big difference too is, obviously the British and French were the two large global empires at that time.

There were probably some other people too, but that became one of the deciding factors in the American Revolution is when there was a negotiation with the French to join the Americans.

Not necessarily because they loved the Americans that much, they just hated the British that much.

There was some of that calculating going on too, I'm guessing.

- Oh, absolutely.

It's certainly not the case that a French monarch would think, "Oh yeah, we wanna support a revolution against the king."

Right?

So you're absolutely right.

- [Steve] Wait a minute, lemme think about that for a second.

- Right!

And so you're absolutely right, having just lost a war, and of course the French and the British were at war on and off for nearly a century before all this.

- [Steve] In Europe and everywhere else.

- Absolutely.

And so after the Battle of Saratoga, where the French see, hmm, maybe there's something to this.

- [Steve] Maybe they can win.

- Right, right, so maybe this is an opportunity for us.

And yeah, so they supply arms, but more importantly than that, just by their entering the war, of course supplying and of course offering their, well, not offering, but bringing their navy into it for the British, it makes the war a different calculation that all of a sudden for them it's a world war, as you were saying.

And they're thinking, oh, we need to defend our island from the French.

We need to see what's going, we need to protect our colonies in the Caribbean that were, in some ways to them, as valuable to the ones on the continent because of the products they could get there, especially sugar and also coffee.

So all of a sudden it made it a much different war.

- [Steve] Became a global war.

- For the British, absolutely.

- [Steve] Okay, well when we come back, we can move forward.

Because obviously we could spend a lot more time on this.

But that's gonna be the thing, because that changes dramatically everything for the Americans and for the British.

So yeah, when we come back, more about the American Revolution with Dr.

Andrew Schocket here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal," our guest is Dr.

Andrew Schocket from the Bowling Green State University History Department, American Culture Studies.

One of the things that maybe gets lost a little bit in this too if you look through it is, right after the British took New York, and that was a really bad time for the Americans.

Getting pushed outta New York, George Washington's troops end up in New Jersey, which, okay, even then, people didn't think a lot of New Jersey, I guess.

But there's outreach then by two British military officers to the second Continental Congress say, "Hey, maybe we can stop this right now.

Let's see if we can find a spot of agreement."

Talk a little about that, because I think a lot of people figured, once we started it we fought all the way through and there was never any discussion, but there was an attempt at a peace settlement in basically 1777, I believe.

- [Andrew] Yeah, absolutely.

So the British sent the Howe Brothers, one an admiral, one a general, to command their military forces in North America.

And one of the reasons I think why they were chosen is because they were not super hard liners.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- Because from the British point of view, yes, okay, they want to put down this rebellion, they want to establish order.

But thinking beyond that, these are people that they wanted to govern.

And so they had to make those calculations, yes.

- [Steve] Yeah, they had to live with them.

They're still gonna be part of the British Empire, they believe.

- Right, and so they send out these feelers and there are preliminary discussions, but really there's no way, even if they had greed, maybe on some sort of terms, I don't think there's any way that the two sides could have agreed on terms that would have allowed everyone even to save face.

I mean, in 1775, in fall of 1775, Continental Congress had sent what was called Olive Branch Petition to King George.

And actually I think they passed it, it goes.

- [Steve] They passed each other.

- I think so, but King George III declared the colonies in rebellion.

- [Steve] Ah, so he drew lines.

- In declaring martial law, and so how do you pull, how does either side pull back?

- How do you walk back and look like, yeah.

- You know, after there's been, as you point out, after they've occupied New York, and after there have already been all the two years.

- Of fighting and killing.

- Fighting, right, how does anyone pull back from that?

And maybe that's, I don't know if that's, what sort of lesson we draw from that, except that we, as human beings, aren't good at thinking through ways to solve problems.

And we can be better at that.

- And you see that as we move through history after that, each side is like, "Well, we can't show that we're weak on this, we've gotta be strong."

One of the things that happens too is the Battle of Saratoga.

We've got like about three, four minutes here.

That was another big turning point, because you said that's when the French went, "Well, maybe we should get it on, but we think might be the winning side.

And if nothing else, we're gonna put more pressure on Great Britain, more pressure, make them spend more money over there."

Meanwhile, as you said, we're still fighting over here in Europe, and in the Caribbean, and everywhere else.

So that was a big turning point as well, the Battle of Saratoga.

- [Andrew] Absolutely.

So the Battle of Saratoga in 1778, and really Saratoga has this, we think of it as this big battle.

It was by that point a semi decrepit fort that was of maybe mixed strategic value.

- [Steve] No value to anybody.

- Right, right.

But it was a victory that the Americans, and at this point, Benjamin Franklin and France say, "See, look!"

- [Steve] Yeah, we beat 'em over there.

- Right, absolutely.

- [Steve] Get on the winning side.

- Right, absolutely.

And so by making it a World War, increasing the price for Britain to continue the war, and of course the crucial naval support that we think of the last battle, major battle of the American Revolution, Yorktown.

And the reason why Cornwallace surrendered there is he went there expecting to get his ride, expecting to get picked up by the Royal Navy, by the British Navy, and he's there, and the French Navy is bottling up the Chesapeake.

And at that point, he has nowhere to go.

And that's why they surrendered.

- Yeah, well, and the other thing too, now, and you mentioned that too, we've got just a couple of minutes.

That's in 1781.

The Treaty of Paris isnt signed until 1783.

So what sort of took place between Yorktown and the treaty?

Did the fighting end right away after Yorktown, or was there still activity before the Treaty of Paris?

- [Andrew] Yes and no.

So the British at that point more or less stopped their military operations on the continent.

They scaled down their navy a bit.

There continued to be some partisan fighting in the States, because again, it's this civil war.

So we think of it, this is a great point, we think of it as it's over, and not quite.

And then of course, there are close to two years of negotiations in which the Americans managed to get more than anyone expected they could have gotten from the French and the British to some extent, playing them off each other and getting excellent terms.

And of course we think of the war ending there, but we often think of the American Revolution as this greater event going through the Constitution, and the ratification of the Constitution, and of course the establishment of a new national federal government.

- Yeah, okay, that's a really great insight into all of this because there's a lot of stuff going on.

And obviously when we see the series, we will get other pieces of that too.

But thank you so much for coming on and the insight and the background to some of these things that we read about in textbooks, but behind what you read in the textbook, there's a much larger story to each of 'em.

So thank you very much.

- Oh, thank you for having me on.

- Great, and you can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time, good night and good luck.

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