Report on Jeff Shaara’s Rise to Rebellion
This novel describes the events in North America and Britain in 1770-76 that led up to the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Its plot is divided into three sections (The Right and the Power, Lions and Lambs, and The Flag Unfurled), beginning on the day of the Boston Massacre in March 1770, and continuing with the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts of 1774, the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and the meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to debate the pros and cons of independence. All of the major historical characters are portrayed in detail in the novel, including John and Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Hutchinson, General Thomas Gage, Thomas Paine, William Pitt the Elder (Lord Chatham) and George Washington. There are also a number of minor and lesser-known characters, such as Corporal Hugh White, who was on guard duty on the day of the Boston and Margaret Gage, the wife of the British military commander, who may have been an agent and sympathizer of the American cause. All of it is based on very extensive research into the actual historical records related to these characters and events, as the novel builds toward its inevitable climax of war, revolution and independence, and is narrated in a very engaging and readable style. Over time, the mood of the book reflects the hardening tone and attitudes on both sides in 1770-76 as they decide that a compromise or peaceful outcome is impossible and events will be decided on the battlefield.
Virtually no one had imagined in 1770 that these events would take a very radical turn in the following five years, to the point where England and the American colonies would be at war. Perhaps the Boston Massacre of March 1770 would later be remembered as the opening shots of the war, but that was not how it was seen at the time. There had been violent protests before that had surprised even many of the American leaders, against the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend taxes of 1767-68, but these had been repealed by Parliament. There was no real reason for the protests at the Boston Custom House in 1770, except for the general anger at British troops being stationed in the town and the fact that they took jobs away from local men in a depressed economy. It all started with boys throwing snowballs at the “lobster backs” and Hugh White striking one of them with his musket, which caused the Sons of Liberty led by Sam Adams to assemble a larger and angrier crowd. After being attacked, the British soldiers started firing on their own, without instructions from their commander, Captain Thomas Preston. They did so in self-defense, as Shaara indicates truthfully, as soon as some started firing “quickly there came more shots, the soldiers losing all control, the fear and anger giving way” (Shaara 12). John Adams ended up defending Preston and his men against murder charges, even though this was against the wishes of his cousin Sam and the other leaders of the Sons of Liberty. Throughout this novel, John Adams appears as a reluctant revolutionary, at least at first, and someone with a high regard for law and order. Sam Adams was far more radical and determined to use violent methods against what he regarded as British oppression, such as limits on American manufacturing and trade, no representation in Parliament and being taxed without their consent.
Benjamin Franklin was not a supporter of revolution and independence in 1770, but the representative of the Pennsylvania legislature in London. He was proud that his son William had been named royal governor of New Jersey and hoped that Pennsylvania would be taken away from its corrupt Proprietors (the Penn family) and made into a royal colony. After the revolution began, though, they were on opposite sides, and Franklin never spoke to his son again. He had been surprised by the protests and agitation about the Stamp Act in 1765, and the generally rebellious mood of the people, especially since he had had one of his friends appointed as a tax collector. Yet over time who grew disenchanted with England, including the corruption and incompetence of its ministers and the poor living conditions he observed among the working class in the towns and the peasants of Scotland and Ireland. Normally a very mild and amiable man, he became increasingly angry and frustrated at the personal abuse he received from Lord Hillsborough and the other ministers, as the rebellious mood of the colonies increased. Franklin came to the conclusion that the British would treat America like Ireland if they had their way, and by 1774-75 had come to support independence. He no longer wanted any reconciliation with Britain, despite the efforts of William Pitt and others to support a peaceful compromise.
Thomas Gage agreed with the Colonial Secretary Lord Hillsborough and King George III that sterner measures are necessary to restore order in the American colonies, and they all regard Thomas Hutchinson as a weak and timid man who simply allowed the radicals and the mobs to get out of control. They are convinced that a string show of force in Boston and shooting the rebel leaders will soon restore good order and respect for the king’s authority. From the start, gage wanted Hutchinson to arrest the leaders of the Sons of Liberty and send them to England to be tried for treason, but the governor was reluctant to do so. Like his superiors, Gage was a member of the aristocracy who had “rarely felt the need to impress anyone on this side of the Atlantic”, and was also hoping to receive a title of nobility after his many years of military service (Shaara 25). After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he and the king agreed that the colonists were now in rebellion and would be put down by military force. George III sent Gage back to Boston with reinforcements, placed Massachusetts under martial law, dissolved the colonial legislature and the courts, closed the port of Boston, and began to make plans to arrest the rebel leaders and seize their weapons.
Gage and the king did not believe that any of the other colonies would come to the aid of Massachusetts after these Intolerable Acts had been put in force, and here they made their worst error. This was the real spark that led to the American Revolution and independence in 1776, as the other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts at the Continental Congress, and the appointed George Washington as military commander of the American armies. Washington had also been a reluctant revolutionary and not enthusiastic for the radicals in Boston, but when the Intolerable Acts had been passed, he played a key role in rallying Virginia behind the cause of Massachusetts and all the other colonies followed suit. Very soon, he was in charge of all the American troops besieging Boston, and finally forced Gage and the British to abandon the city. They would never control New England again, and even though the Congress had not yet decided on independence—mainly because of doubts about the military and economic capacity of America to win the war on its own without foreign allies—as Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense made clear in 1776, the war had already begun and would have to be fought to the finish.
WORKS CITED
Shaara, Jeff. Rise to Rebellion. Ballantine Books, 2002.
