Only 1/3rd of Americans Supported the American Revolution?

[ellisonz]

By William Marina
Published on 8-8-05

The late William Marina was a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University.

This Fourth of July marks the the 228th anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the most significant external aspect of this year's celebration is that the United States is now involved in an intervention ostensibly to bring Democracy to Iraq.

Yet, many Americans, even many scholars and intellectuals, believe that the the American Revolution was itself not a democratic movement. If that is true, then it is legitimate to ask, "what exactly is it that we are celebrating on July 4th?"

The most common piece of evidence cited in numerous books about the Revolution is a letter of John Adams indicating that one third of the Americans were for the Revolution, another third were against it, and a final third were neutral or indifferent to the whole affair.

Oddly, this is the view of the Revolution essentially held by the British at the time. English leaders appeared to believe that only a minority of rebellious Americans, although well organized, desired independence from the Mother Country. Both times British armies ventured into the interior, it was on the assumption there were large numbers of Loyalists there who would support the King's cause.

http://hnn.us/articles/only-13rd-americans-supported-american-revolution

Time to take this country back!

[Odin2005]

1. I believe that was a rough estimate made by John Adams.

He said that a third were Patriots, a third were Tories, and a third were neutral.

[Bucky]

2. Finish reading the article. That's not what Adams said.

In the letter when he wrote that, he was talking about American support for the French Revolution during the late 1790s--twenty years after the US revolution. Far more than 33% of colonists supported the Revolution--and once the war broke out certainly more than 33% were neutral about its outcome. The American Revolution was the bloodiest in terms of per capita casualties. 25,000 military deaths and thousands more of uncounted civilian deaths out of a population of 2.5 million.

A similarly proportioned fight scaled on today's population would be a war with three million military deaths--or a conflict nine times more deadly for Americans that all of World War Two. So, no, one third of Americans did not stay neutral on the US Revolution.

[zipplewrath]

3. It was highly regional prior to 1775

I'm not sure anyone is really in a position to state what the majority opinion was across the country. Even by April of 1775, when the conflict begins, Virginia among others questioned whether to get involved in what they saw as pretty much of a New England conflict. Concord and Lexington were really part of a series of incidents in the northern colonies where the people were objecting violently to the attempts by the parliment and the crown to assert authority. The troops were occupying Boston for a reason, and those reasons didn't particularly exist in Virginia.

I'm fairly sure that within the merchant class, there was a high level of support for revolution. For much of the agrarian class I'm not really sure we can tell. Ignorance may have been the most common situation.