Albert Bushnell Hart

“ The wheel of revolution has twirled backward in our day; for we make governors and presidents great political leaders, and set our legislators on a one-legged race against the initiative and referendum. In the midst of the confusion of the Revolution, when town after town was picked up by the British, and nobody knew whether the Revolution would win out, it is wonderful how well the state governments worked, and how successful they were in putting on record the great principle of the two kinds of law,—fundamental or constitutional law, and statute law. ”

“ The finest work of the Revolution was the making of a national government; for which the army and the navy were in part responsible, because a central national power was all that could save the army from capture and the navy from destruction. The Continental Congress became a government before it knew it, authorizing an army and navy, borrowing money, issuing many times more paper notes than it could ever redeem, appointing George Washington commander in chief of the Continental forces, sending ambassadors to foreign countries. ”

“ When we hear the word we feel a pleased sensation of a good, great, glorious time, intended by Providence to prepare the way for our various patriotic organizations. The Revolution? Why, yes, that was when our forefathers tied the first hard knot in the British lion’s tail! All the people were patriots, and all the patriots were as wise as college professors, and as brave as Albanians, and as great as a president. ”

“ The one indispensable man in the Revolution was George Washington; for there was no other in the colonies who was so central, so immovable, a force. But the Revolution would also have failed but for Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, and the other civilians who built up the new government. ”

“ John Paul Jones, the “founder of the American navy,” was born in this cottage at Kirkbean, in Scotland, in 1747. He died in Paris in 1792.
All that seems natural to us; for we have been brought up on the tyranny of George III, and the misgovernment and plunder of the colonies by the British government. We realize the bad state of things much better than did the Americans at the beginning of the Revolution. In truth the colonies were freer from harsh and arbitrary government than England, Scotland, and Wales, to say nothing of what was then the separate kingdom of Ireland. ”

“ Again Great Britain made the mistake of undervaluing the Americans; and when they became independent told them to be independent—and suffer for it. Now that the United States of America was a separate nation, let it keep its vessels out of the trade with the former sister colonies! It took long years to open up other avenues of trade. ”

“ It is evidence of Washington’s genius that, against overwhelming odds and in the face of every discouragement, he was able to seize such an opportunity to turn the darkness of defeat into the glory of victory. ”

“ Likewise, since the right believes itself right, and the top is sure that the world exists in order that it may be the top, most revolutions mean force, arms, big guns booming, troops marching, bullets flying, heads cut off with axes or caught in a hangman’s noose; also arms and legs cut off, and the ground soaked with a crimson fluid. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs,” and in a revolution there is bound to be breakage of heads and hearts, and banks and constitutions. ”

“ In every colony any freeman who had the necessary pluck and health could acquire land and become a voter: in England not a twentieth part of the adult men could vote. The colonists laid their own taxes and expended them for their own purposes: Englishmen paid taxes levied by a Parliament over which only a few of them had control.
Apparently the main cause of the Revolution was that the colonists could do so much for themselves that there was no reason why they should not do substantially everything for themselves. ”

“ Within the military and civic Revolution arose another territorial revolution. When in 1778 George Rogers Clark with his few score frontiersmen slipped down the Ohio River and picked up the little British towns of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, he was blazing the trail into the West, and opening that vast country to millions of Americans still to be born or adopted, till they would in the end rule the republic. ”

“ THE REVOLUTION
The Declaration of Independence FOUR
The Declaration of Independence was a big step for the thirteen brave little colonies to make. Until then they had only been fighting for their rights as colonies of England,—“No taxation without representation.” But after the Declaration of Independence they were battling as a separate country, and if conquered would have had to suffer the fate of rebels and traitors. Congress knew that if America declared itself free from England the aid of France might be hoped for, and this help might decide the whole outcome of the struggle. ”

“ Miss Dodson’s picture is a striking presentment of the scene, distinguished not only for its art value but for its truth. Each figure is an actual portrait and takes an earnest, living part in the composition. ”

“ SOCIAL AND COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
When Rip Van Winkle came back home he found a new set of neighbors who scoffed at good King George. The Americans lived in a changed world. In the South most of the political leaders who were not Englishmen took the patriots’ side,—the Randolphs, and the Peytons, and the Carrolls, and the Rutledges, and the Pinckneys, and the Haynes,—and when the war was over the wheel had revolved under them, but left them still at the top. In the North there was a greater change,—Sam Adams, the untitled leader of the Boston town meeting, became leader of Massachusetts ”

“ BATTLE OF LEXINGTON · BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL · WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE · SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE · “I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT”—JOHN PAUL JONES · THE BIRTH OF THE FLAG
Words wear out after using them a thousand or a million times. “Liberty,” “The Constitution,” “The People’s Government,”—people take those terms into their minds nowadays as they take a chocolate cream, without stopping to think of its contents. So with “Revolution.” ”

“ The feeling exists that the painters of one hundred years ago could not have the perspective to portray the Revolution correctly, no more than a historian of the same period could write its history. The time has come for modern artists in American historic art. The World’s Fair at Chicago gave an impetus to the work, especially in decorative form. As a result, public buildings erected within the past twenty years show many interesting and distinguished examples of historic art in mural decorations, by such artists as Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, C. Y. Turner, and others. ”

“ JOHN HANCOCK’S HOUSE IN BOSTON
Interesting not only in its historic associations, but as an attractive example of colonial architecture.
EFFECTS OF THE WAR
That was a revolution that reached the wives and daughters, and the handsome sons who inherited their fathers’ silken suits and had expected to inherit their dignities. It took the Americans thirty years to find out how great a revolution they had undergone in business; for when the war was over they had an unpatriotic hankering for the broadcloths and kerseymeres of old England. ”

“ We know that the American Revolution was a military contest, because the pictures in our first textbook of American history show General George Washington, in buff and blue, leading his Continentals up to within sixteen feet and eight inches of General Howe, in a magnificent red coat laced with gold, in vain trying to rally battalions of craven Hessians wearing highly inconvenient bearskin caps.
THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT
Commanding officers of opposing armies are not really so intimate as that ”

“ The guns from the vessels in the Charles River immediately opened fire; but the Colonists kept steadily at work. At last the redoubt was finished, and the tools were sent to Bunker Hill.
But by this time General Gage had ordered an attack on Breeds Hill. Three thousand picked soldiers landed at the eastern base of the hill, and a little after three o’clock in the afternoon began their advance. The tired Americans, who had been working all night at the intrenchments, expected to be relieved by others ”

“ The simple fact was that three million people, of whom about a fourth were negro slaves, put up a fight against a mother country having four times their population. They began without a single professional officer, except the traitor Charles Lee ”

“ This picture, from a painting by Trumbull, the famous American artist, shows the surrender of the English general John Burgoyne to the Americans at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777.
EXTRAORDINARY AMERICAN SUCCESS
In one way the Americans were too successful. Beginning with raw militia, ill-equipped, worse disciplined, the Americans made an army that beat the British. General Washington never ceased to implore Congress and the states to give him a better system for a real national army. ”