History UsefulNotes / TheAmericanRevolution

* Art/StatueOfLiberty (1886): Lady Liberty embodies and celebrates the freedom ideals of The American Revolution. In the sense that a person's liberty is paramount to anything else and fighting fot is always noble and necessary.

* The 1780 British EpistolaryNovel ''Literature/EmmaCorbett'' or, The miseries of civil war. Founded on some recent circumstances which happened in America'', which may hold the distinction of being the earliest novel written about the American Revolution. The titular heroine heads off to America, [[SweetPollyOliver disguised as a boy]], in order to reunite with her redcoat lover. He gets hit by a poisoned arrow, and she tries to SuckOutThePoison, but it only results in [[DownerEnding both of them dying]]. Supposedly, it's based on a real incident that took place in 1777. Back in the day, the novel managed to be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

* ''Series/GhostsUS'', The episode “D&D” has flashbacks set in this era.

* ''VideoGame/EmpireTotalWar''s Road To Independence Campaign.

This decisive defeat marked the collapse of Parliament's will to prosecute the war, and the end of major combat operations in North America. After further fighting between the French, Spanish, and British at sea, at Gibraltar, and elsewhere around the world, the Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the war and established the United States of America as an independent nation. A twentieth of the population of the former colonies, some hundred thousand people, emigrated to remain under the patronage of George III. Most loyalists emigrated to Canada, a milestone in the history of that nation which effectively secured it for the Empire by reducing the potentially rebellious French majority to a minority.\\\

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]] the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

* Two ''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}!'' episodes (1998)

Once upon a time, in 1765, The British Empire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]] the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

** ''Arundel''
** RabbleInArms
** OliverWiswell (Noteworthy for giving the Tory side of things)

* Many novels by HowardFast, including:

* The multiple-volume ''Prelude to Glory'' series takes readers through most of the war in detail, through the perspectives of several fictional characters interacting with the historical ones in various theaters of action. The series begins shortly before the war does (as in, the Saturday before the Lexington-Concord Battle that set it off) and follows it through to its end and setting up the fledgling nation.
* The first two books in John Jakes' KentFamilyChronicles deal with the Revolution:

* Creator/GoreVidal's {{Burr}} which examines not only the Revolution but the entire generation and the period of political society building under the presidency of Washington, Adams and Jefferson.

** ConceivedInLiberty
** HaymSolomonSonOfLiberty (fictionalized account of the Polish Jewish immigrant who was the key financier of the Rebel side in the Revolution)
** TheProudAndTheFree (fictionalized account of the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny)
** AprilMorning
** TheHessian
* A couple of the Richard Bolitho novels by Alexander Kent are notable for presenting it from the Tory side.
* ''Jonathan Barret, Gentleman Vampire'' is set in this era. The Barrets are Loyalists living on Long Island dealing with both the rebels and Hessian mercenaries raiding their supplies.

* The 1780 British EpistolaryNovel ''Emma Corbett or, The miseries of civil war. Founded on some recent circumstances which happened in America'', which may hold the distinction of being the earliest novel written about the American Revolution. The titular heroine heads off to America, [[SweetPollyOliver disguised as a boy]], in order to reunite with her redcoat lover. He gets hit by a poisoned arrow, and she tries to SuckOutThePoison, but it only results in [[DownerEnding both of them dying]]. Supposedly, it's based on a real incident that took place in 1777. Back in the day, the novel managed to be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Once the weather got warm in 1777, Howe wasted much of the spring and summer before putting his army into boats, sailing up Chesapeake Bay, and capturing the by-now-''American'' capital of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. However, he again failed to win a decisive victory against Washington's army, and the ostensible coup in capturing the capital proved to be meaningless--in the decentralized Revolutionary United States, most authority lay in the hands of the states, and Congress had such a small associated bureaucracy it could just pack up and leave, which it did (decamping first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then further inland to York, PA). Meanwhile, an expeditionary force from Canada was decisively defeated at Saratoga in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState northern New York]] and shortly thereafter surrendered to the Americans. The intensity of the fighting and the result persuaded France that the rebels meant business and that this war would be a good opportunity to get revenge on Britain--even if it meant siding with people who they had once fought against and were opposed to everything they stood for (a strong monarchy, a large nobility, and powerful, vibrant Catholic Church). Seeing which way the tide seemed to be turning, the king of Spain also declared war on Britain, and the Dutch--the second-biggest commercial power after Britain--started to bankroll the French and the American rebels. The colonies were now the least of Britain's problems; they were now at war with three of the five major powers in Europe.\\\

Also often forgotten, fellow-victor Spain regained its colony of Florida, which it had to give to the British after the Seven Years' War. It remained in Spanish hands until 1819, when [[UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson some renegade American general]] went beyond orders in an attempt to capture Floridian Native Americans who raided American towns on the border.\\\

* ''[[https://americana-dawn.tumblr.com/ Americana Dawn]]'', originally a ''Hetalia'' fan game subtitled "The Long Goodbye," aims to cover this period of history in a {{Retraux}} style reminiscent of the ''VideoGame/Suikoden'' series.

* ''[[Americana Dawn https://americana-dawn.tumblr.com/]]'', originally a ''Hetalia'' fan game subtitled "The Long Goodbye," aims to cover this period of history in a {{Retraux}} style reminiscent of the ''VideoGame/Suikoden'' series.

Once upon a time, in 1765, The British Empire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]] the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and *human* tale.

* What happens when one combines mystic powers, a traitorous Ben Franklin and a failed revolution? ''Anime/CodeGeass''.

->''"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"''
-->--'''Creator/SamuelJohnson''', ''Taxation No Tyranny'' (1775)

Once upon a time, in 1765, The British Empire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British North America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]] the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). As it would later be portrayed, this was a time when idealistic demagogues overthrew a tyrant and gave voting rights to the people--[[ValuesDissonance if you were English or Scots (don't even mention the Irish and other foreigners), rich, land-owning, and male.]] The time of Modern Mythology in America, in short. In reality, it was a lot more complex, and in many ways far more divisive and terrible, and human--and British--than that.

Britain's colonies on the North American mainland were largely patriotic until after the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar--which had been fought to defend the country's colonies and trans-Atlantic trade from France. Though the British East India Company's victory over the French East India Company (with the help of royal fleets on both sides) was much more important in the long-term, Britain's sound victory in the Americas had three very important consequences there. First, the seizure and formal concession of French North America (modern Quebec) effectively removed the immediate security threat France had posed to British America. This meant that local elites no longer had any reason to avoid antagonizing the central government in disputes between the two, while also making a very valid point in their favor (why should we have to support a big army to counter a threat that's no longer needed?).\\\

Complicating things was that much of the American colonial populace was composed of descendants of the so-called religious "dissenters": Puritans, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and dozens of other small denominations who'd come to America to escape the iron hand that the Church of England had upon public life and where they were often prohibited from owning land or practicing professions.[[note]]To say nothing of the Germans who showed up in the country because their prince was a Catholic and didn't like Protestants--or was a Protestant and thought they were the wrong kind of Protestant--and the Dutch Reformed who had been there longer in the first place. The kicker with these was that the English Dissenters often found that they had more in common religiously with these Germans and Dutchmen than with the Anglicans in charge back home; the Dutch in particular were generally Calvinist Presbyterians, agreeing with the Dissenters completely on theological matters and being only a little different ecclesiastically.[[/note]] Most common in northeastern colonies known as New England, these groups (collectively known as "Congregationalists") had spent nearly two centuries of mostly benign neglect developing their local political institutions. And as the name suggests, these institutions naturally grew out of the direct democracy inherent in the congregational nature of their worship, although Church of England-dominated Virginia possessed the oldest of the colonial legislatures. The upshot of this was that many colonists felt reluctant to follow the laws and policies set down by the Cabinet, despite being fairly co-operative with their own home-grown charter-based (often unacknowledged by the crown, and thus not strictly legal) local assemblies. This belief in superiority of local representation was to prove to be the true sticking point. It effectively meant that while the colonists had no parliamentary representation of their own[[note]]The colonists--despite accounting for perhaps a fifth of the population of the British Empire by this point in time--had no Members of Parliament representing them. Scotland, a less populous region, had dozens.[[/note]], having grown accustomed to running their own affairs via local governments meant they had no desire for such representation either.\\\

Since the signing of the Magna Carta, it had been the right of all Englishmen to be represented before the King in Parliament, through which all laws were passed and by which all taxes had to be approved. Just a century ago, the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar ([[NonIndicativeName which deeply involved all three kingdoms]], and killed maybe 2% of their total population) had started when King Charles I had tried to collect taxes outside of Parliament and ended years after his execution at their hands. Parliament later invited his son to become King and rule with their consent. More recently still, when another King started looking a bit too Catholic, Parliament invited a Dutchman (William of Orange) to take the Crown. He did so without too much fuss in what came to be known as 'The Glorious Revolution'. Long story short: by popular belief, the King ruled only ''with the consent of Parliament''--and by extension, the people. And since the Cabinet and Parliament wielded the King's powers on his behalf (the "royal prerogative"), they ought to do the same in ruling with the consent of the people. In attempting to collect taxes from subjects who were not represented by Parliament, Cabinet was both exceeding its authority and (by omission and trying to render local institutions irrelevant) denying His Majesty's subjects their constitutional right to have a say in how they were governed.\\\

Compounding this were administrative issues. Westminster had assumed a largely hands-off policy in regards to the colonies prior to the Seven Years War. Since the beginnings of British colonization the Crown had subsidized the colonies and protected them, but had little to do with their day-to-day affairs and had been largely content to let them manage themselves. The Government was far more interested in the sugar-rich islands of the Caribbean: they were not only three times wealthier than the entire North American colonies, but easier to tax as well, due not just to their smaller size but to a stronger military presence stemming from the proximity of French and Spanish interlopers. As a result, the American-born British aristocracy had gotten used to running the colonies by themselves, and thus did not take it well when Westminster started interfering in their affairs.\\\

Finally, there were competing commercial interests. Like all empires, the British had an interest in routing as much trade as possible through English ports under a policy known as mercantilism. The mercantilists sought to prohibit local manufacture: Colonies were supposed to supply raw material, not competition. Similarly, trade directly between colonies was actively discouraged. This ensured that taxes, tariffs and duties were assessed and the maximum commercial benefit accrued while also insuring that the colonies remained dependent upon the mother country. And, truth be told, it also allowed for a certain amount of graft, corruption, skimming off the top, and restraint of trade in the form of monopolies, patents, and licenses, all of which required influence at court or bribery to obtain. Unfortunately, this policy, while attractive on paper, ignored the simple reality that prevailing winds made sailing along the North American coast a lot easier than voyaging across the North Atlantic. Faced with the prospect of forking much of their profit over to British middlemen (assuming they even had the time, influence, or bribe money to get the required licences) most American merchants became smugglers by default. And--in for a penny, in for a pound--smuggling within the western hemisphere inevitably led to smuggling on a worldwide scale. It's not like they'd hang you any less if you stuck to the coast of Massachusetts.\\\

What underpinned much of the popular support for the declaration was in large part due to Creator/ThomasPaine, a very smart young English radical whom Benjamin Franklin had brought over to Philadelphia in November 1774, wrote a best-selling pamphlet called ''Common Sense''. ''Common Sense'' attacked the whole concept of monarchy in clear, unambiguous terms, using the Bible to decisively prove that God did not in fact like Kings, whatever people might say about 'giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's'. Combined with the usual railing against the corruption of parliament and the cabinet and the potential tyranny of all Kings in general, this provided a focus for a growing wave of anti-monarchist sentiment, decades of local tradition (along with their penchant for Locke and Hobbes) naturally led said anti-monarchists to favor a republican government. On July 2, 1776, the representatives of the Continental Congress voted in principle to divorce the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain. (However, the new nation wound up celebrating its Independence Day on July 4 because that was the day that the Declaration of Independence was approved and announced to the public, which makes a certain kind of sense in an "if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods-and-nobody-hears-it" way: if a deliberative body votes that something will happen but doesn't tell anybody, did it really happen?[[note]]Also, let's not forget that in the usual course of the law, statutes are generally considered to be effective on the date they are ''published'', rather than the date final approval is given, absent language in the statute to the contrary.[[/note]])\\\

We should at this point note that the war was not just a squabble between white men ([[PoliticallyCorrectHistory but good luck finding a textbook that discusses it]]). The Native Americans mostly allied with the British, as the crown had previously granted the Indians autonomy and prevented the colonists from encroaching on the Indian territories west of the Mississippi River and in the Ohio River Valley. The most powerful, and troublesome to the Americans, were the remains of the Iroquois Confederacy of New York (two of the original six confederate nations split off and allied themselves to the Americans) and the Chickamunga Cherokees of Tennessee and Kentucky. Armed and supplied by the British, they conducted night raids and ambushes on most frontier communities and fortifications. In retaliation, Washington dispatched John Sullivan and his army in 1779 to upstate New York, where they systematically razed 40 Iroquois villages in a scorched earth campaign. The ensuing famine killed so many of them that they would never again be able to field enough men to defend themselves from European raiders and settlers.\\\

At the same time, the British also had great support amongst the African slaves in America (the delicious irony of slave drivers agitating for freedom was not lost on ''anyone''; Ralph Henry, the slave of Patrick "give me liberty or give me death" Henry, ran away to the British the week that quote was uttered, while Creator/SamuelJohnson mockingly asked "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?"). Most of the support was due to the Earl of Dunmore, the last governor of Virginia, who, critically outnumbered by the rebels, in 1779 offered freedom to any slave who joined the British. Not to be outdone by the Americans on the hypocrisy front, the slaves of loyalists were ''not'' freed. Over the course of the war, about 100,000 slaves escaped to the British (or tried to) and about 20,000 of them fought against the Americans as part of the all-black "Ethiopian Regiment" (which was mostly relegated to performing backbreaking logistic and support functions), which first saw action at the Battle of Kemp's Landing, where a black soldier managed to capture his former master. In fact, this was what galvanized the Southern states to seriously support the rebellion: the fear of a British-sponsored total slave uprising. At the end of the war, the remaining black loyalists were resettled in the Canadas or Nova Scotia (many of those later moved to Sierra Leone to found the first freedmen colony). It should be noted that there were also plenty of blacks (both slaves and freedmen) who also supported the Patriots,[[note]]Take a close look at the crewmen in that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware[[/note]] and that several colonial militias had black members, most notably the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which similarly to the Dunmore proclamation was formed at least partially by slaves who had been promised their freedom. It has been estimated that about 1/5 of the Continental Army was of African descent. It should also be noted that a significant portion of slaves who had been promised their freedom on both sides of the war were not granted it, or were re-enslaved later[[note]]Also worth noting is that, during the drafting of the Constitution of the United States, John Adams (among others) pointed out that slave-holding was contrary to the freedom espoused by the fledgling nation, with Adams rather famously pointing out that if the Continental Congress did not resolve the issue (by emancipating the slaves), then it would become a terrible issue for future generations to deal with 100 years later. [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar He was right on everything but the year]][[/note]]. Furthermore, the ideals of the Revolution played a huge part in the abolition of slavery in the North; Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, as well as the still-independent Vermont Republic, all abolished the practice during or just after the war, though it was a gradual process rather than the full immediate emancipation that would happen the following century.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the fledgling nation was now an incontrovertible fact. The United States of America were - 'were' and not 'was' because the constitution as known today had yet to be drafted and the federal government was very weak - under-populated, poor, debt-ridden and exhausted from a civil war which had practically torn them in half. They had no real army to speak of and no naval forces whatsoever. It remained to be seen if the secessionist colonies could form a strong and coherent state of their own or whether they would return to the Crown, by mutual agreement or by force. If there was one lesson history taught about republics[[note]]Like the English Civil-War-Commonwealth which became a dictatorship under Cromwell, and the Dutch 'Republic' which became a ''de facto'' monarchy under the House of Oranje/Orange. The Italian Republics (Tuscany, Venice, etc) kind of counted, but they were run by powerful guilds and merchant clans and were autocracies for all intents and purposes.[[/note]] it was that they inevitably failed, and the state of the republic in the following years would seem to confirm this assertion. Ironically, the Republic's survival was ultimately due to the actions of some hundred powerful oligarchs acting against the wishes of the majority of the people. Together they conspired to write and have ratified by the states a constitution, one that bound the states under a central government, to keep the fledgling nation afloat. Out of this clandestine agreement came the Constitution and, later on, the Bill of Rights as Americans know it today - the point of the bill being to undercut popular opposition to their attempt to subvert the power of the states to which most people who remained owed their allegiance. It would be another half-century, and a [[UsefulNotes/WarOf1812 war that nobody really wanted]], before people could say with confidence that the new nation would be around to stay, in one form or another--and it would take another war, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar the world's first industrial war]], to make the United States truly one nation, in a position to become what it became.\\\

Regardless of what the academics think, the traditional Whig School is still more-or-less ubiquitously accepted by the American public at large. This usually does not engender hostility towards present-day British people, since this happened a long time ago, and the British have been American allies in much more recent conflicts. As you might imagine, people on the political right tend to hold steadfastly to the Whig School while people on the political left tend to at least lean towards the Progressive School.\\\

The American Revolution is oddly underrepresented in American films, given its importance. Perhaps it's because the triumphalist Whig narrative was already past the peak of its popularity by the time cinema was invented, and the other narratives are not very conducive to crowd-pleasing films. Perhaps such films were awkward to make during the early twentieth century, when the Americans were allied with the British in the World Wars, and awkward to make during the late twentieth century, when it became increasingly difficult to venerate slave-owning Founding Fathers. And it also probably doesn't help that when someone does decide to make a big epic film about the American Revolution, it usually turns out to be a BoxOfficeBomb. Perhaps the subject matter just has a really limited appeal outside the United States, limiting it to projects that are small enough to not rely on foreign box office. And perhaps Americans themselves have a greater interest in more recent conflicts, like UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* General Wallace Worthington, an ancestor of Warren Worthington's (aka TheAngel from ''The X-Men'') fought on the Rebel side.

* The 1780 British EpistolaryNovel ''Emma Corbett or, The miseries of civil war. Founded on some recent circumstances which happened in America'', which may hold the distinction of being the earliest novel written about the American Revolution. The titular heroine heads off to America, [[SweetPollyOliver disguised as a boy]], in order to reunite with her redcoat lover. He gets hit by a poisoned arrow, and she tries to suck out the poison, but it only results in [[DownerEnding both of them dying]]. Supposedly, it's based on a real incident that took place in 1777. Back in the day, the novel managed to be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

-->--'''Creator/SamuelJohnson'''

->''"[[{{Hypocrite}} How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty]] [[{{Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil}} among the drivers of negroes?]]"''

->''"Loudest are the [[{{Hypocrite}} yelps for liberty]] [[{{Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil}} among the drivers of Negroes]]"''

->''"Loudest are the [[{{Hypocrite}} yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes]]"''

* '''The Progressive School''': Also emerging around the turn of the twentieth century, this interpretation essentially views the American Revolution as a FullCircleRevolution. After all, it both started and ended with the rich white slave owners being in charge, right? In its earliest iterations, this interpretation argued that a genuine people's revolution was ultimately co-opted by counterrevolutionary elites, who created the Constitution in part to prevent uprisings like Shays' Rebellion. In the late twentieth century, it began to be questioned whether there even was a genuine people's revolution in the first place.\\\

* ''Series/Ghosts(US)'', The episode “D&D” has flashbacks set in this era.