…. AMERICAN WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE
"For many, the story of the American Revolution is simple and straightforward: in an effort to break the chains of tyranny and unrepresentative tax schemes, American colonists fomented rebellion and soon, waged a full-fledged revolution against their mother country, Great Britain. For others, mostly historians, the story is a bit muddier. I still remember the first time the revolution lost some of its middle school romantic allure. It was after reading Benson Bobricks Angel in the Whirlwind.Specifically, Chapter 11: "Nabour against Nabour," where Bobrick spends the entire chapter recounting stories about Patriots assaulting, intimidating, beating, terrorizing, tarring and feathering, and killing Loyalists—even worse, some of these Loyalists weren't Loyalists at all but simply objected to, in their own ways, the mob mentality and groupthink that was spreading like wildfire throughout the colonies. In the fight for "big-F Freedom," many people's "small-f freedom" was lost or seriously violated. It was an important lesson: the American Revolution wasn't an exception to the rule of rebellion and war.
I think Tory refugee Nicholas Cresswell (quoted by Benson) accurately portrays the ambivalent, contradictory, unfortunate, tragic, and brutal nature of the revolution. In short, the reality of it: "It brings sadness and melancholy upon my mind to think that a set of people who three years ago were doing everything they could for the mutual assistance of each other, and both parties equally gainers, should now be cutting the throats of each other and destroying their property."…."
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