THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS A CIVIL WAR

The passionate commitments on both sides of the Atlantic which made armed conflict unavoidable, and the loyalties in America and Britain which the conflict promoted, obscured in retrospect an important truth: in functional terms, the American Revolution shared most of the characteristics of a civil war. One such characteristic was the way in which both sides seemed to appeal to a common tradition. In 1774 a loyalist addressed the Congress: ‘You may still profess yourselves to be his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, as you did in your late RESOLVES, and as the leaders in the grand rebellion of 1641 did, in their messages to the King immediately after the battle of Edge Hill, where they had fought against him in person’; but this would not save America from the ‘desolation and slaughter’ of a civil war. Between Washington's assuming command of the Continental Army in July 1775 and the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776, he and his officers professed their continuing allegiance to George III in a way which indeed recalled the rhetoric of Parliamentary forces in the 1640s.

For similar reasons many English officers refused to accept a command in America, like General Lord Frederick Cavendish and Admiral Keppel, or spoke against the war in Parliament, like General Henry Seymour Conway; few of those in the field had much stomach for the conflict.