THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

In a 2009 survey conducted by Philadelphia's American Revolution Center, 82% of Americans agreed that it was vital to know the history of our nation's founding. But only 44 percent were able to answer basic questions about the struggle that created the United States of America.

The American Revolution not only won Americans the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was an event that transformed the world of the 18th Century. In the next hundred years, other nations and peoples issued more than 200 similar declarations of independence.

Only in recent years have historians begun to tell the whole story of the Revolution. It began in a burst of anger against taxation by the British Parliament, a body in which Americans did not have a single representative. But few people realize Americans were defending rights they already possessed. Each of the 13 colonies had a legislature freely elected by voters. The lawmakers in turn appointed judges, sheriffs and other officials, guaranteeing the right to a trial by a jury of their peers, and the right to own property. The voters paid taxes to support these governments. America was 150 years old when the Revolution began in 1775. A sophisticated society had evolved, with about the same distribution of income we have today.

Even more surprising to many people is the realization that about 40 percent of the population was non-English. There were hundreds of thousands of Irish, German, Dutch, Jews, Swedes, Scots, Welsh and African Americans in the embryo nation and they all participated in the Revolution. At one point a third of General George Washington's army was Irish. Toward the end of the war, one in every seven of his soldiers was black. The Revolution also awoke thousands of women to demand more equal rights and many of them participated in the conflict. When Spain entered the war as an American ally in 1779, the governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, raised an army of Spaniards, French and free blacks that won crucial battles in Florida and along the Mississippi River. From the viewpoint of modern America, the struggle can and should be called "everybody's revolution."

At the center of the war stand three men -General George Washington, whose military leadership won the war, Benjamin Franklin, whose diplomatic skills persuaded France to join us a crucial ally, and Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that transformed a colonial revolt into an event that has changed the history of the world. Knowing and understanding these men is crucial to grasping the Revolution's significance for our time. Washington stands for realism and unwavering resolution, Franklin for wisdom and understanding the world beyond America's shores, and Jefferson gave us the ideals around which Americans have tried to build the nation.

The Revolution was not an easy victory. It lasted eight exhausting years. In some colonies, a third of the people remained loyal to Britain. The Continental Congress's paper dollars became worthless in 1780 and Americans had to depend on loans from France. But ultimately, Washington's firmness and Jefferson's vision prevailed. Americans began their historic journey as a free people.

There was scarcely any part of American life that the Revolution did not influence, from religion to education to business enterprise. The spirit of liberty, the thrill of independence, created new ideas, new emotions, new pride. The Revolutionary generation sensed this reality in their deepest hearts and minds. They saw that the Revolution was a spiritual enterprise that would never end. There would always be a struggle to realize its ideals of freedom and equal opportunity for each generation of Americans.

One of the most poignant testimonies to this sense of the Revolution's power was written by Nathanael Ames, author of a popular almanac. He predicted that in an independent America "arts and sciences will change the Face of Nature" from the Appalachian Mountains to the "Western Ocean." He foresaw "treasures of gold and silver and mountains of iron ore" that would create industries for "millions of hands" in great cities. Finally Ames spoke directly to us, the Revolution's heirs.

"O! ye unborn inhabitants of America! Should this page escape its destined conflagration at the Year's End, and these Alphabetical Letters remain legible -- when your eyes behold the Sun after he has ruled the Seasons round for two Centuries more, you will know that we dream'd of your Times."

It is up to all of us to cherish, to nourish, to enrich that dream.

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A RECOMMENDED READING LIST ON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
(compiled by Thomas Fleming)