The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

By Robert Middlekauff

Book Overview

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.

Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the election of George Washington as first president, Robert Middlekauff offers a panoramic history of the conflict between England and America, highlighting the drama and anguish of the colonial struggle for independence. Combining the political and the personal, he provides a compelling account of the key events that precipitated the war, from the Stamp Act to the Tea Act, tracing the gradual gathering of American resistance that culminated in the Boston Tea Party and "the shot heard 'round the world." The heart of the book features a vivid description of the eight-year-long war, with gripping accounts of battles and campaigns, ranging from Bunker Hill and Washington's crossing of the Delaware to the brilliant victory at Hannah's Cowpens and the final triumph at Yorktown, paying particular attention to what made men fight in these bloody encounters. The book concludes with an insightful look at the making of the Constitution in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and the struggle over ratification. Through it all, Middlekauff gives the reader a vivid sense of how the colonists saw these events and the importance they gave to them. Common soldiers and great generals, Sons of Liberty and African slaves, town committee-men and representatives in congress--all receive their due. And there are particularly insightful portraits of such figures as Sam and John Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many others.

This new edition has been revised and expanded, with fresh coverage of topics such as mob reactions to British measures before the War, military medicine, women's role in the Revolution, American Indians, the different kinds of war fought by the Americans and the British, and the ratification of the Constitution. The book also has a new epilogue and an updated bibliography.

The cause for which the colonists fought, liberty and independence, was glorious indeed. Here is an equally glorious narrative of an event that changed the world, capturing the profound and passionate struggle to found a free nation.

The Oxford History of the United States
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. The Atlantic Monthly has praised it as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book." Conceived under the general editorship of C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, and now under the editorship of David M. Kennedy, this renowned series blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019531588X
• ISBN13: 9780195315882
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 752 Pages
• Weight: 2.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Book

Arrived on time as described

Excellent Resource, but Kindle Version Has Some Problems

"The Glorious Cause" is an excellent secondary source on the Revolutionary Era. However, in this review I will focus on the presentation of the Kindle edition rather than the book's contents. The Kindle edition has some problems. The biggest issue is that in two places, large chunks of text appear out of order (e.g., toward the end of Chapter 21 there's a sudden break mid-sentence, followed by several pages of text that belongs at the start of Chapter 22). The other issues are ones that seem to be shared by many non-fiction Kindle books. The maps and the index are illegible. Also, while the notes are linked (a good thing), you can't page through the notes themselves. Thus, if you click on a particular note and find that it reads "ibid.," there's no easy way to access the preceding notes and find out what source "ibid." is referring to. Notwithstanding these problems, I'm delighted that Oxford has made "The Glorious Cause" available as a Kindle book. Oxford has been one of the most active Kindle publishers and should be praised for jumping in.

The war of "The Children of the Twice-Born"

The inaugural volume of the highly honored but still unfinished "Oxford History Of The United States" series is "The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789," a superbly written, scholarly, and highly literate account of the America's War for Independence. Written by Robert L. Middlekauff, Professor of History... this is the finest account of the Revolutionary War I've found to date... even better than Benson Bobrick's "Angel in the Whirlwind," which I've already reviewed. "The Glorious Cause" is a comprehensive account of the American Revolution designed to give readers a well rounded overview of not only the causes of the war, but also of how the war was fought. The book succeeds admirably at its task. After finishing "The Glorious Cause," I felt a much greater appreciation for the men and women whose struggle for freedom brought forth on the North American continent a new and independent nation - the United States of America. "The Glorious Cause" begins by examining the causes of the American Revolution. In one of the book's earliest chapters, entitled "The Children of the Twice Born," Middlekauff carefully lays out his closely reasoned and well argued thesis: that the seeds of revolution were planted long before the war was actually fought. Those seeds, embodied in the economic, social, political, and religious fabric of American society, made the evolution to democracy on the North American continent almost inevitable. The earliest settlers came to the New World because of their disenchantment with authoritarian English laws and what they viewed as centralized, overly ritualistic, dogmatic Anglican religion. When the settlers arrived with their ideals of political and congregationalist religious democracy, they found land cheap and plentiful. Whereas only about 20 percent of all Englishmen were landowners, and hence were eligible to participate in England's parliamentary democracy, over 50 percent of American colonists owned land and therefore could take part in colonial parliamentary government. The result: provincial representative assemblies tended to do the bidding of their constituents rather than the royal governors. After the Seven Years' War, tension between American political and economic interests and the interests of the British government was exacerbated by Parliament's intent to restore Britsh prerogatives in America. Tension was bound to lead to conflict, and that conflict wasn't long in coming. The American colonies were left pretty much to their own economic and political devices during the Seven Years' War, so long as they provided support for Britain's war against the French. The colonists bore the brunt of the fighting during the war against the French in North America; at war's end, they expected to be permitted to return to some semblance of self-government. It was not to be, however. Under Britain's new King and a Parliament with a new-found awareness of the American colonies' potential to enrich their coloni

America's long and winding road to liberty.

This second volume of "The Oxford History of the United States" provides an objective, sober look at the American Revolution without denying its role in world history as a truly "glorious cause". In demythologizing the war as we saw it through grade-school eyes, author Robert Middlekauff profiles our Revolutionary forebears as they really were: men of courage and vision who were not without their flaws. Likewise, the British redcoats we loved to hate may not have been entirely hostile or unsympathetic to the legitimate grievances of the Americans, yet their often condescending view of the colonists and an incompetent colonial policy gave America no option but to rebel in the end. The book's well-written accounts of the Revolution's major battles will increase the reader's understanding of political, logistical, and strategic problems on both sides which contributed to the conflict's drawn-out, six-year duration. Unlike other histories of the war which end with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Mr. Middlekauff offers an absorbing narrative of the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 and its subsequent ratification by the states. After reading "The Glorious Cause", I can better appreciate the sacrifices made over 200 years ago by a determined people who, in defending divinely-established rights and liberties for themselves and their posterity, defended virtue and morality as well.