Following his in-depth talks with the WSWS's Tom Mackaman regarding the 1619 project, Gordon Wood now brings us a book review in the Wall Street Journal for Mary Beth Norton's new book, 1774.

Gordon Wood … professor emeritus at Brown University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, as well as Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815, and dozens of other books and articles on the colonial period, the American Revolution and the early republic.

[In her account of the long year 1774, from the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 to the outbreak of hostilities in April 1775,] Mary Beth Norton, in her new book, “1774,” … shows conclusively that the scales had been tipped in favor of independence long before [Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued his November 1775 proclamation, offering freedom to any enslaved person fleeing to the British army—a military expedient only]. Ms. Norton, who is professor of history at Cornell and a former president of the American Historical Association, does not fundamentally challenge the traditional trajectory of events in that decisive year. What she does do is enrich the narrative, filling in the story with a staggering amount of detail based on prodigious research in an enormous number of archives.

 … for Ms. Norton this is the point of her book. She wants to re-create as much as possible the past reality of this momentous year in all of its particularity. Only then, she suggests, will we come to appreciate the complexity of what happened and to understand all of the conflicts, divisions and confusion that lay behind events, like the Tea Party, that historians highlight and simplify. At times she relates events week by week, and occasionally day by day. She seeks to be as inclusive as possible and tries to incorporate all the varying points of view in her narrative. She seems to have read every newspaper in the period, and she delights in describing the give and take of debates between patriots and loyalists that took place in the press. 

By the early 1770s, the crisis between Great Britain and its colonies that had begun with the Stamp Act in 1765 seemed to have eased. Faced with mobs and boycotts of British goods, the British government had twice backed away from trying to tax the colonists. It had repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, and, in 1770, it had withdrawn the Townshend duties, keeping only the duty on tea as a symbol of Britain’s authority to tax the colonists. This proved to be a big mistake.

 … Ms. Norton painstakingly describes the colonists’ emerging opposition to the imported tea. … On Dec. 16, 1773, the night before the tea was to be unloaded and taxed, a band of men disguised as “Mohawks” threw 342 chests containing more than 46 tons of tea worth more than £9,000 into Boston Harbor. This became the famous “Tea Party.” … Many colonists outside of New England worried that the hot-headed Bostonians were much too rash and violent.

But, of course, the British government came to the rescue of the Bostonians’ reputation. British leaders were furious at the destruction of the tea. They had for far too long appeased the colonists, repealing acts of Parliament and retreating at every sign of colonial opposition. It was high time, the government declared, to show the colonists the power the British nation could wield over its dependencies.

The British government passed a series of acts—acts that were so severe, so uncompromising, so drastic, that they fundamentally altered the imperial debate and forever changed the relationship between Britain and its colonies. The government closed the port of Boston, ordered Thomas Hutchinson back to England, and appointed a military general, Thomas Gage, as the new royal governor of Massachusetts.

The closing of the port of Boston shocked all the colonists, but Virginians especially. They had been upset at the clandestine destruction of private property, but the British reaction was too much to take. George Washington declared that “the cause of Boston. . . now is and ever will be considered as the cause of America.” Many colonists suggested a meeting of all the colonies to deal with the crisis. 

The British government followed with two more acts that made matters worse. … The other colonies realized at once that, if Britain could coerce Massachusetts in this outrageous manner, it could do the same to them. … the fever was spreading. No one, [General Thomas Gage] later reported, could have imagined that the acts designed for Massachusetts alone “could have created such a ferment throughout the continent and united the whole in one common cause.”

As the colonies gathered together in a Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September 1774, New Englanders were actually preparing to fight. When a rumor spread that British troops had killed some Bostonians, as many as 20,000 men from various parts of New England mobilized to march on Boston before they learned that the rumor was false. Although Americans in the other colonies were not as jittery as the New Englanders, many realized that the imperial relationship was disintegrating.

… In her detailed descriptions of these debates, Ms. Norton always gives a fair hearing to the views of the loyalists.

The Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia could not have reversed the massive transfer of authority taking place in the localities, even if it had wanted to. The Congress simply recognized the new local authorities and gave them its blessing.

 … In January 1775 the colonists learned of the king’s response to their appeal for a redress of their grievances. In his speech to the opening of Parliament, George III put an end to the hopes of many colonists for reconciliation. He spoke of the “most daring spirit of resistance, and disobedience to the law” in Massachusetts and the way in which “fresh violences” there had been “countenanced and encouraged” by the other colonies. He told the Parliament of the determination of his government to uphold its authority.

His ministry sent military reinforcements to Boston and ordered Gen. Gage to use force against the Massachusetts rebels if necessary. The British government thought it was dealing with “a rude rabble” that had no substantial backing in the colony and could be put down with ease. Given this kind of misperception of reality, it was inevitable that a military clash would occur, as it did on April 19 in Lexington and Concord.

“By April 19, 1775,” concludes Ms. Norton, “Americans had not yet formally adopted a Declaration of Independence, but their leaders had long since practiced independence in thought and deed.” The colonists didn’t need Tom Paine in his “Common Sense” of January 1776 to tell them that the time was ripe for breaking away from Great Britain. In 1774 Americans had already in fact become independent, as Ms. Norton’s book makes only too clear. And never once in her detailed account of that long year does she declare that the protection of slavery had anything to do with bringing about that independence.

See also Tom Mackaman's previous Interview with Gordon Wood on the American Revolution

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