Patriots or Loyalists?
Examining the Cause of Independence
Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams...and it's not the Sam Adams Beer You Know and Love!
Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams were the brains behind the brawl in swaying the colonists toward the cause of independence. Thomas Paine and his 52-page pamphlet (Yes, it's much longer than the "pamphlet" we think of today.) influenced a lot of colonists toward the idea of independence with his arguments (and the arguments were logical.) However, at no point in the American Revolution were there more than 33% of the colonists who were staunch supporters of independence. There were also 33% who were Loyalists and 33% who were neutral. These numbers were fluid depending on how the war effort was going.
The point is that there was never the overwhelming support for this idea that we have been taught in school for all these years-that myth is revisionist history.
Thomas Paine
Authored Common Sense and other pamphlets in favor of revolution. After the war, he went to France and wrote treatises in support of the French Revolution. He returned to the U.S. after the French Revolution and died in relative obscurity. The governmental leaders distanced themselves from him because of his radical tendencies. If he had influenced so many colonists toward revolution in the 1770s, what might he have done to incite revolt against the fledgling United States government?
Charles Inglis
Inglis was a staunch Loyalist (like at least 33% of the colonists) and he was a minister. He wrote and spoke out for the Loyalist perspective.
Samuel Adams
Sam Adams (John Adams' cousin) was a mastermind of garnering public support for the Patriot cause. He was responsible for establishing the Sons of Liberty and Committees of Correspondence. Some historians have speculated that without Sam Adams, there would have been no revolution at all!
https://youtu.be/-1bt6bNmtg8
https://youtu.be/QwJAaaglXsk
Charles Inglis
The video clip below is about Charles Inglis. The narrator is a computer, so the quality isn't great. But there is not much about Inglis, so I used what I could find. However, the information in the video is useful. So try to ignore the sound for 2 minutes!
https://youtu.be/gzA_QHGa1MI
Southern Loyalists
This is a good opportunity to include information about a little-covered topic: Southern Loyalists. Had the British military leadership not focused so much on dividing the colonies at New York and isolating the New Englanders (who were the primary instigators of the war) and focused on leveraging their Loyalist support in South Carolina and Georgia and then moved northward to take the Carolinas and the Middle Colonies/States, they would have had a good chance at winning the war! Check out the video below!
Revolution Southern Loyalists