The Unknown American Revolution:
The Unruly Birth of Democracy and
the Struggle to Create America by
Gary B. Nash
The Universality Of The American Revolution
In this audacious recasting of the American Revolution, distinguished
historian Gary Nash offers a profound new way of thinking about the
struggle to create this country, introducing readers to a coalition of
patriots from all classes and races of American society. From millennialist
preachers to enslaved Africans, disgruntled women to aggrieved Indians,
the people so vividly portrayed in this book did not all agree or succeed,
but during the exhilarating and messy years of this country’s birth, they
laid down ideas that have become part of our inheritance and ideals
toward which we still strive today.

Personal Review: The Unknown American Revolution: The
Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
by Gary B. Nash
Generations of scholars have put forward a hypothesis that the American
Revolution was a conservative revolution. On the surface, this hypothesis
seems plausible. After all, the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia
created a model of government that was very similar to the English model,
a model of branches of government that had checks and balances over
one another. Gary Nash's book, the Unknown American Revolution,
collects and reveals information about a revolution that was truly radical --
a revolution that I had never seen revealed in any classroom, in spite of
being exposed to a fair bit of liberal arts education.
Although Nash doesn't make an explicit comparison, the U.S. Constitution
of 1787 was quite conservative compared to the Pennsylvania state
constitution of 1776, a constitution that called for a broader franchise and
government by a unicameral legislature. Elites were snubbed in this state
constitution, a constitution that created a government without an executive
branch or a upper house of the legislature. Up and down the seaboard,
radicals argued for state constitutions such as these, although, in most
cases, they had to compromise with conservatives and moneyed interests
and produce more moderate governing institutions.
Nash paints a fascinating picture of angry farmers and "leather aprons"
tearing down sumptuous mansions of abusive governing elites and staging
jailbreaks for unjustly imprisoned leaders; Black slaves joining both sides
in the conflict in a revolutionary attempt to secure their own freedom and
abolish slavery; and itinerant frontier preachers challenging the established
church in defense of Christ's Poor. He establishes a continuity of mob
violence from the Carolina Regulator Movement to the violent reactions to
the Stamp Act, all the way through Shays Rebellion of 1786. Nash's
portrayal of Shays Rebellion as a continuation of the disaffection of the
poor makes more sense than the traditional portrayal of Shays Rebellion
as an aberration demonstrating the weakness of government under the
Articles of Confederation.
Indeed, Nash's defense of mob violence as something focused and
purposeful (as opposed to random and mindless) is bound to generate
some controversy. Professor Nash takes up the position that a law that is
unjust is no law at all, and that mobs are not unthinking masses. Is mob
violence democratic? Can a mob make a reasoned decision on whether a
law is just or unjust? Nash seems to think so. A little scary, since this line
of reasoning could be used to justify riots, wilfull destruction of property,
and lynchings.
The genius of Professor Nash's book is his ability to separate the War of
Independence from the American Revolution. Separating from Britain is
one matter, revolutions are another. How much did American society

change in the American Revolution? More than meets the eye, argues
Nash. The fledgling United States might have failed to abolish slavery, but
the contradiction between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence
and holding people in bondage was placed firmly on center stage. Slavery
WAS abolished north of the Mason-Dixon line, and the institution drew
harsh condemnations even from slaveholders such as Washington,
Jefferson and Madison. Radical government may have been replaced with
more moderate government, but never again could wealthy elites
contemptuously ingnore the political aspirations of the masses or publicly
label them as "rabble."
Although the Unknown American Revolution is long and seems to ramble
in some places, this book effectively challenges some myths in the account
of the revolution. This is a good popular history of the American
Revolution.
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