Derek W. Beck - Igniting the American Revolution: 1773-1775

Copyright 2015 by Derek W. Beck

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Cover image The Battle of Bunkers Hill, 17th June 1775, c.181531 (oil on canvas), Trumbull, John (17561843)/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA/Gift of Howland S. Warren/Bridgeman Images

Colonial America 1775 on page 2 Rick Britton

Map illustrations on pages 155, 210 by Janie Javier

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beck, Derek W.

Igniting the American Revolution : 17731775 / Derek W. Beck.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

(hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783Causes. I. Title.

E210.B39 2015

973.3dc23

2015016941

To my dear wife Vicky

You have sacrificed much in supporting this book.

Thank you.

This volume covers the crucial events between 1773 and 1775 that set in motion what would ultimately become the American War for Independence. In writing on this subject as an American, and one who has served in the U.S. Air Force, I am predisposed like all American historians toward a pro-American bias. Yet I have strived to paint the events in this book with accuracy and objectivity, avoiding such bias to the best of my ability. One consequence of this is that I have generally avoided the word patriot , even though it is today a commonly used term in other history books to describe the colonists.

While we can call the Americans patriots , can we not also call the British patriots ? For what is a patriot, in the true sense of the word, but a lover of ones country? The British believed they were fighting a civil war, and were fighting to maintainand for the love oftheir empire. The Americans were equally fighting for the love of a land they understood and appreciated in a very different way than their British brethren across the sea. Were they not all patriots in their own right?

The logical result of this attempt at an unbiased approach is that in some cases throughout the book, the British may appear to be the good guys and the Americans the bad guys. At other times, the British may seem like tyrants, just as many American stories love to paint them. Rather than attempting to steer readers one way or another, I have worked to embrace these shades of gray and present as real and authentic a portrait as possible based on the extensive research I have conducted of both sides. Americas Founding Fathers were not all superheroes. Nor were the British all murderous oppressors. They were all real people, imperfect peoplelike the rest of us.

My intent and my hope is that this book provides an honest look at the events that began the Revolution, warts and all. Some readers may prefer to adhere to the perspective of older history books that paint the Americans as superheroes. These readers may not like this more honest perspective and may even call me an Anglophile. But I think my continued honorable service in the modern American military refutes any such claims. Rather, I would prefer to be called a lover of truth. (Sadly, I can find no word for this: veritophile?) Truth is where real history is to be found.

Authors Note: This volume employs logical quotations, meaning the only punctuation appearing inside quotation marks is also in that position in the original as well. So, a quotation ending with a comma inside the quotation marks, such as quotation, indicates the comma was there in the original, while one with the comma outside the quotation marks, such as quotation, indicates the comma is not part of the original. This style is observed for emphasis or scare quotes as well. See the bibliography for more.

First, thank you to two of my biggest supporters of this project, my mother, Katherine Esber, and my father, (Maurice) Mo Beck, who have both given years of encouragementeven after I quit a successful full-time career in the Active Duty U.S. Air Force to pursue writing this.

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my longtime friend Jonathan Varoli for introducing me to his sibling literary agent and thus getting this whole thing off the ground. I also wish to express equally sincere gratitude to my literary agents, Doug Grad and Jacqueline Varoli Grace, for becoming champions of the book and exhibiting great patience with my many questions and concerns throughout the publication process. And last but certainly not least, I am so very thankful to my editor, Stephanie Bowen of Sourcebooks, for taking a chance on this first-time author, and for her great passion for Revolutionary Boston, which has made our partnership so refreshing and enjoyable. Thank you all sincerely for believing in this book and making it a reality.

Just as important to the success of this book are my many friends and colleagues who helped with the research along the way, and I thank them all. In particular, my trusted colleague and avid supporter Dr. Samuel A. Forman kindly read through my manuscript and offered many useful suggestions, and has long been a source of encouragement for the project. John L. Bell of the blog Boston 1775 has also been a longtime supporter. He patiently responded to all of my many queries on various minutiae during the research process and even helped to spread the word of my project on his popular blog. Todd Andrlik gave me frequent encouragement as well. He pushed to have my agents contact Sourcebooks and has also published several of my articles in his Journal of the American Revolution . And Benjamin Smith and David Paul Reuwer of the Patriots of the American Revolution magazine were the first to ever publish any of my historical writings. Lora Innes also was a source of encouragement and shared advice on branding and all things social media. And Thomas Fleming read my manuscript at two different stages, provided feedback and encouragement, and kindly offered an endorsement.

Several friends also helped me in random ways. David and Sarah Garner let me crash at their Boston home when I needed to research there, and Christophe and Souri Gaillard let me crash at theirs when I needed to research at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brian Raimondi shared his access to the University of California, Los Angeless (UCLA) digital databases for my research. David Silver donated a rare book on Ticonderoga to help aid my research (and it now appears in the bibliography, by A. French). Sandro Catanzaro ran out and bought me copies of the Boston Globe and shipped them to me when they noted my research on Dr. Joseph Warren.