The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution

by Robert G. Parkinson

Overview

When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Robert Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and fears about insurrectionary slaves and violent Indians. Manipulating newspaper networks, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow agitators broadcast stories of British agents inciting African Americans and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion. Using rhetoric like "domestic insurrectionists" and "merciless savages," the founding fathers rallied the people around a common enemy and made racial prejudice a cornerstone of the new Republic.

In a fresh reading of the founding moment, Parkinson demonstrates the dual projection of the "common cause." Patriots through both an ideological appeal to popular rights and a wartime movement against a host of British-recruited slaves and Indians forged a racialized, exclusionary model of American citizenship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469626925
Publisher:	Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
Publication date:	05/18/2016
Series:	Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	768
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Robert G. Parkinson is associate professor of history at Binghamton University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The field of the American Revolution has not seen many game-changing books in the twenty-first century, but this is one. Political history meets military history meets cultural history here in an argument about both the nature of the Revolutionary War and the emerging U.S. political culture. The narrative integrates white fears of native Americans and African Americans into the story, explaining what happened between 1775 and 1783 with tremendous implications for the future of the nation." —David Waldstreicher, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

In a brilliant reexamination of the American Revolution, Robert Parkinson shows how American patriots deployed newspapers to unite the colonies in common cause against the British. Through these 'founding stories,' white Americans marginalized, demonized, and excluded enslaved people and native Americans, shaping the Revolutionary narrative down to the present day." —Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

What did it mean to belong to the American People in the Revolutionary era? Robert Parkinson presents a new origin story based on the centrality of matters of exclusion, especially race, to the Revolution. Bringing colonists into 'the common cause' meant excluding native and black people, whether they supported it or not. They would have no place among 'the People of the United States' as that People gave itself identity and form." —Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University

Robert Parkinson's extraordinary book persuasively makes the case that 'propagation,' not 'propaganda,' created unity in America during the Revolutionary War. Newspapers throughout the continent propagated 'war stories' that stressed the threat from internal enemies. Parkinson offers an innovative interpretation of the Revolution and its aftermath that not only explains much about the disconnect between the revolutionaries' rhetoric and their attitudes toward non-Anglo peoples, but that also reveals the origins of a bifurcation evident in historical scholarship to this day." —Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

05/02/2016
In this extensively researched study, Parkinson, assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, explores the roles played by concepts of inclusion and exclusion among the supporters of the patriot cause in the American Revolution. Drawing primarily upon an immense array of colonial American newspapers, Parkinson emphasizes the methods by which leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, and both John and Samuel Adams mobilized the printed word in countering the “catalog of forces acting against American unity.” To undercut the divisiveness of issues such as voting rights, land distribution, religious heterodoxy, and slaveholding, these revolutionaries focused their readers’ hostility against both their British rulers and perceived enemies within their own communities. Their literature increasingly centered on the supposed dangers presented by Native Americans and slaves—groups that the British urged to revolt against local authorities. The book is academically focused, offering a detailed and insightful analysis of how newspapers became loci of communication and shapers of individuals’ and communities’ senses of themselves as political actors. Moreover, Parkinson persuasively explains the intensely racialized nature of citizenship in the newly independent U.S. and the long-standing problems posed by the exclusion of Americans of indigenous or African heritage from the “common cause” of the Revolution. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Brilliant, timely, and indispensable. . . . Parkinson writes with authority on military, political, social, and cultural history, reconstructing the story of this critical period as it actually unfolded, with everything happening at once."—Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books



Persuasively explains the intensely racialized nature of citizenship in the newly independent U.S. and the long-standing problems posed by the exclusion of Americans of indigenous or African heritage from the 'common cause" of the Revolution."—Publishers Weekly



Engrossing. . . . A must-read for anyone interested in the American Revolution and issues of race."—Library Journal, starred review



One of the most significant studies in of the Revolution in years. It sweeps the entire war; connects cultural, military, and political concerns; contains the best survey of American newspapers during this period; and argues persuasively that fear of blacks and Indians formed the psychic center of the new nation. Highly recommended."—CHOICE



Wonderfully written and deeply researched. . . . Reveals a very different and much darker picture of the revolution. . . . Full of illuminating insights about familiar events."—William and Mary Quarterly



Even as he builds on the existing scholarship about the Revolution, Parkinson recasts our understanding of the Revolutionary War and its lasting impact."—Virginia Magazine of History and Biography



Clear prose and logical structure make it a joy to read. . . . Parkinson's impressive analysis . . . will force future scholars to engage with his uncomfortable argument that American independence rested on racism and ethnocentrism."—Common-Place



Convincingly demonstrates that race and racism were not afterthoughts to the rhetoric of equality of rights but were deeply integrated into the founding years of the United States."—Journal of American History



Parkinson has captured something of the panicked and often explicitly racially demonizing culture of the revolutionary period with this new and valuable take on familiar sources relevant to the field of early American studies."—American Quarterly



Parkinson's balance between patriotism and prejudice injects The Common Cause with a certain timeliness in an age in which questions of journalistic accuracy, rhetoric, and representation are heavy on the minds of American readers."—H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 05/15/2016
"Common cause" was a phrase often utilized in Europe during the 18th century to justify imperial alliances against a shared enemy. In this engrossing monograph, Parkinson (history, Binghamton Univ.) recounts how colonial leaders, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, co-opted the phrase through colonial newspapers to bind the 13 colonies to fight the American Revolution. Their aims were achieved through the constant publication of inflammatory articles alleging that Great Britain was arming Native Americans and Africans to wage war on the respective colonies. While kernels of truth existed in a fraction of the stories, they were at best gross exaggerations, if not outright fabrications. The consequence of the tactic was that when the war was over, it ensured that there was no place in the new country for Native peoples or Africans and their descendants. This included those people of color who were devoted patriots who had fought and died alongside the colonists for the common cause. VERDICT A must-read for anyone interested in the American Revolution and issues of race. For further exploration, consider James Corbett David's Dunmore's New World.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Library Journal