A couple weeks ago, I finished H.W. Brands new book entitled Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution. As a self-described history nerd, I was thrilled when this book came out. H.W. Brands is a a well known history professor that teaches college in Texas. My concentration is Early American History, so this book was right up my alley.
I started reading the book immediately after receiving it in the mail. As I read, I noticed it concentrated on the most well-known American founders, who are the usual people, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. So much has been written about them at this point, there is not a whole lot of new stuff that can be written.
The book did not provide any knew about them. We already knew that the Benjamin Franklin was a womanizer, but proved to be a good diplomat.
We knew that John Adams was more serious and his Puritan upbringing, which was very conservative, come into conflict with Franklin’s lifestyle.
We knew George Washington was upset about promotions from the Seven-Years war, which was one of the factors why he was angry at Britain.
The book repeated most of what has already been known for generations. What the book did not include much of, or anything at all, was profound.
There was very little mention of the other half of our first American civil war, Loyalists, who were those that chose to remain loyal to Britain during the war. Brands only mentioned them sporadically, mostly towards the later part of the book. I was shocked by that since Loyalists were literally in the title. It seems he wanted to reach a broad audience, so the well-known Founding Fathers is who he spent most of the time writing about.
There were many Loyalists during the Revolution who stayed loyal to Britain for a host of reasons, mainly safety and they tended to be wealthier who had established long relationships with merchants in Britain. Brands barely spends any time going into detail on what drove the Loyalists to stay loyal during the war and what they were giving up by doing that.
Brands also barely mentions women in his book. He does provide a few examples of Loyalist women, but never goes into great detail about it.
Brands also has very little mention of slavery in his book which is surprising since contemporary historians are doing more research into the slavery and the slave trade. He also barely mentions Native Americans in his book, who were central to the war effort as many Natives felt they had to choose the side where they felt their land was the safest.
This book could have been much better. It seems Brands was more interested in getting people to buy it, which means an over abundance of Franklin, Washington, and John Adams stories.
My grade for the book: C-
