♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

And today I'm going to be in conversation with Joseph Ellis, who is one of the nation's leading historians and expert in the colonial revolutionary period.

Uh, he's a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and we're gonna talk about his new book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783.

Joseph Ellis, thank you very much for being with us today.

ELLIS: David, it's a pleasure.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about "The Cause."

"The Cause" was what people then called what we now call the Revolutionary War effort more or less.

So was the word, the phrase, "The Cause" used then by them, because the Revolutionary War wasn't called the Revolutionary War, was that right?

ELLIS: That is right.

Um, the British called what became the American Revolution, the American Rebellion.

They didn't use the term American Revolution until after it was over.

They first called it "the common cause".

And that term starts in 1774.

Um, and, uh, is, uh, describing the common response of all the 13 colonies to British policy towards Boston and Massachusetts and the so-called coercive acts and shutting down the port in reaction to the Boston Tea Party.

So "common cause" is a term to say that all the colonies are going to rally in support of their sister colony in Massachusetts, instead of letting her be isolated.

The British thought they were gonna teach the Americans a lesson and thereby avert any movement towards independence.

In the process they created a movement towards independence.

Um, and they dropped "common" in '75, and early '76.

And it just becomes "The Cause".

And that's the term they use to talk about the values on which they based their secession from the British empire.

The term "American Revolution" wasn't used because initially, because they didn't think of themselves as Americans.

They thought of themselves as New Englanders and Virginians, um, and Southerners.

What they were leading was a war for colonial independence, the first in modern history in truth, um, but on principles that had revolutionary implications.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's put it in context, the French and Indian War also known as the Seven Year War is over around 1763.

And what happens is the British say, "We now have to have troops in the colonies.

We have to pay for these troops."

And the Americans weren't happy with the taxes that were being imposed, but you say in your book that they didn't really need the money in Britain so much to pay for this, so why did they impose these taxes?

ELLIS: The standard interpretation of that is they thought that since they were incurring costs to oversee and govern this new acquisition, this enormous acquisition, a, a third of a continent, the land from the Mississippi to the Atlantic from Canada, including Canada, down to Northern Florida.

They're a newly arrived empire, um, brimming over with confidence.

Um, and they expect the colonists themselves to contribute to "The Cause" that, that they're, uh, you know, the new consolidation of the British Empire.

But, in my view, it's not the money.

It was really a question of power.

It was a question that, that we need to establish our authority over these people.

There's 2.5 million Americans.

There's about 150,000 indigenous people living in this region.

Um, and we need to establish control.

In response to that the Americans, make their constitutional arguments summed up, you cannot be taxed without your consent.

RUBENSTEIN: So who really is in charge of the British government, is it the parliament or is it the king?

ELLIS: After the Glorious Revolution and over the early 18th century, the king becomes under the George I, II, and into III, a largely symbolic figure.

Um, not the source of power.

George the III, however, who assumes the, the throne in 1760, essentially expands royal power by claiming he is defending the prerogatives of parliament.

Um, and he has control over about 160 seats in the House of Commons and Lords.

He's given money sufficient to pay patronage.

And so the British Monarch in this period has more power, uh, than, uh, he had in the earlier years of the century and no Monarch after George III will be able to exercise the power that he did during this time, including Queen Victoria.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, uh, when I was in school, um, learning about the American Revolutionary War people used to say in the books, well, George, uh, King George was deranged, he didn't have all of his faculties.

Was that true, or was that just stuff we were told then?

ELLIS: George III becomes mentally impaired in the late 1780s.

Um, it's a specific illness.

It's physical.

It's not, uh, just purely psychiatric, but during this period of time, he has all his marbles.

He's generally regarded as a good king.

Um, uh, several observers, including, uh, uh, you know, prominent writers said he cares more about the British people than any other Monarch.

But, um, when the colonists threw the tea in the Bay of Boston that for him was the last straw.

He believed that he had, they'd thrown his own body into the, into the water, and this will sound familiar to a lot of Americans, I think, um, that he said that, "Great Britain's authority had been defied, and if we don't respond immediately and forcefully, we will end up losing Canada and then we will lose the Caribbean and then we will lose Gibraltar, and then we would lose maybe even India."

It's early version of the domino theory.

And so he saw himself a, as a person who was protecting the entire British Empire.

And if we lose this piece of it and we're gonna lose everything.

RUBENSTEIN: So, the Boston Tea Party occurs in 1773.

Uh, King George is upset.

He sends troops over, including Hessian troops who are, uh, German troops who are more or less mercenaries as we call them at the time.

They get into a skirmish in Lexington and Concord.

Some British troops are killed.

Some Americans are killed.

Around that time, the Americans finally come together and say, "Let's get together for the first time and have a Congress, a con, a kind of a gathering for the first time."

They'd never had a Continental Congress before.

Is that right?

ELLIS: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: So the Continental Congress occurs in, uh, Philadelphia in the, is it about 1775, they finally gather?

ELLIS: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: So who is the leader there saying, "Uh, we should try to figure out how to get, uh, in good shape with the British.

We don't wanna be independent.

We just wanna be, uh, a part of the empire, but we wanna be listened to and not taxed."

Was that the common thought then, or was it independence was already on their mind?

ELLIS: No, independence was not on their mind.

They, they, wished to avoid a break with the British empire.

The major voice inside the Continental Congress at this stage of the game, uh, is a guy called John Dickinson who is from Pennsylvania.

He's a Quaker.

He believes that the British government has temporarily lost its mind.

And it's lost its sense of bearing in what's in its own best interest.

And if the king can only be persuaded, that, um, that this is a mistake, the British ministry has carried him in the wrong direction.

So the first Continental Congress issues what they call a, uh, a series of petitions to the king asking for the king to sort of rescue it's, his own government from this huge mistake.

Um, uh, these are prudent revolutionaries, okay?

The last thing that they want, uh, in '74, early '75 is to have to fight the British Army and Navy, and they don't think they could win that war.

RUBENSTEIN: But, uh, when it doesn't appear that they're gonna be able to stop the British from sending troops over, um, they asked George Washington, who's a delegate from Virginia to the Congress to serve as the military leader of the so-called Continental Army.

Uh, whose idea was it to appoint George Washington, and was he qualified for that job?

ELLIS: It was John Adams who nominated him.

Um, the Massachusetts delegation comprised of several people, but the Adams team, Sam and John were the pl, major players.

And remember it's Massachusetts that's being occupied by the British Army.

And a lot of the other colonies are worried they're going to be dragged into the abyss or over the abyss by these crazy people from Massachusetts, and, um, and so both Adams', but especially John, at this time, tries to be, um, to share authority.

And so let's make sure that a Virginian is someone who heads this thing that will eventually be called the Continental Army.

He's really gonna take command of the troops outside of Boston, um, which have circled Boston, um, and, uh, and have the British Army basically trapped there about seven, 7,000 British troops.

RUBENSTEIN: So when Washington gets to Boston, uh, he finds a Continental Army so-called that really is a ragtag group of, uh, untrained people.

They're not really, uh, adequately, clothed and so forth.

How did he prevail to the extent that he did prevail in Boston and when he did prevail, why did they not just stay there and do more damage?

Why did he leave and go down to the New York area?

ELLIS: The thing called the "Boston Siege" is a, uh, long staring match.

There's no real big battles or anything.

They acquire guns from Ticonderoga that they've placed on a Peninsula that gives them artillery advantage.

And because of that General Howe, now commanding the British Army, decides he has to simply withdraw.

So the British fleet comes and pulls him out and takes the, the British Army and the loyalists, uh, several thousand loyalists up to Nova Scotia.

So the British are gone.

The reason there's no reason for Washington to, to stay in Boston.

The British are, they're no longer there.

And, um, but word has arrived through intelligence that the British now intend to really smash this re, this rebellion, and they're gonna send the biggest fleet ever assembled, um, to cross the Atlantic.

And the top target is gonna be New York, take New York, move up the Hudson corridor, seal off New England, and then, uh, and then, uh, conquer New England.

And that's the end of the war.

That's their plan.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, when does the United States, or not, I shouldn't say, I should say the colonies, when did they actually declare that they are gonna be independent or they wanna be independent, as opposed to let's convince King George to overrule the parliament?

And why does John Adams say that the most important thing happened on July the 2nd, and Thomas Jefferson would say the most important thing happened on July the 4th?

ELLIS: Uh, you're getting to some good stuff here, David.

The British had decided to throw everything they've got at the colonist and win the war in one massive blow.

Um, um, and it is that realization that transforms the American opinion on whether or not they should try for independence.

It is not a rational decision, "Oh, we have to do this for the long."

It's that we have no choice.

The king has declared his independence of us.

Adams writes a memorandum, and then it's, "All the respective colonies need to rewrite their colonial constitutions, and indicate to us whether they will stand with us if we are forced to declare independence."

This is in May of 1776.

And the dominant reason why Americans are ready for independence is they believe they have no choice.

That the king who they'd, they'd, they res, they honored and respected has abandoned them.

And he sent Hessians to come in and the Hessians are, uh, troops are some not unfairly described as people who take no quarter and rape all the women.

One town during this very time, in Maine, the British fleet cannonades it with firebombs and burns the entire town down about 2000 people die.

So they, they're under attack.

They're all... And, and they're about ready to be hit by the full force of the British Army and Navy.

And it is in that, in the shadow of those events that they think that they have no choice.

Um, now, why the fourth?

There's a portrait in the Capitol rotunda.

It's called the "Declaration of Independence" by John Trumbull.

Everybody who walks through there, thinks that's July 4th because yeah, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and then two other people are less noted, notable.

Coming to a desk where John Hancock and people think that's the signing ceremony.

They're coming to sign.

No, it's not July 4th.

It's June 28th.

It's when the committee that drafted The Declaration presents the draft to the full Congress.

On July 3rd Adams writes to Abigail and says, "Yesterday, the 2nd, will be celebrated ever after, there will be parades, there will be speeches, there will be illuminations."

He gets everything right, including the fireworks, but he gets the date wrong because it becomes not the, the 2nd, but the 4th.

The 2nd is the day they voted on independence from a resolution by Virginia that these colonies are and have every right to be independent states.

That was the resolution.

They voted on the 2nd.

Nothing happened on the 4th.

The reason the 4th is remembered is because the printer put July 4th on top of the first page, oh, as it was rolling off the press.

Um, there was no signing ceremony.

Most of them signed the parchment copy of The Declaration on August 2nd, but there were people signing it coming and going until September.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's go back to the war for a moment.

They're fighting the battle.

Um, Washington goes down to New York, uh, he's surrounded by a lot of British troops and, uh, ships.

How does he escape and was the escape so miraculous such that had he not escaped, the war would have ended right there, more or less?

ELLIS: New York is an archipelago, there's Staten Island, there's Long Island, there's Manhattan.

Um, and it's a water-laced trap for, for, for the Continental Army.

It's the biggest blunder that Washington makes throughout the entire war.

He should have never tried to defend New York.

Howe didn't expect him to try to defend it.

He told his superiors, "He probably would just go, go inland and make me come after him," because whoever, whoever has the Navy controls the battle and the only people that have a Navy and the greatest Navy in the world is the Brits.

So the battle of Long Island, and then the battle of Manhattan is a series of dramatic defeats for the Continental Army.

Um, after being humiliated on Long Island, they're trapped there as, you know, the East River separates Long Island from Manhattan.

And Washington has to be persuaded to try to retreat across the river because in Washington's honor driven sense of war and battle, it's demeaning, it's dishonorable to retreat.

Officers in both armies share this, this basic medieval sense of honor.

It's like, it's a challenge to a duel, and you've refused to do it.

He's persuaded eventually to attempt to retreat across the East River.

Um, everybody knows about the famous painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Leutze.

That's probably the most famous painting in American history.

A much more important retreat across a river, though it's not in the wintertime, it's across the East River, because he gets 10,000 troops across safely.

It's a miracle.

The wind, the wind had to shift at the right time.

A fog had to come in to cover up the, the retreating troops.

A strategic defeat of that sort is the most difficult maneuver to make, and these are all amateur troops.

Never fought, they're six months in the army.

So it's a standing, a miracle that they get across.

Um, he then should have simply again retreated up Manhattan and gotten off the island, but he doesn't do that.

He stops in the middle of Manhattan, uh, and, and, and attempts to draw the British into another battle.

He doesn't think he should retreat until he's won a victory.

Um, but eventually he gets off the island.

And the question that you raised at the end is, "Well, what would have happen?"

That, this it turns out is the best chance the British will ever have to win the war.

At any rate, there's a meeting on Staten Island while this is going on, it's the only diplomatic meeting during the war between the two sides.

Franklin is there representing us along with John Adams and the Brits say, essentially, "Look, we've just beat the liv, living de, devil out of you and why don't you just give up?"

And they say, "Well, it doesn't make any difference to us whether we lose the army.

Um, so what you, you'll, you will have spent all this effort to capture, you know, one little parcel of land."

And Franklin, uh, says to, uh, uh, Richard Howe, the Admiral, "Uh, so Richard, um, you should go home and you, you, your own, your own career, and cause will be destroyed if you stay in this war."

"It would be like the crusades," he says.

Um, and, um, so the American political leadership simply won't acknowledge a military defeat leading to anything meaningful.

RUBENSTEIN: So as the war progresses the Americans hardly ever win wa, a battle, um at all.

And that's in part because as you pointed out in your book, uh, they don't have a lot of munitions, they don't have a lot of clothing, they're not that well-trained, uh, and they tend to come and go because they're not really in the army in the sense that they're there for till the war is over, they kind of have six month or one year, uh, commitments to the army.

So Washington's always begging Congress for more money, more munitions, more clothing.

Why does Congress, if it wants to win this war, not give him everything he wants, and how, why does he have to keep begging for this?

ELLIS: The American side could have filled that army of at least a 100,000 if it wanted to.

Age wise, they could have 150,000.

Washington said, "All I need to win the war in a year is 60,000."

He never got more than 10 to 15,000.

Why?

Patriotism in a national sense of patriotism, "The Common Cause" sense of patriotism, began to die in, in '76 and retreated to local levels.

And it stayed alive there, uh, in a v, in a very big way.

If you were living in a town in Virginia or South Carolina, you have somebody come to your house and you, like your next door neighbor, the woman that lives right next to you and have a, she would say, "Here is the, the oath to sign committing yourself to "The Cause", and if you don't do it, um, we're gonna burn your house down, um, and you can't go to church with us, blah, blah, blah, blah."

So there's patriotism at the local level, but residents in this respective now states don't see their self-interests connected to a larger national effort.

However, the larger question that you asked is, they're losing in all these battles.

The people are walking away from their responsibility to the army.

All that's really true.

But the American say, they don't wanna set up any kind of standing army of their own.

Washington, after a year of almost losing the war has one strategic insight, "It's very important, I don't have to win, the British have to win.

All I have to do is not lose.

If I can keep the si, the Continental Army intact, um, and if support of the countryside remains as potent as it is, the British will eventually give up.

And the game will not be worth the candle."

And that's what the truth is.

So the, you just need a couple of big victories along the way, and you have to keep the Continental Army alive.

Um, in a protracted war, we will win, and the British will eventually go away.

And think about this, a final, how many wars did Great Britain lose between 1750 and 1950?

One.

This is it.

RUBENSTEIN: The Treaty of Paris ending the war doesn't occur until 1783.

What was going on in the ensuing years?

ELLIS: A lot of backing and forthing, uh, that took a while for the British to acknowledge they'd lost, um, and to assemble a government willing to negotiate independence, uh, so there's Britain having to come to terms with the fact that it, this was a mistake.

It was an unwinnable war, it was an unnecessary war, they lost 50,000 troops, uh, they went in debt, the rough equivalent in modern terms of several $100 billion.

Um, uh, when the American side, the new form of government that is coming into existence and is formally approved in 1781 is called the "Articles of Confederation", where sovereignty continues to reside in the states.

There is, uh, the beginning of an argument at this time.

On the one side are most of the veterans of the Continental Army, including Washington, including Hamilton, including the leaders in that, in that body, and a few of the people from the Continental Congress saying that the war of the American Revolution was eventually about American nationhood, the creation of a single national government.

They are a statistical minority.

The dominant group of people from the respective states and from Virginia people like Patrick Henry say, "No, the government that's existed during the war as provisional, temporary, put together to win the war, and then each of us go our separate ways."

So that the first sentence in the most famous speech in American history is incorrect.

It's the Gettysburg address, "Four score, and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation."

No, they didn't.

They brought forth a Confederation of sovereign states.

Very much like the, uh, the, the, uh, form of government that the Confederacy will demand in 1861.

Um, uh, and so the, one of the legacies of The American Revolution is not nationhood, um, but an argument about government itself, uh, whether government is us or government is them.

RUBENSTEIN: So our final question for you, and you talked about this in your book, who takes the blame in Britain for losing the war, or do they not blame anybody?

ELLIS: They look for scapegoats, and of course they do in the same way that any losing country does.

Um, initially they start to try to blame the generals, you know, the, the Howe Brothers, Gage before them.

The ultimate scapegoat becomes George Germain, who is the American secretary and the equivalent of the secretary of war throughout the war.

But the real scapegoat is George III, and they can't do it to him because he's the embodiment of the state.

In the wake of the war, there's a victory by the British fleet, uh, in the Caribbean, by the British Navy that essentially they start focusing on, they said, "Look, we just lost our North American effort.

Let's go, let's start focusing upon retaining control of the rest of the world."

Um, and if you think about it, you know, the British Empire doesn't cease to exist.

In fact, its glory days are still 100 years ahead of it.

So they move, move forward after this, but they never come to terms with why they, they made the mistake they did.

RUBENSTEIN: It's a very interesting story, "The Cause".

I wanna thank you very much for being in conversation with us Joseph Ellis, and thank you for, elucidating a lot of the things about the American Revolutionary War that people really don't know.

Thank you.

ELLIS: Thanks for having me.

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