Allison carefully addresses the checkered American military record during the Revolutionary War. Such corrections are timely in an era of neo–Tea Party fundamentalism, which holds the founding fathers blameless and the British fonts of evil. However, correcting the popular record, he adds that the American colonists’ tax burdens were comparatively light, and those colonists were generally more prosperous than Britons back home. Wrote Virginia’s governor to the British secretary of state, the law was “insufficient to restrain the Americans, and that they will do and will remove as their avidity and restlessness incite them.” Allison notes that American revolutionaries did indeed object, vocally and violently, to the notion that they should be taxed without parliamentary representation. He locates one in the much-hated Proclamation of 1763, which forbade English colonists in North America from settling across the Appalachians, and which stirred up resentments even as colonists disobeyed it. In the space of little more than 100 pages, the author covers a tremendous amount of ground, including the complex precipitating causes of the struggle for American independence. Revolutionary Sites of Greater Boston, 2005, etc.) aims to correct a few of those mistruths. “The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other,” prophesied John Adams.
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