Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution

The great cities of colonial America—New York, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia and Charleston—were in the forefront of revolutionary agitation before the War of Independence, but once the fighting began, says Carp (an assistant professor of history at Tufts), the politics of liberty moved to the countryside. The British concentrated on occupying the cities, centers of commerce and transport, in order to supply their army; the patriots reluctantly abandoned them so as to avoid being defeated in battle, and shifted their forces inland. It was no coincidence, then, that the most important American victories (Saratoga, Yorktown, Trenton and Cowpens) occurred away from the major population hubs. After the British defeat, some cities, like New York and Boston, went on to marvelous things, while others, such as Newport and Charleston, never quite recovered from their devastating occupation. Carp argues that political power shifted to the rural South as attitudes toward urban irreligion, culture, unrest and ethnic mixing soured. When the site of the new national capital was chosen, it was located on “a remote riverbank” midway between South and North. Carp’s account of the forgotten cities that fomented the Revolution is intriguing and will be mainly of interest to readers looking for an alternate explanation of this most remarkable of rebellions. (Sept.)