The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America
by T.H. Breen
Belknap Press, Harvard University

What engine drove and sustained the American Revolution through eight grueling years of war with Great Britain? Was it the Enlightenment principles the Founding Fathers espoused and wrote about so eloquently to legitimate the rebellion of American colonists? Or was it something closer to hearth and home, like the thousands of small communities who placed more importance on moral responsibilities than in the ethereal philosophic theories of well-off and highly educated men? In The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America, historian T.H. Breen makes a convincing case for the latter.

Breen is the John Kluge Professor of American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress and Founding Director of the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University. His other books include George Washington’s Journey and Marketplace of Revolution. In his latest entry in the field of Revolutionary studies, he reveals the American everyman (and woman) who experienced the run-up to rebellion and all-out revolution in the context of the local community, town, or village. Along with his main argument that “the will of the people” was the ultimate driving force that kept the American Revolution alive in its darkest days, Breen expounds that the true revolutionary power resided not in the hands of those crafting the declarations, constitutions, and legislation (and reaping the fawning glances of history as a result), but rather the local communities who united in times of tribulation to stay the course…no matter the cost.

The Will of the People tells a new story about the American Revolution, one mostly left in the deep shade of the Founding Fathers’ towering shadows. Eschewing the standard histories of the Revolution that place primary importance upon its political theories and legal reasoning, Breen revises this overdone focus to highlight the “true sites of resistance”—the small communities across the fledgling nation who daily sustained the fight for independence via a new vehicle of political activism, the committee. In the early days of revolt and continuing through the long conflict, Committees of Safety (or other similarly named associations) sprang up across the colonies. These extralegal bodies were truly (pardon the pun) revolutionary in that “managing the imperial conflict opened new opportunities for local men who suddenly found themselves in charge of organizing and policing resistance.”

The organization and policing of resistance is a big theme in Breen’s work, woven seamlessly into chapters examining a different element of the people’s “emotional environment,” such as rejection, assurance, fear, justice, betrayal, and revenge. In each case, Breen steps back to allow the people’s voice to supply the narrative through a rich surfeit of primary sources. These letters, broadsides, and newspaper articles reveal the dedication the American committee had to maintaining the Revolution by its vigilance for the safety, security, and parity of communities. This included monitoring the economic disparities that hit many towns hard during the lean years of the war, with subtle (and not so subtle) forms of public shaming. For example, when the Continental currency bottomed out, many Americans made it a point of patriotism to accept the devalued and “not worth a Continental” bills. The local committees of safety and responsibility also portrayed marketplace profiteers who raised prices on necessary goods as scoundrels betraying the principles of the Revolution. 

But through it all, as Breen points out, the American revolutionary committees exercised a level of restraint never seen in other revolutionary movements across the world. The feelings of betrayal and revenge ran high among the populace, for instance, when former loyalists tried to return home after the war. But episodes of violence were rare; people accepted the law’s judgments and moved on. Indeed, the esteem in which the local committee held the rule of law explains why the American Revolution trod such a different path than the French and Russian varieties.  

We’ve heard it said that all politics is local. The Americans who supported the Revolution from their doorsteps, farms, and town squares were emblematic of this notion. In The Will of the People, Breen has written an extremely well-paced and engaging account of those who never enjoyed the attentions of history. Until now. 
—Peggy Kurkowski holds a BA in History from American Public University and is a copywriter living in Denver, Colorado