The Rest Is History - 350: The Triumph of George Washington (Part 4)

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

With the French and Spanish siding with George Washington’s revolutionaries, the game is up for the British, and it seems time for them to cut their losses. Following the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, the war is effectively over, but what are the short and long term consequences of this? In our final episode on the American revolution, Tom, Dominic and Professor Adam Smith look at the end of the war, the subsequent Treaty of Paris, and the broader question of how the revolution shaped the United States and the future of its people. The Rest Is History Club members can listen to the full series now. Join The Rest Is History Club on Apple podcasts or at www.restishistorypod.com for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows, and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. What if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America. What if all this was a terrible idea? And what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the

founding fathers, but because of them. The revolution, this argument might run, was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders' panic mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and demagogy. Look north to Canada, or south south to Australia and you will see different possibilities of peaceful evolution away from Britain towards sane and whole, more equitable and less sanguinary countries. No revolution and slavery might have ended, as it did elsewhere in the British Empire, more peacefully and sooner. We could have ended with a social democratic commonwealth that stretched from north to south, a near continent-wide Canada.

Wow. So that, Tom, was Adam Gopnik, a very great essayist, in The New Yorker in May 2017, asking if the American Revolution was a mistake from the start. And of course, you and I will have our own opinions about why or not it was a mistake. But the fact is that as we reach episode four of this mighty epic, we are in, what, 1778. The French and soon the Spanish have piled in, or in Spanish case, will pile in.

And they will be followed by other countries who form a league of armed neutrality, the Russians, the Danes, the Prussians, the Austrians, the Portuguese, basically making it very difficult for the British. And from this point, don't you think, Tom, the game is kind of up for Britain? I think the game has been up right from the start. I don't think there was any prospect of the British ever. You think it was unwinnable from the beginning? Yeah, I do.

So Adam Smith, Professor Adam Smith, who is the Edward Osborne Professor of American History at the University of Oxford, who has been performing manfully in these four episodes. Adam, do you think the game was up from the very beginning? I think the game was up if the goal was a restoration of the status quo as it had been before 1775 i think other alternatives might have been possible i think if you know if we talked about in the previous episode if washington's army had been captured if saratoga hadn't fallen i mean there are other options yeah but the possibility is narrow and narrow and narrow and definitely by the time you get to the french intervention which is where we ended the last episode it's very very, very difficult to see how the British get out of this. And yet the funny thing is you mentioned Washington.

So Washington at this point, I mean, he's the great hero for the Americans, obviously, commander of the Continental Army. At the point that the French get involved, he is really in the depths of despondency, isn't he? Because Philadelphia had been taken by the British and he has led his army into winter quarters, a place called Valley Forge, which is about just under 20 miles Northwest of Philadelphia. And he's there for six months and they've got nothing to eat. It's freezing cold. They're

really miserable. And Valley Forge is this sort of, so Ronald Reagan, big favorite of yours, Tom, of course, Ronald Reagan used to tell this story about Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge and asking God for help. And Valley Forge is a really important part of the American mythology of the revolution and the war, isn't it? Because it's sort of, again, it's the underdog spirit. The odds are against us. And, you know, God was with us.

Providence was with us. Do you think it really deserves that reputation, Adam? Well, it was another moment when it's easy to imagine how the Continental Army could have completely dispersed. And if that had happened, the calculations would have shifted. It's not to say that there wouldn't have been some other kind of military force that would have been put together, perhaps under Washington, perhaps under somebody else. But it was certainly a desperate moment.

And the reason, as you say, Dominic, I mean, the reason why it's become so much part of the myth of the American Revolution in the United States is because it reinforces this underdog narrative and in that Reaganite way, because it implies at least that it's only because of God's providence that it was possible in the end for the Americans to triumph. God and women. Am I right? Martha Washington is there too. I don't know anything about Martha Washington, but she's followed George and she's there sort of bandaging people and, I don't know, making soup or something that sounds like i'm being flippant about but obviously women play a huge part in the american revolution from the beginning yeah not least in following their husbands or their boyfriends with the army and they do all the important stuff behind the lines like yeah washing their clothes bandaging their

wounds providing them with food all those things which an army absolutely depends on well thomas paine has a brilliant description of the whole setup with all the men who were busy building up the fortifications and the women laboring. And he says that it was like a family of beavers. That's nice. You like a beaver, Tom. I love a beaver, yes. But Adam, so women in the American Revolution, we haven't talked about women much, but they are, I mean, historiography now really plays up the part that women played in a way that wouldn't have been the case 100 years ago.

And critically so, because this was a war which, as we've in effect been emphasising, was won or lost by the American white colonial public and their commitment to this cause. And so it was in American households that sacrifices were made, that commitments were made to try to wait out this through this time of trial. The presence of the Redcoats, the presence of the army in itself intensified American commitment to try to, that the only possible outcome with any honour was complete victory, complete independence, removing British troops forever from American soil. King George had already been taken down. None of that is explicable if the only focus is on the men in the armies and the generals making the decisions on the American side and the founding fathers who are all of course men but of course there's a there's isn't a famous exchange

of letters abigail adams is abigail adams yes john adams wife yeah where she writes to him when they're passing the declaration of independence and says you know while you're remaking the world think about women as well forget the ladies to get the ladies and he sort of writes back in this incredibly condescending way and says yeah right you know like we're gonna do that like we're gonna give you a second's thought or something so was there ever he does he does although in fairness i mean that's actually a magnificent exchange of letters i mean john and abigail adams write to each other they're apart most of the time throughout this whole revolutionary crisis. And he clearly takes her incredibly seriously as a kind of counsellor and source of advice. And he tests out ideas with her and he wants to know what she thinks and what people around her back in Boston are thinking. So it's actually quite a really impressive and interesting close political relationship,

as well as emotional one between John and Abigail. So could there have been a more, as it were, a more progressive outcome for women, for the poor, for slaves, for people who are pushed to the margins of kind of American political life? Or was it always going to play out as it did? But doesn't, I mean, doesn't the war is kind of bad for slaves because they are seen as having sided with the British. So in a way, the kind of bad for slaves because they are seen as having sided with the British. So in a way, the structures of oppression become a titan as a result of the Revolutionary War. Yeah, well, I think gender and class work out in different ways from

race in the American Revolution. And there is a moment in the 1790s when women are enfranchised. In New Jersey, famously, they're kind of almost accidentally enfranchised if they're property owners, some women, a tiny number of women. In terms of poor white men, the American Revolution was almost everywhere a great boon, and some of the new state constitutions that are being written around about this time, Pennsylvania being the best example, are incredibly radical constitutions that give huge amounts of power

to ordinary white property-less men relative to anywhere else in the world or that really has ever been properly dreamed of anywhere in the world other than, you know, at the most radical extreme moments of the English Revolution of the 1640s. What about, let's say, Indians, so Native Americans? So the British are trying to enlist Native Americans as allies. And in fact, throughout all this period, there's very bloody fighting in the Western borderlands, the kind of frontier zone. Does the American Revolution work out well or badly?

Well, I mean, I'm guessing what your answer is going to be. The answer is not well for Native Americans. And is that because previously they had just been seen as King George's subjects like any others, but now they are seen as enemies? Yeah, I guess for the reasons we were talking about in the first episode, it was in the interest of policymakers in London to try to balance

the powerful indigenous nations in North America against white settlers. And the French did the same. The French were making alliances with Native Americans. The practical effects of American independence was that Native American peoples were then regarded as being essentially fair game within the boundaries of the newly established United States.

And no, the American Revolution was clearly a bad thing from the point of view of indigenous people. And Adam, just to follow up on that, that the Native Americans are seen as having allied themselves with the British, and presumably even more so that's the case with slaves in the South who have not only escaped their owners, but in certain cases have actually joined the British army. So there's a famous Ethiopian regiment, it's called. And then there's a squad of black dragoons who are enrolled in the British army. Black loyalists play an important role and not a role that's dwelt in traditionally in American historiography until the last couple of decades.

And the Ethiopian regiment, I think, was originally raised by Lord Dunmore and was a direct consequence of the proclamation that we talked about in a previous episode. One of the soldiers in the Ethiopian regiment, Harry Washington, was owned by George Washington, been born in the Gambia, purchased by Washington some 10 or 15 years before the war, ran away when he heard of Dunmore's proclamation and fought for the king throughout the Revolutionary War, was eventually, I think, among those black loyalists who were evacuated by the British and settled in Nova Scotia. So what was it, the phrase, sometimes liberty wears a red coat or something? Just throwing that out for our American listeners. Yeah, there are surely no American listeners left.

So let's get back to something that will be cheerier for American listeners, namely the gradual implosion of the British war effort. So we ended the last episode, February 1778, the French piling in. The Spanish have joined a year later. And that obviously, as we were saying before, completely changes the dynamic.

Because they wanted to brought it back. I mean, that's basically what they want. The Spanish do indeed. But of course, for the British, it's not just defending the Caribbean. They also know how to defend Britain. I mean, so Adam, the chances of a French invasion, I suppose they're not enormous, but they're not negligible either. I mean, the British are always worried of a French invasion, I suppose they're not enormous, but they're not negligible either.

I mean, the British are always worried about a French invasion in this period, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, this isn't just theoretical. There was an armada, the Armada of 1779, Dominic. and Spanish Navy attempted at the very least to kind of divert Britain from the war in the Americas and in the Caribbean and all these other places Britain was trying to defend. But, you know, with a genuine prospect of landing in Great Britain. And the most famous kind of naval innovation in this is that the French government commissions an American called John Paul Jones, who's a kind of former slave ship captain, to actually go and raid the British coast, which he does with some success.

Whitehaven. Yeah, he shells Whitehaven and Cumberland. He's still quite remembered there. If you go to Whitehaven, where there is, by the way, an excellent secondhand bookshop, John Paul Jones is still remembered in might even rightly say and he he ends up taking shelter in the netherlands which i think reflects very poorly on the dutch that they allowed him in so his life then takes a series of very bizarre twists tom he um he ends up in russia after that he's accused of raping a 10 year old girl and um he goes to poland and then he goes back to Paris and he ends up being made US consul in Algiers. Of course. Yes, of course he does.

Yes. Against the slavers. But then dies before he can take up his, he's found dead in his Paris apartment. Isn't that a strange life? There's the plot of a thriller. Yes. Anyway, that's all part of the. So that's not good for anybody.

Well, it's not good for the people of Whitehaven. I think it's fair to say, Adam. But the British still have a – the amazing thing is they don't give in. They don't just say, right, let's just cut our losses. Why not? Why do we keep going? Just pride? Stubbornness?

I think yes. I think those things. I mean, that really is a great question because by this point, the support in the House of Commons for Lord North is ebbing away. It starts losing some critical votes. I mean, there are plenty of people in Britain by this point saying, let's cut our losses and get out. But it's a massive thing. It's a massive thing to acknowledge the independence of these 13 colonies, you know. But also, I i mean as late as

1780 britain is still winning victories they are so they win a the battle of camden which for any londoner is a kind of an amusing idea um that's south carolina isn't it yes yes south carolina not in north london and they're fighting in the south because there is and actually this is a good answer to your your question dominic i mean as tom as tom is implying there, there is still this thought, well, maybe we can turn this around. And they're fighting in the South, not least because in the South they have good reason to believe there are still lots of loyalists there. And there are, there are loyalist groups who are irregular forces who are fighting to try to support the british and so the famous story of an american independence fighter who gets turned of course is benedict arnold um and uh he is um so what was he he was a kind of very distinguished general kind of very energetic general uh kind of loses his mobility he he gets

badly injured in his legs but it's still very kind of feisty yes um and feels that he's not getting the credit that he's owed yes he's not being promoted because he's from the wrong place and there's all this business about the continental congress wanting to share out the commissions among the different states and all this kind of thing and he's clearly a kind of prickly ambitious figure who doesn't think he's getting his fair dues he's also married to a beautiful woman Peggy Shippen who is a loyalist from a loyalist family anyway in Philadelphia and he as you say he gets turned and he thinks actually maybe I could get more accolades and get more glory if I defect to the British side. And it goes wrong from his point of view.

I mean, he ends up, he survives. Because he gets offered the command of West Point, doesn't he? And it's suggested that he has this over. He's going to surrender. The plan is he's going to surrender West Point to the British, but the plan is exposed before he can do that. He manages to escape. His wife, Peggy, eventually manages to escape as well. And they're reunited in London. But the guy who'd

been running the messages, Major John Andre, is captured by the Americans. And he's British. And he is British. And he is executed as a spy. And he's hung. He's not shot, as a gentleman should be, but he's hung. And even the Americans who capture him and are holding him prisoner in the weeks before he's executed think they just swoon over this guy. They think John Andre is the most magnificent military figure, astonishing, bearing brave and when he walks out and to his final execution and he's still astonished because he thinks he's going to be shot until he sees the news hanging there and he's asked if he wants to say any last words and he says bear me witness that i bear my fate like a brave man and they all go oh how, how magnificent. And they're so scary. So there's absolutely a sense still that the Americans are capable of admiring officers in the British Army.

But equally, there is also a figure who is up there in the annals of infamy alongside Benedict Arnold, who is a British officer called Benastre Tarleton. Brilliant name. And he is the guy who inspires what's his name in the patriot the kind of the villainous mel gibson's villain but he's a tremendous man isn't he benastre tarleton he looks gallant he kind of looks the part and uh he he kind of wins a battle and and the um the his opponents surrender and then he all his men slash them and kill them um and so this is uh tarleton's quarter it's called the tarleton complained that he'd been actually his horse had been shot from under him and he'd been

stuck under the horse so he wasn't in position to but i mean you could argue couldn't you tom to go back to the thing we were talking about in previous episodes that if the british army had been had rather more tarletons and fewer gentlemen johnnies or whatever they were called then maybe they would have done a bit better than sort of playing by the Queensbury rules, which they're sort of doing throughout. Is that fair, Adam? Or am I being too ruthless? It certainly would have created a different outcome. But as we were saying before, all the time the British are saying, well,

it's a hearts and minds strategy. And they just don't quite bring themselves to do it. And really, if every British general had been a bloody Ben Tarleton, I mean, is it going to fundamentally change the story? I don't think it is. All it would have done is to really even further entrench. Poison

relations, wouldn't it? Yeah. Just to go back to the question I asked 10 minutes ago, which was about why Britain kept fighting, why Britain didn't throw. I suppose one answer is that the british i mean nobody knows how the story will end so nobody knows that all 13 colonies will become independent as you said there are still lots of loyalists in let's say south carolina or north carolina or wherever so perhaps do the british think you know what the south is quite lucrative for its plantations. We could keep those states. Okay, New England is gone,

maybe Pennsylvania, wherever, but Virginia, the Carolinas. Well, because of course, with the French entering the war, there's the risk that the Caribbean colonies might go as well. And the British are facing the prospect of losing all their colonies in the new world. So the fact that they're able to hold onto to their Caribbean colonies suggests that that's not entirely a foolish strategy, right? Well, I think, yes, they're always trying to hold on to the Caribbean colonies, number one. I mean, that is the thing that they absolutely cannot happen is that the French and Spanish would take Jamaica and Antigua and Barbados. Did people in London envisage some scenario whereby some of the southern colonies remained loyal?

Yes, they definitely did. All options were still on the table, I think. And that's no doubt part of the reason why the war continued. And as Tom said, they're still winning battles. So they take Savannah. They take Charleston. They win this battle at Camden. The guy who wins that is General Cornwallis, who's from a Whig family.

You know, your classic, I mean, basically a casting agency who supplied an old Etonian to command a British army. But actually, he's really good at it. So Cornwallis is remembered as this terrible disaster. But he's won lots of battles. He fought in the Seven Years' War. He's famously gallant. He voted against the Stamp Act.

And he goes on to become Governor General in India, doesn't he? He does. He's not a kind of complete weed and a nothing, like he's remembered. And then once he's won Camden, he moves north, doesn't he? He moves into North Carolina. And he thinks, right, what I need to do is to cut the rebel supply lines from Virginia. So he ends up going into Virginia. And this is, I mean, it's so so that the camp we're not a military history

podcast is probably everybody can tell but he um he's sort of trudging this way and that's across the landscape and he ends up in a peninsula to use the technical language yeah that's exactly yeah some people may say that about this podcast that basically we trudge this way and that's but dominic you know historical but again you know what's intriguing about this podcast that basically we trudge this way and that's a historical but again you know what's intriguing about this is that he knows what is coming so he's been commanded by general clinton to go and do this and he's saying no i think this is a terrible idea um but he you know he obeys but even as he's doing whatever it is he was saying trudging around he's kind of writing letters and keeping correspondence to make sure that you know he he will be able to say that he thought this was

a bad idea so again it's this sense of defeatism he said he writes to clinton i assure you i'm quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures because that's it and that's basically what he's doing and he ends up in this peninsula called the williamsburg neck where he decides there's a place called ytown. This is a good base. I'll get supplies from the sea here. And this obviously is, I mean, it's got a tiny bit of the feel of the Battle of Actium to it, I think, Tom. You know the Battle of Actium where they got kind of cornered, didn't they, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, blockaded by Octavian's fleet.

And he basically manages to corner himself in this peninsula where Washington pitches up with the french they outnumbered him two to one and he's thinking well maybe i'll get supplied from the sea and then the french fleet sails into view and he thinks oh god it's all over that ship has sailed as it were yeah and and then um it's a swamp which is a very poor choice i think of uh topographical choice because they all get malaria. Half of his men get malaria. He realizes he's not going to be able to get out.

They're all hungry, very miserable. And eventually, the 19th of October, 1781, Cornwallis says, enough. I surrender. And he's too ill to attend the ceremony himself. So he says. So he says. What is it with you cyn ceremony himself he says so he says what is it with you what is it with you cynics so he sends out his second in command doesn't he to surrender and so george washington refuses to accept the surrender from the second in command and asks his second in command to accept the surrender instead. The British would have been happy to surrender to the French,

but not to the American rebels. Because it's humiliating for them. And so they all walk out, don't they? They kind of have to walk for a kind of mile, a mile-long gauntlet. They have to run it. And then they have to hand over all their weapons. And so the British troops hurl down their muskets

in the hope that they'll smash it up but it's been a very unsporting end they're not even allowed to play the right music and stuff and they're not allowed to carry their flags unfurled they have to furl their flags um but having said that washington then once the surrender has been completed invites um all the senior officers for a party which is wonderful except for except for one officer, who is, of course, Benastry Tarleton. So he remains the baddie that they love to hate. So Washington, unsporting behavior followed by very sporting behavior. But then six days after the surrender, he issues an order that says that all the slaves that have joined the British,

my troops are now to round them up and return them to their owners, which is the kind of detail, Adam, that 21st century historians seize on as a sort of unsettling one in what's normally a very patriotic narrative. It is unsettling if you have swallowed the patriotic narrative that I suppose many Americans did over many generations. It's not in the slightest bit surprising, though, is it? I mean, they're in a slave society. The core thing about slavery is that it's a claim to property. And there would have been no possible alternative course of action for Washington himself, who, of course, is a slaveholder. And in a slaveholding state, colony of Virginiaia what else would he would you expect him to have done in that situation so there's no sense there that's bad

behavior i mean almost everybody involved with the american cause would say that's that's exactly what we'd expect them to do no i wouldn't go that far because the the 13 colonies were diverse and complicated places. And I think, I mean, also, right, that in Northern states, in Philadelphia, particularly and in New England, that the process of the war gives a massive boost to abolitionism, as it has done in Britain as well, actually. It does. Yes. Yeah.

So the impact of the American Revolution on slavery is a highly complex one. In some ways, it reinforces it. In other ways, it gives a huge boost to the anti-slavery movement. Both things are true simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a break now. So, Cornwallis has surrendered. Effectively, it's the end of the war. But when we come back, let's look at how the war is officially concluded and then think about the short- and the long term consequences of it. and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. It's the final section of our four-part epic, the heroic Adam Smithith like george washington he's been in the field for what seems years his sword is still unsheathed and adam uh we're approaching the end and basically cornwallis's surrender that's it and is it recognized as such by everyone when the news gets back to London and Lord George Germain, who I actually don't think we've mentioned so far in this discussion, but he's the poor guy in London who's having to try to run the war on behalf of Lord North. He realises the significance of this. The King realises the significance of this. This isn't the only British army in the

field. The British still hold New York. They still hold Charlestown, Charleston, South Carolina. They've still got a military presence, but this is a blow from which they know they can't come back. And they're also, round about the same time, the French have won a victory at St. Kitts and the Spanish have just captured Menorca. So it's like playing one of those kind of strategy games where everything is going wrong at once.

You think, okay, it's time to cut the losses. But oddly, so this is a weird detail. Cornwall just surrenders in October 1781, but the Treaty of Paris is not for another two years. What's going on in the intervening two years? Well, partly what's going on is naval warfare in the Caribbean. So really the war, I mean, there are three different wars

happening simultaneously here. There's the war between the British regulars and the American troops, the Continental Army, which we've mostly been talking about. Secondly, there's a kind of civil war within the colonies, which we've referred to a little bit, but it's really important in some places, sort of loyalists and patriots and kind of really nasty, violent stuff. And then thirdly, there's the global conflict. There's Britain on the one hand and France and Spain on the other. And that war continues beyond Yorktown. And the naval battles that take place in the coming months,

which are British victories and which secure Antigua and the other sugar islands, that's the way in which the British in London would like to think that the war has ended. That's the note they want to end on. And that's important to their negotiators. And also, Adam, isn't it? Admiral Howe, who'd been in command of the naval fleet, the naval forces in the Revolutionary War, he's come back and he comes to the liberation of Gibraltar. So there's a sense in which Gibraltar is more important than America. Yes. So actually, from the British point of view, they come out of this thinking,

okay, well, we lost the colonies. That's been a bit of a disaster. But actually, in the grand scheme of things, we've got out of this. We've dodged the bullet. It could have been much worse. Right. It could have been much worse. And in a way, the fact that everybody's ganged up on Britain,

is that effectively revenge, as it were, for the Seven Years' War? And is that recognition that the Seven Years' War had put Britain up there to be shot at in a kind of preeminent position? I think that's absolutely right, Dominic. Yeah, that's exact. And it's a scary moment. People in London, that's what they're really frightened of, is this isolation in Europe. All of British foreign policy through the 18th century is to avoid, and into the 19th century is to avoid isolation in Europe of the kind that happens in the late 1770s and early 1780s. And they don't want that to happen again.

That's the lesson the British policymakers draw. Right. But actually, so Britain, I think it's fair to say, I mean mean obviously i i know our remaining american listener will say i've never heard such a i've never heard such a partisan podcast in my life triopic tosh but it's fair to say that the british have made a series of very bad mistakes from the start of this series to right to this point yeah but in a weird way the british really distinguish themselves with the peace, don't they? Because they get the Americans to sign a peace.

They do a deal with the British alone and they give the Americans much more generous terms than the French or the Spanish want them to. Absolutely. And Franklin's negotiating it in Paris, isn't he?

Yes. And he's a kind of very free-form negotiator. You know, the British say, let's do this. And he goes, yeah, why not? Brilliant. The story of the Treaty of Paris is usually told as a great triumph for Franklin's negotiating skills. And no doubt the Americans did do a good job. But fundamentally, what this is about is that the British definitely did not need to agree such generous terms to the new United States. But it was in Britain's interest to do that.

Once the 13 colonies had been lost, it was in Britain's interest to have a reasonably strong United States in North America as a bulwark against the French. Yeah, and also presumably to keep them on board because there's Canada and there's the Caribbean as well. Indeed. And the worst outcome in the Treaty of Paris for Britain would have been France reclaiming some of her possessions in North America or Spain doing likewise. And so a weak, fragmented, tiny United States just clinging to the atlantic seaboard which would have been certain to invite another war very soon that wouldn't have been in britain's interests either so long as they wanted to hold as you say tom as long as they wanted to hold on to their possessions in canada and just on i mean people will often talk about the um what the americans call the revolutionary war and we call the american war of. People often talk of it as a civil war. When it's over, I mean, when they are meeting Franklin,

who used to play chess with British guys when he was in London before the war, is there bad blood? Or are they all sort of shaking hands and drinking port and kind of chuckling about funny things that happened at Saratoga or whatever. I mean, what's the sort of atmosphere like between Britain and America in the immediate aftermath? There's a very emotional moment when John Adams comes to London as the first minister from the new United States and he's presented at court and he has a conversation with the king. And they're both very emotional about this and the king certainly so. But John Adams pledges the future friendship of the United States

and emphasizes all the common ties of culture and language and religion and with the strong implication that now this late unpleasantness is behind us, at the end of the day, we are now like you and like we've always been, a great Protestant power. And we know who our enemies are. They're the French. And that was why Thomas Jefferson, in contrast, did not go down so well. So the answer to your question, Dominic, is it depends on which Americans you're talking about.

Because Jefferson is a shameless Francophile, isn't he? He is, and he remains a shameless Francophile, isn't he? He is, and he remains a shameless Francophile, even into the 1790s. As the guillotine is falling, Jefferson is toasting the chateau of the American Revolution falls on France rather than on Britain, because French support for the American war effort costs them a lot of money, bleeds them of so much money that it precipitate the revolution. And you talked about America being Protestant. But one of the other interesting kind of corollaries of the war period is that Jefferson is able to make the case for there being kind of wide-scale religious tolerance. And that is something that simply because the

structures of kind of establishment churches are no longer able to be maintained. And so that's another very, very significant fruit of the Revolutionary War, isn't it? Yes. I mean, pretty much everybody imagines that the religious toleration is within a Protestant context. It's a different matter being entirely tolerant of Catholics and nevermind non-Christians. But once it's been kind of written into the constitution, then a bit like the Declaration of Independence, these are slow burners that will burn their way through American history. Yeah, that's right. And disestablishment happens across the new United States in those places that still have a church establishment quite quickly afterwards.

Massachusetts is the last, I believe, is the last state to disestablish its church. So they hold the Puritan tradition clings on there for a long time. But that's also something that's deeply ingrained in their sense of being of English liberties. They wouldn't have regarded that as something that's entirely new. They would have said, well, we've always had religious liberty, or we thought we had, and the American Revolution has given it an impetus. And it's focused, you know, the Church of England and the church establishment was clearly associated and in place like virginia which had an established anglican church associated with tories and support for the king and so they were delegitimized yeah so there's that great

thing right from jefferson it does mean no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg and i guess only someone who's been through a very violent war could maybe have made that made. Yeah. So Thomas Jefferson himself had not actually been through a violent war. He had a war in France. But yes, no, but I take your point. But Jefferson's sort of performative secularism was not typical. I mean, you know, most of the rest, I mean, Jefferson did say he was a deist and Tom Paine, of course, was certainly performatively non-religious, but not the rest of them. The rest of them were all very pious church attending

Presbyterians or Congregationalists. But Jefferson is a kind of sign of how far that can be pushed and that kind of brief window where it's possible to establish a new country on broadly enlightenment principles yeah tom you love jefferson but i can tell from that i don't love jefferson the way that adam uses the word performatively i mean he's the rankest of the of hypocrites oh he is he's a terrible one right he ranks tom with um bogey douglas john lennon and Virginia Woolf as absolute enemies, sworn foes of the rest of history and some of the worst people who've ever lived. Now, I don't include John Lennon in that. Before we move on to the future for the United States, there is, of course, one other country in North America that was created by these years, and that is Canada.

Is that too strong to say that this is the foundational moment of Canada? No. I mean, Canada as an entity doesn't exist quite at this point, but by definition, it exists because it's British North America. And that's what people begin to refer to. It's British North America. And everything that happens in British North America is also happening in the United States. And it's a place of relative religious freedom and relatively high levels of political participation and access to land and

wars with indigenous people and stories of exploitation. What it doesn't have is slavery, and it doesn't have a Republican constitution, but it develops and flourishes and prospers. And Canadian history begins at this moment. So that's Canada. The United States. So suddenly the United States, 1783, its independence has been recognized by Britain, which must seem like an absolutely extraordinary moment. Of course, they've thought of themselves as independent since the mid-1770s,

but now they have it de jure as well as de facto. But is the United States a nation at that point? Surely it's just 13 different colonies in an uneasy confederation. In an uneasy confederation, in a dangerous world with no template that they can follow. Well, ancient Rome, perhaps? Well, they're looking to ancient Rome. Some are even looking at Swiss republics, the Dutch Republic. And there are historical precedents. The ancient ones are the most relevant.

Because the assumption is at this point in European society that republics basically implode. Yeah. That's the assumption, that they're inherently unstable. Yeah. But I mean, they are unstable at first, aren't they? They've got Shays' Rebellion. They've got lots of local issues unresolved. They've got the issue of the Native Americans on the frontier. Who knows that the French might not come back? The British might come back. And they have no leadership, no capital, no government, really, do they, at this point? No. I mean, effectively, the Articles of Confederation are really more like a kind of peace treaty among these 13 newly independent

states with no proper executive. They theoretically have treaty-making power, but they've got no tax-raising ability. So it's a very shaky beginning for the newly United States. And then what, I mean, anybody who's seen the musical hamilton will know that alexander hamilton who we've not mentioned at all and james madison who i think we mentioned in passing that they are two of the key figures in creating a kind of national government and moving towards a constitution and a much stronger executive a president a monarch effectively um an elected monarch what is it that provokes them to do that? And why does everybody else, having been anti-government

and anti-British power and all that stuff for so long, why do they suddenly say, okay, well, now we need to – is it fear? What is it? Fundamentally, it is fear, but there is effectively a revolution in favour of government, to use a phrase that other historians have used. Well, it's their government, right? I mean, that's the key difference. It's not governments being practised on the other side of the ocean. It's their government and they can choose it.

That's exactly right. And, you know, John Adams said around about the time of the Declaration of Independence that there's something odious in a government a thousand leagues away. And this whole movement is about, yes, taking back control and creating a government of our own. Well, they have representation, and so now they can have taxation. Yes, exactly. But there's a continuing needs about it. I mean, without getting into the whole, all the sort of the dotting the last I's and crossing the t's of the constitution making there's a tension between federalists which is hamilton madison and co anti-federalists which is jefferson about whether

or not there should be a powerful state whether there should be a central government whether you should just let the states get on with it and would it be too strong to say that that runs all that argument which is happening in the aftermath of the Treaty of Paris and then the adoption of the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787? That runs all the way through American history, or is that just being too simplistic and back-projecting current American political debates to the 18th century? The nature of the debate changes, obviously, over the generations, but that fundamental tension is there right from the beginning. And there's huge unease and opposition to the project of creating a stronger central government. There's this huge discomfort with

the presidency in particular as a strong executive with prerogative powers that far exceed what George III had. A kind of model of executive, a single executive based on a kind of Stuart conception of kingship. Admittedly, with the pretty massive caveat that the person is elected rather than has any notion of being divinely appointed and being hereditary. But nevertheless, a model of the constitution that is like a kind of pre-glorious revolution English version of the English constitution with a strong executive and a separately elected, separately selected legislature. But again, there is a slight hint of the Roman about it because you have the figure of Washington, this great general who has led his people, his fellow citizens, and then he returns to his plow. I mean, that's the image of it. George III himself had said, if Washington does that, then he is the greatest man in history, or words to

that effect. And he does. He goes back to Mount Vernon and farms, or at least he gets his enslaved people to farm for him. So in a sense, when the Americans are thinking, you know, we want this kind of monarchical president, they can do that with a degree of confidence that they have the ideal candidate to hand, a figure of antique Roman virtue. Yes. And I think we probably haven't emphasised Washington enough, actually. The figure that Washington became through the war. I mean, Dominic, you said, is this a nation? I mean, who knows whether it's, I mean, you can argue about what makes a nation, of course, historians spend a lot of time doing so. But if anything has made a nation,

it's the experience of war. And it's the figure of George Washington as the embodiment of the American cause with his honor and his integrity and his apparent inability to ever tell a lie. So that's a fascinating question. So that raises an interesting question about with his honor and his integrity and his apparent inability to ever tell a lie. So that's a fascinating question. So that raises an interesting question about Washington. Are the Americans fortunate to have somebody like Washington who gives them a focal point, a hero, a figure around which the nation can coalesce? Or were they always going to produce somebody like that onto whom they could project those qualities? What do you think, Adam? In other words, is Washington a creation of the kind of national imagination? Well, there's certainly something in that. There was evidently a yearning for some kind of replacement father figure.

They got rid of one George, but fortunately they had another George ready to, in some respects, step into the shoes of the deposed king. They were fortunate that Washington was such a good figure on which to project their desires and hopes. But I think that question massively underplays the moral stature of Washington as a political leader. Because if you think of the English Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the English Revolution throws up Cromwell, the French Revolution throws up Napoleon, both of whom essentially become dictatorial figures. Washington doesn't. And that then

establishes the whole kind of tenor of the American presidency and therefore the character of the United States, not just as a republic, but in the very long run, a democracy as well. Strongly agree with that, Tom. I think Washington was a great man. And I think he probably is a figure that we need to recognize more for his role in all of these events and in the creation of the United States. Yes, I don't know who we is in that sentence either. Well, I guess, Adam, that you might be talking about your academic peers, the scholars who study the American Revolution and the origins of American history. Because of course, this is now, you know, it's not just a matter for scholars, it's highly contested political territory. And the idea that Washington might be criticized more for owning slaves, say, than for defeating the British, which would have been kind of unheard of idea maybe even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, is now quite current in America.

Yes. I mean, at every stage in this story and in all the stories that you two tell on your podcast, there's huge contingency, right? And that's what you two do so well is to tell a story always with a kind of sense of alternative possibilities. And that's what history is. And by contingency, of course, we don't mean just sheer luck. We mean the kind of awareness of other options at every moment. And George Washington's personality shaped the key moments, shaped that contingency in ways that benefited the future stability and in some respects,

the openness and liberal freedom of the newly created United States. But can I ask then, the corollary of that is that if the stature of Washington is kind of like the foundation stone of the myth of America's beginnings, and I don't use myth in a pejorative sense. I mean, myth is something that is powerful and can be ennobling and inspiring. But if that foundation stone starts to kind of be, you know, you start to shift it, you tug at it, you kind of question it. Is that improving Americans' understandings of their past and therefore opening up new opportunities for kind of making a better state? Or is it by damaging the kind of the origin myth, are you damaging the coherence and the fabric of the American Republic as it exists now? I mean,

that's a massive question, but it is one that seems to shadow a lot of the debate in contemporary America about the American Revolution. There's a lot of deep discomfort in the contemporary United States with a story of the national origins, which is built around great men and great white men, and great white men, many of whom were the owners, claimed to be the owners of other human beings. Among whom was Washington himself and Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. And James Madison, who was the principal author of the Constitution. And Patrick Henry, who said, give me liberty or give me death. There's deep discomfort about that. And you can understand why. I mean, you can understand why, can't you? And in a way, the remarkable thing is that it's taken until this point in the 21st

century for that kind of critique to have the popular purchase that it has now. And I think you mentioned in a previous episode, the New York Times 1619 project and the fundamental value of the 1619 project is to challenge that old framing in a very direct way. And so it's directly and deliberately replacing 1776 with 1619, the date at which unfree black people were landed in Virginia, and saying that that is the real origin moment of the United States rather than 1776. Of course, they're both still operating within the same frame, which is that there has to be a moment of origin. And in both cases, that 1776 or 1619 were in some teleological sense leading towards the creation of something called

the United States. So last question, Adam, for you, because you have been, I should say, for those listeners who've listened to this over two weeks, you've been listening to this over two weeks, but Adam has been doing this over basically the course of four hours in one go. Well, so have you two. I haven't been dubbed in. We've just been folding up the questions to you. It's not like Megan and Harry's podcast. We're there with you.

We don't do the questions separately. So Adam, where does the story of the American Revolution go from here? Because of course, it's so contested at the moment. People argue about precisely these things that you've been talking about. But as you look forward, how do you think people will go? I mean, do you think the patriotic narrative that we see now when we go to Boston, we do the Freedom Trail, or you go to Mount Vernon, or you walk around Washington, D.C., and you see all the sites. Do you think that will effectively survive? It's challenged in the New York Times and in the Academy, but effectively, it's too rooted now in the American imagination. Or do you think there will be more changes to come in the 21st century?

I don't know. But I think that if the American Republic is going to survive in something like its present form, and of course, it is the oldest continuous, and it's an incredibly old country, the United States, the world's oldest codified constitution. If it's going to continue, then it needs its origin myth. The origin myth has always evolved. It's never a static thing. And there should be a way, and there is a way, of telling the story of the American Revolution and the founding of the Republic and those ringing principles of the Declaration of Independence and the value of republicanism and the commitment to popular participation in politics and openness and the commitment to being an asylum for mankind and all of these things, there should be a way of telling that story in a way that is more inclusive than has been the case over most of the last two centuries. And the reason why I think the 1619 Project has been so challenging to some of my academic colleagues of an older generation

is because of their fear that by changing the frame so dramatically to focus on the question of race and slavery, then everything else will go. And there are certainly academic colleagues of mine in the United States on the left, and generally of a younger generation who want to do that, who want to throw out the whole concept of the nation state and who see the United States as fundamentally corrupted and can't imagine any true emancipation within the context of the polity that was created in 1776 or 1787. There are those people. And from the point of view of us in Britain, one of the weird corollaries of this narrative that basically the American colonists

in the War of Independence were fighting to keep slavery is to cause the British Empire rather implausibly as an agent of abolitionism, which in due course, of course, it does become, but not at this point, right? I mean, it doesn't get British imperialism off the hook to say that actually they were the goodies in this, because that's clearly not true. There are insofar as the original 1619 articles suggested that defense of slavery was a principal reason for the American Revolution, and that there was

a deep anxiety on the part of American slaveholders that the British Empire was turning to anti-slavery, that is a great exaggeration. I mean, as we discussed, it was certainly true in the Carolinas and Virginia that plenty of slaveholders were terrified at the prospect of the British using enslaved people against them. It is not true, generally speaking, to say the American Revolution was fought in defense of slavery. There are people who directly make the connection between the secession of the 13 American colonies in the 1770s and the secession of the southern states in 1861. That is hugely overdrawn, in my opinion, not least because while in the 1860s, there was a big anti-slavery movement in the northern states, and there were genuine reasons for southern slaveholders to think that their security, their slave property would be undermined within the union.

That just wasn't true to anything like the same degree in the 1770s. There was an anti-slavery movement in Britain. There was an anti-slavery movement in Philadelphia and in New England. It was not one that was going to overwhelm the slaveholders' security had they remained within the British Empire. What threatened their slave property was participating in rebellion. Okay. Adam, we've worked you hard enough, I think. That has been a tremendous performance. Tom, I think a tour de force is the time-honoured expression, isn't it? Yes, I would say a Washingtonian campaign.

A Washingtonian campaign. You were skulking in Valley Forge. That's right. And not with your own teeth. So if you've enjoyed Adam's performance and you haven't already heard him, Adam also did four terrific episodes for us about the American Civil War this time last year, which you can find on our various channels. Adam, you have performed.

I think you now hold the record, actually, for the most appearances on the rest of this show. What an honour. What an honour. Well, I don't know whether all your academic colleagues would consider it an honour. So don't advertise it to them. But also, Dominic, we must mention Adam's own podcast. We must. The Last Best Hope.

The Last Best Hope. The Last Best Hope. On which, on which in a recent, if listeners go to The Last Best Hope, they will hear another friend of this podcast, Dan Jackson, explaining how Geordies shaped Southern American culture. You would stun me.

So basically everything in America, it's all about Geordies. It's all about Geordies. Who'd have thought that Dan would come up with that? So Adam, thank you very much. Thank you to everybody for listening and we will see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community,

please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.