Summary of Joseph J. Ellis's The Cause

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The American Revolution was a highly compressed historical moment that resulted in the independence of the United States. The British called it the American rebellion, an accurate description of the eight-year war fought by former British colonists who sought to secede from the British Empire.

#2 The American side of the story requires a different kind of movement from the top to the bottom of the social scale to grasp the reasons the American resistance was so intractable. The British side of the story requires several trips across the Atlantic to understand the reasons why the government made the biggest blunder in the history of British statecraft.

#3 There are some ugly moments in this story that will require a revision of our prim and proper picture of eighteenth-century warfare as a polite exchange of muskets between two perfectly aligned rows of statuesque soldiers.

#4 We must avoid the presentistic fallacy, in which we assume that the revolutionary generation is a fixed object against which we do our politically correct isometric exercises. We must also be capable of thinking paradoxically.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669390633

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Insights on Joseph J. Ellis's The Cause

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The American Revolution was a highly compressed historical moment that resulted in the independence of the United States. The British called it the American rebellion, an accurate description of the eight-year war fought by former British colonists who sought to secede from the British Empire.

#2

The American side of the story requires a different kind of movement from the top to the bottom of the social scale to grasp the reasons the American resistance was so intractable. The British side of the story requires several trips across the Atlantic to understand the reasons why the government made the biggest blunder in the history of British statecraft.

#3

There are some ugly moments in this story that will require a revision of our prim and proper picture of eighteenth-century warfare as a polite exchange of muskets between two perfectly aligned rows of statuesque soldiers.

#4

We must avoid the presentistic fallacy, in which we assume that the revolutionary generation is a fixed object against which we do our politically correct isometric exercises. We must also be capable of thinking paradoxically.

#5

Benjamin Franklin made a shocking prediction about the future of America in 1751. He believed that the population of the British colonies in North America was doubling every twenty to twenty-five years, a rate over twice as fast as the population of England.

#6

The American Revolution was the result of the British Empire expanding into North America, and the resulting conflict with the French. The Treaty of Paris in 1763, which marked the end of the French and Indian War, laid the foundation for the first British Empire.

#7

The British felt a sense of both glory and dread as they entered a new chapter in their history. The most experienced and informed British student of American colonial policy, Thomas Pownall, sensed a dramatic shift in the atmosphere.

#8

The same sort of ill-defined apprehension came from an anonymous writer who called himself Cato and spoke for ordinary inhabitants of England. He asked, What have we done. As far as he could tell, Britain had acquired new jewels in the Gulf of Florida to the North Pole.

#9

The British government had a policy of complacent neglect towards the American colonies for the past century, but this changed in 1764 when Francis Bernard wrote a book called Principles of Law and Polity Applied to the Government of the British Colonies in America.

#10

The first manifestation of a new imperial policy came not from Parliament, but from King George III. He recognized the Treaty of Paris as an opportunity to rescue the British monarchy from what had become a murky symbolic significance.

#11

The Parliament passed three laws in 1764, 1765, and 1767 that significantly changed Britain’s colonial policy: the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts. The ministries of George Grenville and Charles Townshend justified the legislation in financial terms, as responses to the economic problems generated by the Seven Years’ War.

#12

The British government, led by the King-in-Parliament, had always claimed that Parliament had the power to do anything that was not naturally impossible. This was the source of its governing power, and it could do everything that was not naturally impossible.

#13

Blackstone’s Commentaries, which were published just as the Stamp Act was passed, provided a legal rationale for Parliament’s authority over the American colonies.

#14

Adams’s Puritan ancestors had planted, cultivated, and institutionalized values that stimulated the common people to aspire to independence and to attempt to limit the power of the great.

#15

The Adams analysis had major implications for the ongoing constitutional argument about Parliament’s imperial agenda. It suggested that any projection of parliamentary power claiming to be absolute was the imminent arrival of despotism.

#16

The British fear that all the American colonists were leaning toward independence was just as irrational as the American colonists’ fear that the British were trying to enslave them. The defining issue was power, not money.

#17

The British ministry began to adopt a new policy toward its American colonies, which was to subject them to more stringent control. The American colonists needed to adjust their new role as second-class British subjects.

#18

There have been four schools of thought about the American Revolution, and they all reflect the opinions of their own historical waters. They are the Progressive, Imperial, Neo-Whig, and Neo-Beardian schools.

#19

The most prominent feature at the top-down level is the remarkably consistent American constitutional argument that emerged in response to Parliament’s imperial initiative. The major players were: John Adams and James Otis in Massachusetts, Stephen Hopkins in Rhode Island, Daniel Dulany in Maryland, Richard Bland in Virginia, and John Dickinson in Pennsylvania.

#20

The American argument was that taxes should not be imposed on the colonies without their consent, as represented by their colonial legislatures.

#21

The American colonies had the highest literacy rate in the world in 1770, which allowed the spread of ideas on a virtual highway.

#22

The American boycott of tea was successful, and the British government responded by passing the Tea Act in 1773. The act allowed the company to sell tea in the American colonies at a discount, which was seen as a treasonous move by the American public.

#23

The British ministry responded to the Tea Party with shock, outrage, and finally catharsis.

#24

In his message to Parliament, King George III