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Conversations with Tyler #217 · July 17, 2024 · 72m
Alan Taylor on Revolutionary Ironies and the Continental Civil War
Historian Alan Taylor reframes the American Revolution as a continental civil war rather than a simple independence movement. The revolution divided families, communities, and nations in ways the founding mythology obscures.
Canon
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Taylor argues that reading biographies of ordinary colonists — farmers, merchants, enslaved people, Native Americans — provides a more accurate picture of the Revolution than reading biographies of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams.
Highlights
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The founding mythology of American unity obscures the reality that the Revolution was a civil war
Taylor shows that roughly one-third of colonists supported independence, one-third were loyal to the Crown, and one-third tried to stay neutral. The 'united' colonies were deeply divided.