1776 Debunked

The Settler Revolt and the Tradition of Counterrevolution in the United States

Reshaping Historical Narratives

Americans of all political backgrounds, including so-called Communists, SocDems, Liberals, and Conservatives, have a severely distorted view of the American Revolution and the year 1776. The common belief holds that the American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies organized against the “oppressive British” and declared independence, proclaiming liberty for a new nation. Our national lore describes how a people would not be subjugated to “taxation without representation”.

Looking back on these mythologies can be, at times, a little humorous. The American Revolution has permeated all spheres of American life, even from early childhood. Traditional American mythology has obfuscated the realities of Colonial America and the revolt that spawned from the Thirteen Colonies. To address this, we propose a different interpretation and analysis of 1776, aiming to challenge popular narratives and accounts of the so-called American “Revolution”. We argue that the American Revolution was nothing more than a Settler revolt and a counterrevolutionary consolidation of White Supremacy and systemic land theft. This foundation has persisted throughout American history, which we will discuss in the conclusion.

Establishing the full scope of our argument is challenging because most American historical accounts of 1776 are heavily biased and, overall, incorrect. This is why making a distinction is essential, as many Americans are utterly convinced that 1776 was a progressive effort to end colonialism and establish a foundation of liberty and freedom. We maintain that 1776 was the first example of many counterrevolutions in the United States, aimed at consolidating specific power structures. The American Revolution, as we will demonstrate, sought to maintain chattel slavery and expand American borders.

National Mythologies and the Founding Fathers

Settler colonies have contained many contradictions from their inception, which the United States exemplifies. Nations need stories, many of which are built by the hands and will of the people. Settler states, however, are founded upon expropriation and extermination carried out by the incoming settlers. They come from outside and plant their roots, bringing with them the social formations and expectations of the old society. Scholars of settler colonialism maintain that the old society is replicated on stolen land to ease the bodies and minds of the settlers, as they are incredibly insecure. For this reason, paranoia is noticeable among settler societies because their settlement is contingent upon lies and dispossesion. However, this paranoia can be alleviated through myths and shared ideology, which fill the void within the settler.

In the case of the American Revolution, we are instructed from an early age that the colonists of America wanted freedom and liberty without much context. Colonists believed Britain had become too tyrannical and needed to be stopped through force to make freedom ring. Their victory in the war is a cause for celebration every year. We celebrate 1776 on July 4th, grilling burgers and hanging out by the pool. For many of us, July 4th is just a day off from work and an excuse to go to the beach. We don’t often ponder why July 4th is so important to Americans. But this settler holiday is essential to the myth-narrative of the United States. Recently, this writer attended a baseball game and felt a little disgusted when the national anthem played. An entire stadium standing up, hats and hands over hearts, chanting words that represented violence. The national anthem and July 4th are integral to the 1776 myth-narrative because they create a common ideology.

It is usually understood that the Founding Fathers represented the Thirteen Colonies and resisted Britain’s extreme measures. Some of which took the form of burdensome taxes and Royal Military escalation. However, we often hear these tales in isolation, as if the Americans and British were the only people present on the continent. To begin our study, we first attempt to fill in those educational gaps by rooting the conversation in the colonial context. Yes, Britain and its colonists had growing tensions, but what else was going on contemporaneously? We know that Britain had begun escalating its military presence, but why? Conveniently, slaves and Native Americans are always left out of the story of 1776. To contrast with this understanding, the political and social presence of both groups will be discussed, as their stories carry significant weight. Analyzing the colonial character of America and its influence on the settler Revolt of 1776 will conclude this study, aiming to challenge the common American perspective on the American Revolution.

The Colonial Situation

Apart from the British and the Americans, the French, Spanish, Native Americans, and African Slaves were all present in North America. Inter-colonial conflict and resistance from the Native Americans and African slaves created a tense situation with many shifting variables. Setting the historical stage will help us understand how, where, when, and why the American settler revolt developed the way it did—by 1776, much had transpired across the continent. As we all know, the mass importation and enslavement of Africans to North America had been occurring for hundreds of years at that point. Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese, the institution of chattel slavery became a burgeoning business. Slaves were imported, exported, and utilized as free labor and property, much to the advantage of the Europeans. Native Americans, too, had been subjected to dispossession, disease, enslavement, and forced conversion for hundreds of years. If we begin with this material understanding of the colonial setting, it will establish the interests of both parties: the colonized and the colonizer.

In North America, three colonial powers vied for supremacy: the British, the French, and the Spanish. This triad created a powder keg situation both internally in the colonies and externally in their respective Metropoles. While the importation of slaves was initially dominant in the Caribbean, the mainland became a battleground in the decades before the revolution. South Carolina, in particular, had a population that consisted of 60% African slaves in the years leading up to 1776 [1]. Reliance on the slave trade created a power struggle between the three colonial powers and their “internal enemies”: slaves and Indians. But the colonial powers wielded this risky situation to their advantage, deciding when and when not to arm African slaves.

Britain began to see value in negotiating with Africans and maintained diplomatic relationships with the Maroons (runaway slave settlements) in Jamaica as early as the 1730s. Similar to the British, the Spanish kept an armed African force in St. Augustine to strengthen their presence on the continent and deter their adversaries. Tales from St. Augustine told of Africans collecting British scalps for cash, creating a sense of fear that a slave revolt would break out. As another countermeasure, the Georgia colony was intentionally established as a bloc against Spanish Florida, with the British enlisting the assistance of armed Africans themselves [2]. Accumulation of slaves on the mainland and inter-colonial rivalry guaranteed future rupture in the form of slave resistance and war. Two specific events —the Stono Rebellion and the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War) — exemplify this rupture, bringing heavy political costs and bloodshed.

The Stono Rebellion

African and Native Resistance had been ongoing on the continent from the very first implantation of European settlers. A dialectical relationship emerged in which the settlers' way of life depended on mass slavery and its trade, as well as land expropriation and the extermination of the Indians. Naturally, resistance and revolt became a constant headache for the European colonists: power brokers and settlers alike. While many slave insurrections occurred during the colonial era, one in particular is significant for our analysis.

The Stono Rebellion of 1739 wrought destruction upon South Carolinian settlers as tensions with Spain flared up. In September, a group of mostly Angolan slaves resisted their enslavement, killed twenty-nine settlers, and marched south towards Florida. They were reported to be “dancing, singing, and beating drums to draw more Negroes to them”, showing us a little taste of what organizing looked like in 18th-century slaver America [3]. As news of the revolt spread to Carolinian settlers, it became evident that perhaps tensions with Spain and the revolt were connected.

Leading up to the revolt, both Spain and Britain were tireless in their efforts to thwart each other’s presence on the continent. Neither power had garnered enough strength to give the other respective colony the final boot. Following the Africans’ rebellion, settlers in the Carolinas began to believe that only harsher oppression of their slaves would quell all resistance, contrasting with some of London’s steps towards abolition. The Spanish were eager to exploit these English ruptures, inviting slaves into St. Augustine and procuring weapons for them in exchange for their freedom [4]. Spaniards were not directly responsible for the Stono Revolt, but they did use the event to their advantage.

Their rivals, the English, were in a state of total social and political disarray. Settlers began to worry that Stono would encourage future insurrections, igniting hatred of Africans as the common enemy. As English colonial authorities contemplated an attack on St. Augustine, their settler subjects even appealed to the Crown for help. An untimely culmination of disease, inter-colonial tensions, and now, slave insurrection brought into question the fragility of the colonial arrangement and its emphasis on mass enslavement [5]. Here, we can identify that these ruptures affected settler sentiments and Britain’s ability to control the colonial situation. Armed conflict with Spain on one end of the continent was quickly followed by tensions between the French and British on the other end, ultimately resulting in all-out war between the three powers.

The French and Indian War and Its Consequences (Seven Years’ War)

Britain was flanked on all sides by its colonial rivals and its internal threats, slaves and Indians, which weighed heavily upon the settlers. Witnessing firsthand a rebellion of enormous political and social magnitude caused an uproar among the settlers, posing yet another challenge for the British. While the Stono Rebellion was a notable example of internal threats, the French and Indian War was significant due to its profound political and military consequences.

Britain, France, and Spain engaged in several military conflicts during the colonial era, but none had a greater impact than the French and Indian War. We are less interested in the order of battle of the war than in its sociopolitical repercussions. The British benefited greatly from the conflict, removing the French from Quebec and the Spanish from both Florida and, briefly, Cuba. Britain assumed the top position amongst the colonial powers to the ire of all involved parties, including its colonist settlers [6]. Naturally, Britain would need to pay for the war and maintain an even larger geographical hegemony, which necessarily involved its military prowess and economic aptitude.

Importing African slaves into major ports, like Philadelphia and New York, became emphasized as London attempted to cut competitors out of the slave trade. Of course, this raised questions of inevitable slave revolts and resistance within the colonies. As European indentured servitude diminished, African enslavement grew egregiously, which increasingly set the British and the American settlers against each other [7]. British considerations of abolition began to stir while the colonists enjoyed a larger share of the profits from the slave trade, ultimately creating an economic and political rift between the two. Spain and France, whilst largely ousted from the continent, waited for opportunities to exploit the situation.

While removing the Spanish and French from the continent provided Britain with a military and political boon, the war could not assuage the colonial thirst for profit. Slave traders in the colonies grew furious as coveted slaves from West Africa were now closed off to them, due to new London-dominated markets. How could Britain contain its colonies if its most crucial class grew agitated? Horrified by the slave trade’s new costs and not its barbarities, settlers became worried that hefty imposts would empty their pockets. This led some traders back towards the French and Spanish slave markets, where they soaked up profits by smuggling [8]. A serious challenge to Britain’s hegemony in shipping now existed, which, of course, would complicate the political landscape as well.

Attempting to pay for its costly, yet victorious war, while covering market pitfalls, would surely lead to one alternative: taxes. What American textbooks usually don’t let on is that while the British did impose taxes on the colonies, it was not because of some deep-seated resentment, nor did it constitute an oppressive apparatus. Levying the American Duties Act, also known as the Sugar Act, in 1764 was not an entirely new practice. Taxes on molasses of a similar character had been imposed as early as the 1730s, yet without widespread outrage. Paying for imposts and collections on taxes proved to be a moral and political wrong for the settlers, but they shed no tears for their African slaves. The Stamp Act of 1765 heightened tensions because it imposed a direct tax on individuals using paper products, rather than regulating the market, as the Sugar Act had done [9]. While the act was repealed the following year, Britain was determined to wrest political control from the colonists, enacting a flurry of successive laws.

Following the economic acts, Britain sought to flex its military and political muscle through increasingly assertive laws. The Declaratory Act established Britain’s complete legal control over its colonies, though it was largely ignored. As the Seven Years’ War drew to a close, British military leaders sought to station troops in key cities to quell unrest and reassert their authority, culminating in the Quartering Act of 1765. However, the Quartering Act was initially rejected by the Colony of New York, with other colonies soon following, which angered the British with such objections [10]. But these measures could not surpass the most significant offense by the British, which would become the Quebec Act of 1774, considered one of the “Intolerable” Acts.

The act liquidated all claims to the speculators north of the Ohio River, including those of George Washington, in a move that seriously threatened the voracity of westward expansion and land theft. Settlers had hoped new territories would bring new profits, but they were now left with limited options. Multiple colonies, including New York, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, coveted lands once owned by the French and would soon turn their anger against the British [11].

The Class Character of Colonial America

What we have examined thus far establishes that a growing rift between the Crown and its colonies was growing in the years leading up to the Revolt, contingent upon the slave trade and its fruits, and, of course, land theft. Settlers were now subject to closed markets, accompanied by new taxes and a halt to land expansion, which set off the powder keg that was Colonial America. The Settler Revolt of 1776, as we will examine, was bound up with burgeoning contradictions, both internal and external. Britain could not assuage its settlers through economic or military presence, nor could it undo the tension, all while rivaling powers escalated. What option remained, of course, was civil conflict between the British and the agitated settlers, raising questions about who exactly these settlers were.

Contrary to popular belief, the American colonists were quite wealthy and, in fact, better off than the British proletariat and peasantry, as we will see. Sticking out like a sore thumb is the idea that Americans revolted simply due to limited legal rights, obscuring a class analysis of the Thirteen Colonies. American colonists shared the dual advantage of land and labor through westward expansion, at the expense of the Indians, and chattel slavery, to the detriment of the Africans:

But the most important forces for expansion were the increase in land available per man — a result of the westward movement — and the increase in the number of slaves which added to labor and capital [12].

There is a common misconception, especially among MAGA Communists (ACP types), that American settlers were a landed feudal peasantry before the Revolution. Robert Middlekauff’s neutral and tame work, The Glorious Cause, suggests otherwise, and without a Marxist interpretation, can provide us with an accurate class analysis. The idea that American settlers were resisting an oppressive feudal apparatus is laughable at best. As Middlekauff points out, the dual structure of mass enslavement and westward expansion increased labor and capital, revealing the interests of the colonists.

The Thirteen Colonies were founded on genocide, dispossession, and slavery, an undeniable fact that drove a political and economic wedge between the colonies and the Metropole. The Colonist population (and as a result, economic expansion) grew rapidly in the years preceding the Revolution, especially in or around port cities [13]. American settlers held control over a growing market mainly based on the flesh trade and cash crops like tobacco or cotton, which was very different from the British working class.

Access to the booming economy was enjoyed by colonial settlers and not their British counterparts, challenging popular narratives that American colonists were an oppressed body.

Besides flux they were characterized by a tendency toward the stratification of classes. At one end of society, upper classes gradually separated themselves in wealth and styles of life from everyone else. At the other end, lower classes, small in numbers but genuinely impoverished, made their apperance in the cities. The largest single group of colonials belonged to a middle group of farmers who owned and cultivated their own land [14].

This provides a clearer picture of class dynamics in colonial America: a thriving upper class, a small urban proletariat, and a burgeoning petite bourgeoisie with access to land and labor in the form of slaves and speculation. Large landowners and ruling families emerged in Colonial America, accumulating wealth that rivaled that of British landowning families [15]. While a form of feudalism did appear, it was particular to specific regions and did not constitute the whole of the economy in colonial America. In particular, the Hudson Valley of New York, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina were the wealthiest areas of the booming landed class, many of whom first settled in America under charters and land patents that helped establish their generational wealth. Initially, these charters had no value, but at the turn of the 18th century, landowning families like the Penns and Calverts (a family George Washington married into) profited greatly as the charters began to take effect [16].

While the urban poor did exist in American cities, they also possessed some degree of access and autonomy that differed from that of their British counterparts. They, too, did not suffer the burden of being born into slavery, nor were they subject to land thievery and genocide. Landowners possessed enormous wealth, which attracted tenants from lower social classes to work on large estates, such as those in the Hudson Valley. However, these tenants did not constitute a permanently landed peasantry, like those in England, again establishing that colonists, even the impoverished, existed in a material reality that greatly benefited them. Landowners offered leases without the burden of rent for the first few years, inviting tenants to join them in their quest for profit. Seizing this opportunity, colonial tenants signed onto leases aspiring to become freeholders themselves and join the ranks of the elite. Tenants quickly began to accumulate wealth in the years leading up to the Revolution, which raises questions about whom the Revolution benefited [17].

Thus far, we have established several key points regarding the dynamics of class in colonial America before the Settler Revolt of 1776. Contrary to popular understandings of 1776, American colonists enjoyed excellent access to a growing economy rooted in slavery and landed interests. Some scholars, such as Alice Hanson Jones, have dedicated their studies to analyzing the colonial economy and the wealth it generated before the Revolt. Jones presents a series of graphs, charts, and statistics extracted from colonial records that show, in some cases, colonial wealth doubling that of the British working class [18]. That the American colonial class was largely made up of middling landowners and small producers, whose land and labor were extracted rather than created, raises the question of whose interests the Revolt ultimately served. In the final stretch of our analysis, we will conclude our argument by demonstrating the political power of the Colonists and how they were victorious in the American Settler Revolt of 1776.

Colonial Power and De Facto Independence

American colonists enjoyed political authority and proximity to power structures, unlike their British counterparts. Interestingly, every colony of the original thirteen had political bodies that rooted power in land, cementing the interests of the wealthy and influential landowning class in colonial America. The British working class, on the other hand, did not and could not have the political means to challenge the Crown, making the colonists appear that much more powerful. Wealthy landowners like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson positioned themselves at the forefront of the conflict against the British, hoping to expand their power and wealth. So was the American Revolution a popular revolt, or was it a counterrevolution that concentrated wealth and power into the hands of a few wealthy figureheads?

When the British issued the Declaratory Act in 1766, it was largely ignored by the colonists' political bodies, showing that they did not have to submit to British authority and could organize effectively against it, contrasting again with the British working class [19]. The common belief is that the American colonists faced political and economic exploitation that compelled them to oppose the British forcefully. However, a closer look at the Colonial administration suggests otherwise and points to a rigid power structure mainly based on landed wealth and economic speculation. Differing interests and personalities within the Colonial assemblies all centered around one goal: profit. Economic fixers or the “Lord Boodles” of America, as Middlekauff calls them, gained power through land speculation and economic contracts within these assemblies [20]. Patronage became a vital part of colonial governing bodies, and access to those opportunities was essential for rising politicians. In contrast, the typical view of colonial America emphasizes the colonists' perceived powerlessness. Furthermore, we are rarely taught about the political or economic interests of those within the power structure. Filling in these gaps is crucial because we are challenging the very foundation of the United States. It has always been rooted in profit, theft, exploitation, and murder.

As we’ve already examined, the Americans were growing increasingly anxious that Britain’s new economic measures meant doom for their burgeoning profits. How could our Lord Boodles ward off British military and economic might if they were, supposedly, powerless? With landed wealth so concentrated in various political bodies, it was not difficult for them to organize and propose a political response. While the colonies sought to counter all British duties, the Stamp Act in particular was the most egregious, as we explained in the last section. The Virginia House of Burgesses became the first colonial body to take serious political action, declaring that taxation had to be regulated by Virginians themselves [21].

The issue was not taxation in general, but specifically British taxation. American colonists wanted control over their economy, bound in land speculation, and cultivated by African slaves; no initial requests reflected demands for “liberty and freedom”. By the end of 1765, nine of the thirteen colonies followed Virginia in issuing similar declarations of economic independence [22]. In most colonial situations, these declarations would be seen as acts of de facto independence from Britain, but the American colonists did not declare official independence for another eleven years. The Crown had partly acquiesced to their American subjects on economic issues, hoping they would not break away from the Metropole. The Stamp Act was defeated, and the colonists continued to push their political advantage.

Loyalists, Patriots & The Settler Revolt

We have reached the final stage of our analysis, where we will discuss the actual events of 1776 and their repercussions. So far, we have argued and established several key points about the events leading up to the Revolt and their political significance. The American colonist class was largely made up of slavers, speculators, and middle-class types, all aiming to profit from land theft and African slavery. The consolidation of power through landowning began within the colonial assemblies, revealing who “freedom” truly benefited. In reality, the colonists wanted and demanded economic independence from Britain, not just a vague call for freedom and liberty. Virginia showed that de facto independence could be declared based on economic control, allowing them to tax their own citizens without British interference. We now turn to the War of 1776 between Britain and her American subjects, the colonists, and a military conflict that we must analyze to build our case.

Once again, we encounter conflict with the prevailing narrative. 1776 is typically portrayed as a popular revolt of American settlers against their British overlords, jockeying for national independence. We again thank Robert Middlekauff for presenting a plethora of counternarratives in his work The Glorious Cause. Military confrontation began in April 1775 between British regulars and the Lexington Militia of Massachusetts Colony [23]. In an exchange of fire, both British and American troops were wounded and killed, beginning the Settler Revolt. Such a short battle between the two forces demonstrated the contradictions of such a conflict, as Middlekauff establishes:

Of course the war would often resemble many of the eighteenth century, with conventional armies facing one another using well-known tactics. But it was different at times in the enlistment of civilian populations and the discard of the usual methods of battle. It never became an entirely civilian war, a people-in-revolt against an army [24].

Both logistical and financial concerns posed problems for the American side. George Washington, the foremost American military leader, became increasingly frustrated with the colonists' lack of discipline and will to carry out the war. His military concepts were often drafted from European practice, which emphasized discipline and order. The colonists, as Washington saw, did not have the same prowess or capability as their European counterparts:

Under arms his fellow Virginians resembled those in civilian life—stubborn, undisciplined, and lacking in public spirit…‘Discipline is the soul of an army’, the young Washington wrote in 1757, and now in 1775, he had to find a way to convert what he considered to be the rabble around Boston into an army [25].

As young students, we were taught that George Washington was the most righteous and upright American, with examples including his admission of a lie. This paints Washington as a virtuous national hero with ambitions that resembled those of a nation. Yet despite these depictions, Washington viewed the Colonists as rabble with “an unaccountable kind of stupidity in the lower class of these people” [26]. Upon arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts Washington found himself up against a wall. Believing he would need at least 20,000 men for an effective siege on British positions, he found that only 16,000 men had enlisted, with roughly over 2,000 unprepared for duty [27]. These scant numbers and signs of poor administration and organization reflected Washington’s presuppositions that Americans were unfit and poorly prepared.

Even in September 1776, two months after Independence from Britain was declared, Washington continued to struggle with military matters, particularly with the militia. Many Americans do not realize that the Settler Revolt was primarily carried out by paid militiamen serving short enlistments. Thus, as Middlekauff suggested previously, this was not a war of a “people-in-revolt”, unlike other revolutions, such as those in Vietnam, Cuba, or Tsarist Russia. The War of 1776 began for political and economic reasons and was conducted by those who aimed to benefit from the conflict, leaders and militiamen alike. Routed by British forces in New York, Washington could hardly keep his men together and almost suffered a total defeat just one year into the conflict. Nor could he understand why his troops were so undisciplined, so ill-prepared, and so lacking in fortitude [28].

Why did his young troops repeatedly fail to stand and fight? Washington’s explanation—one which made him feel both despair and pride—was that they were free men. Their freedom brought them to revolution and, paradoxically, made them incapable of fighting it well. The freedom Washington saw left its mark on character: yes, the Americans were free—a condition which made them impatient of restraint and discipline. And discipline was the heart of an army. It could be achieved only through long training, and a long period of training entailed long enlistments [29].

Indeed, as Middlekauff contends, the issues of organization and preparedness were tied to the material reality faced by the Thirteen Colonies. Largely unburdened by wage labor, debt peonage, or chattel slavery, White Colonists waged war not because they were under the thumb of oppression, but because they wanted to control the reins of oppression. Freedom for Americans did not resemble national unity or character, but rather the ability to control the means of production to enable systemic structures of domination and economic consolidation. We turn again to Gerald Horne for a look at the Black Loyalists.

Faulty discipline, coupled with logistical and financial issues, burdened Washington’s armies and brought forth the contradictions of the Settler Revolt. The colonies’ material conditions and class character did not produce a genuine movement for national liberation, not because it did not, but because it could not. Colonial America was not composed of proletarians nor peasantry - it consisted of a thrifty class of slavers and landowners. Of course, we cannot forget the hundreds of thousands of African slaves utilized to accumulate and amass wealth. It is not a shocking fact that more slaves served alongside the Red Coats than did the Americans.

In 1774, future President James Madison had noted a booming phenomenon of African slaves arranging private meetings with British soldiers. This trend was not new, as slaves in Boston had already begun organizing to secure freedom from the British rather than the Americans [30]. Our earlier conversations on settlers’ fears of demographic imbalance and potential slave revolt come to light here. Concerns centered around land acquisition and slavery were the driving force for the settler class. However, the British opposed these goals as they repeatedly attempted to strangulate illegal shipping and westward expansion. Lord Dunmore, the royal Governor of Virginia, embodied this notion by resisting settler expansion and issuing his infamous proclamation in November 1775. With British backing, Lord Dumore’s decree promised freedom to Africans if they armed themselves against the settlers. Declaring martial law and levying war against the traitorous Americans was bolstered by the settler kryptonite — African freedom [31]. Though the exact number of Africans that served alongside the British is not entirely known, estimates indicate that 20,000 slaves served with the Red Coats and only 5,000 in the Continental Army.

Conclusion and the Long Tradition of Counterrevolution

Thus concludes this rather long entry regarding 1776 and the settler revolt. However, this leaves us with one final point to touch upon. We contend that the American settler revolt was one of many counterrevolutions throughout American history. In this specific study, we meticulously reviewed the class character of Colonial America, its colonial situation, and the essential preceding events that led up to the settler revolt.

To maintain class power and institute structural violence, the United States has consistently engaged in counterrevolutions of a similar character. Many examples exist across U.S. history, such as the ruthless Indian Wars (genocide), the Palmer Raids, COINTELPRO, the war on drugs, and various onslaughts against organized labor. While counterrevolution has taken place in many capitalist states, few hold a candle to the United States. It is both the methodology and the persistence of these counterrevolutions that make the United States an exceptional case. While no strict definition exists, a counterrevolution is a concerted effort to either reverse the goals of a successful revolution or undermine a potential revolt or social unrest. In the case of 1776, Gerald Horne uses the term to demonstrate that the revolt was materially tied to the importance of land expropriation and chattel slavery. We can continue to trace these sporadic consolidations of power across some of the most critical moments in United States history.

In 1898, a murderous coup was carried out by armed White Supremacists that overthrew the Reconstruction-era fusion government in Wilmington, North Carolina. The events of this counterrevolution are discussed in extensive detail in David Zucchino’s book Wilmington’s Lie. During Reconstruction, Black Americans were gaining political legitimacy and agency for the first time —only to be squashed by White terrorists. Such a phenomenon can only be understood as a counterrevolution, an effort to undo strides towards social change. The counterrevolution was top-down as President Andrew Johnson defeated repeated measures to advance Reconstruction and maintain military occupation of the former Confederate states. Wilmington’s coup represents a state-approved effort to resist any threat to the established order, a phenomenon that has persisted across U.S. history.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this long study. We hope you took away new ideas and concepts that help touch upon the many contradictions of the birth of the United States. Future discussions on counterrevolutions and their persistence must be held to gain a complete understanding of the stubbornness of the United States as a political entity. Counterrevolutions, violence, and defeats stem from the prevailing mode of production and those who carefully position themselves to exploit it.

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Notes

1. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pg. 45

2. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 13-15

3. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 110-111

4. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 112-113

5. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 114-116

6. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 161-166

7. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 164-165

8. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 168-171

9. Borneman, The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America, pgs. 296-297

10. Borneman, The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America, pgs. 298-299

11. Borneman, The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America, pg. 301

12. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 38

13. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 36

14. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 38

15. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 38

16. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 39

17. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pgs. 40-42

18. Hanson Jones, Wealth of a Nation To Be: The American Colonies on The Eve of the Revolution, the whole book

19. Borneman, The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America, pg. 298

20. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pgs. 42-43

21. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 81

22. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 87

23. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pgs. 274-278

24. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 279

25. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 306

26. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 306

27. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 307

28. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pgs. 340-342

29. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, pg. 342

30. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pg. 214

31. Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance in the United States of America, pgs. 220-222

32. Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

Bibliography

1. Horne, Gerald. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York: New York University Press, 2016.

2. Borneman, Walter R. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.

3. Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

4. Jones, Alice Hanson. Wealth of a Nation To Be: The American Colonies on The Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

5. Zucchino, David. Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy. New York: Grove Press, 2021.