Summary of Joseph J. Ellis's The Cause

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #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.