Summary Of Revolutionary Summer By Joseph J. Ellis

Katherine Senechal

Professor Infranco

History 110

27 January 2016

Revolutionary Summer

Revolutionary Summer by Joseph J. Ellis begins in the spring of 1776, a year into the fighting between Britain and the colonies. The battle at Bunker Hill had resulted in the death of more than 1,000 British soldiers and American deaths in the hundreds. After the British raided several New England towns, American soldiers led by Benedict Arnold trudged through the wilderness of Maine in winter, “suffered a crushing defeating in the attempt to capture the British stronghold at Quebec” (Ellis, 2013, p.4). The leader of the radical party in the Continental Congress was John Adams. Many of his colleagues found him obnoxious. Adams did not mind this as he believed

“The martyr was Joseph Warren, a local physician who was marked as a rising star in Boston politics and who also just happened to be the doctor for the Adams family” (Ellis, 2013, p.30). The hero of the revolution was George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army. When independence was officially declared, Washington received a letter from the civilian head of the government along with the Declaration. “He ordered it read aloud to all the troops after dinner that evening on the New York City Commons and on several brigade parade grounds” (Ellis, 2013,

Near the end of the book he includes a quote from Joseph Plumb Martin that says “It has been said by some… that the Revolutionary army was needless… But I still insist that they would not have answered the end so well as regular soldiers, who were there, and there obligated to be” (Ellis, 2013, p.213). All parts of the Confederation - the Continental Army, the Militia, and the Congress – were important factors in this war for independence. “The strategic center of the rebellion was not a place – not New York, Philadelphia, not the Hudson corridor – but the Continental Army itself” (Ellis, 2013, p.208). Though not everyone thought the Continental Army was a good idea in forming this new nation. “The very idea of a ‘standing army’ struck most members of the Continental Congress and the state legislatures as a highly dangerous threat to republican principles” (Ellis, 2013, p.32). There were other problems in this infant nation that were yet to be addressed such “the slavery question, even though most delegates were fully aware that it violated the principles they claimed to be fighting for” (Ellis, 2013, p.xix). Even though the states had much work still to do after winning their independence, the new United States was “the land of opportunity, where credentials mattered less than demonstrated ability” (Ellis, 2013, p.39). This illustrates the motto I learned the first time I learned about the