The Art of Manliness - Would You Have Been a Patriot or a Loyalist？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.720 when americans think back to the war of independence most are apt to feel that

00:00:15.020 had they lived back then they would have been patriots for sure in retrospect the decision

00:00:20.240 to rebel and get out from under the thumb of british rule seems inevitable yet only around

00:00:24.600 a third of colonists ever declare themselves as revolutionaries and even among the country's

00:00:28.940 founding fathers it wasn't always obvious if they would stay loyal to great britain or become rebels

00:00:33.480 right up until the signing of the declaration of independence as h.w brand's historian professor

00:00:39.760 and author of our first civil war explains the decision to align with the side of the loyalists

00:00:44.000 or the patriots was complex and not only had to do with the kind of policy issues we often think

00:00:48.520 about in regards to the war but also personal factors related to respect and ambition he talks

00:00:53.980 about how george washington and benjamin franklin were actually very unlikely patriots and what

00:00:58.280 ultimately got them to embrace the revolutionary cause and why franklin's son chose differently

00:01:02.380 and remained a loyalist we also discussed why john adams threw in his lot with the patriots

00:01:06.560 and why benedict arnold flip sides after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is

00:01:11.660 slash patriot

00:01:12.560 all right hw brands welcome back to the show delighted to be with you so we had you on last

00:01:36.640 time to talk about teddy roosevelt and how he was the last romantic brought you back on the podcast

00:01:41.980 to talk about another book our first civil war and in this book you try to answer the question

00:01:47.920 of what caused american colonists to forsake their mother country and take up arms against it

00:01:54.460 start off like do we know what percentage of americans were patriots versus loyalists

00:01:59.860 we don't nobody has taken public opinion polls in those days and i think for fairly understandable

00:02:06.340 reasons people they were reluctant often to raise their hand and say okay i'm a loyalist you know i'm

00:02:12.660 a i'm a patriot because they didn't know who was listening it often depended on whose army was in

00:02:18.660 control of a particular region philadelphia for example changed hands a couple of times during the

00:02:23.780 course of the revolutionary war and when the british were in philadelphia not surprisingly there seemed

00:02:29.080 to be a lot more loyalists around than when the continental army controlled philadelphia so

00:02:34.140 that's that's a way of saying no we don't really know however john adams who probably had as good a

00:02:41.740 sense of this as anybody estimated at the beginning of the fighting against britain probably a third of

00:02:47.660 the american population was whig that is patriot for independence a third was tory that is loyalist

00:02:55.140 in favor of continued connection to britain and a third was in the middle and that sounds about right

00:03:01.440 from just observation of the way things transpired over the next six and seven years

00:03:07.580 i'll point out that a principal objective of both sides in the fighting was to carve out that middle third

00:03:16.880 and to claim as much of it as possible for itself so the fighting in the american revolutionary war

00:03:23.520 was yeah in a very broad sense americans against the british but it was a lot more complicated than

00:03:31.880 that because it was the americans were only americans at the point when they declared independence

00:03:38.420 before that they were all british colonials and even in their way of thinking most of them were

00:03:45.380 massachusetts men or virginians or north carolinians so the whole question is you know who constitutes an

00:03:50.820 american but the point of the book and the reason i call it our first civil war is that the crucial

00:03:56.000 fighting the crucial conflict was american against american if those in favor of independence could win

00:04:03.880 the loyalty if they could win the hearts and minds as john adams put it if uh hearts and minds of most

00:04:11.520 americans then they could defeat the british when most people give an explanation of what caused the

00:04:17.100 american revolution what's the typical answer they give and uh how did your research uncover a more

00:04:22.820 nuanced answer to this question so when we learn about the american revolution in fifth grade or

00:04:29.500 whenever we first encounter it it's a matter of and this is perfectly understandable you're talking to

00:04:35.280 children young students that the americans and again they're speaking collectively because

00:04:41.440 they have to sort of make this clear in broad brush strokes the americans got fed up with oppressive laws

00:04:49.480 that the british had been passing and they said enough is enough we are going to make laws for ourselves we're

00:04:55.920 going to create our own country the british objected and a war broke out and the american side won and

00:05:02.900 hence the united states of america is born so that's if you have 15 seconds to describe the american

00:05:10.440 revolution that's a fair approximation but i wrote a book that takes a lot longer to 15 seconds to read

00:05:17.480 so i have opportunity to expand on that and figure out what i really want to do is i want to figure out

00:05:24.400 why certain people chose to become rebels and certain people chose to remain loyalists and to do this

00:05:34.540 i have to ask my readers implicitly to forget that they know how all this turned out because if you know how this turned out

00:05:45.580 if you know that george washington for example is going to go down in history as the father of his country

00:05:51.620 this the united states of america the victorious general then you kind of think well yeah it was sort of

00:05:56.860 inevitable of course he's going to do that but in fact i don't think there was any of course about it

00:06:01.880 because in george washington's case he's a rather unlikely revolutionary people who want to overturn

00:06:09.860 the status quo are usually people for whom the status quo is not working very well the status quo suited

00:06:16.780 george washington wonderfully well he's one of the wealthiest men in the american colonies he had pretty

00:06:22.320 much anything that anybody could ask for but still he becomes a revolutionary likewise benjamin franklin

00:06:30.000 benjamin franklin the british empire had made possible benjamin franklin's brilliant success he could not

00:06:38.040 have gone from rags to riches the way he did from obscurity to world fame and celebrity the way he did

00:06:46.760 in any other political entity at that time besides the british empire nonetheless he turns his back on

00:06:54.440 the british empire and tries to overthrow the british empire the british king as the king relates to the

00:07:01.040 american colonies so that's the thing that needs explaining and so i look at several people who become

00:07:07.880 revolutionaries that is patriots i look at several people who i have to be careful when i say this because i say

00:07:15.480 become loyalists the fact is they don't become loyalists they just remained loyalists when we have

00:07:24.320 our sort of first rough and ready approximation of the american revolutionary war we sort of assume that

00:07:30.260 the default setting for everybody in america is to be in favor of independence and it's the loyalists

00:07:36.860 that require explaining i think it's the other way around the loyalists simply kept doing what they had

00:07:42.720 been doing or to put it in another way george washington benjamin franklin and everybody else

00:07:48.700 of their era they were all born englishmen now in the case of washington and franklin they decided to

00:07:55.900 become americans to give their first loyalty to this new country people like william franklin benjamin

00:08:03.400 franklin's son people who remained loyalists they just kept doing what they were doing they didn't have to

00:08:11.380 make any big change so that's that's the sort of thing that i look into and i try to examine so why

00:08:17.520 this person and not that person why this person at this time and that person at that time what was going

00:08:22.460 on in their heads and you paraphrased what i really begin the book with and that is this fundamental

00:08:29.020 question of what causes a man to forsake his country and take arms against it that's the one i want to look

00:08:37.320 at it's a huge step for anybody to take when i've been talking about the book to my students to

00:08:43.240 other audiences i ask them to consider what they might do what would cause them to take a similar

00:08:52.160 step what would cause somebody some american today to say you know what i'm no longer in favor of the

00:08:57.700 united states of america i'm gonna overthrow this government and set up a new one i mean thankfully we

00:09:03.060 don't see that much we haven't seen it very often but it's something that occurred in the 1770s and so

00:09:09.360 the question is why i think you did a great job of really showing that these decisions they were

00:09:14.680 personal decisions oftentimes we think of why you rebel against the country there's going to be ideals

00:09:21.220 like these sort of abstract ideals of liberty and autonomy and whatever but there's also this very

00:09:25.420 personal thing going on and you explore like what happened in the lives of these individual men

00:09:30.560 to make them finally i'm gonna i'm gonna flip and so let's talk about some of these guys you spend a

00:09:36.080 lot of time talking about benjamin franklin and as you said he was one of the most famous men in all

00:09:40.960 the world and it was because of the british empire what was unique about franklin's transformation into a

00:09:47.220 patriot compared to some of these other founding fathers well in benjamin franklin's case the reversal

00:09:53.780 was about as extreme as one could imagine because a lot of people in america in the british colonies

00:10:02.260 in america before the revolutionary war they had rather tepid feelings if they had feelings at all

00:10:08.700 about the british government the british government was far away its edicts rested fairly lightly on the

00:10:15.460 shoulders of americans they didn't really think about it one way or the other benjamin franklin on the

00:10:20.380 other hand he thought a lot about government he thought a lot about the british empire he wasn't

00:10:26.520 simply a subject of the british empire he was a fan he was an enthusiast of the british empire he

00:10:35.180 recognized what the british empire had going for it and what people who lived under the rule of the

00:10:42.880 british empire had going for them and he he knew this in part because of his study in comparative

00:10:49.460 examination of people in the french empire in the spanish empire the people in the british empire

00:10:54.820 were way better off but beyond that in the british empire somebody like benjamin franklin was allowed

00:11:01.380 to flourish in a way that he could not have flourished anywhere else benjamin franklin was born

00:11:07.200 in boston to a family of very middling means he was one of a very large group of children and so he

00:11:14.180 didn't get much in the way of paternal resources to get him started he only had a couple of years

00:11:19.940 of formal education parents had to pay for their kids education in those days and for the rest he did

00:11:25.680 it on his own but he did it as someone who was constantly questioning things constantly questioning

00:11:31.860 for example the theocratic rule of puritan boston he ran away from boston in part because an apprenticeship

00:11:39.320 that he had been assigned to and his brother it was weighing upon him but also because he rejected

00:11:44.300 the rule of the puritan clergy that ran boston in those days and he just had to get out of there and

00:11:50.960 he wound up finally in philadelphia which happened to be about the most tolerant open-minded city you could

00:11:59.780 find in the world in those days and it suited him perfectly and he flourished he thrived he made a

00:12:07.140 successful business so successful for example that he was able to retire in his early 40s and then

00:12:14.320 indulge his interest in science and in literature and various other things eventually in politics

00:12:19.400 and and then beyond that he went from philadelphia and he lived for almost two decades in london he was

00:12:27.540 formerly the agent that is the lobbyist for the pennsylvania assembly and then other the assemblies of

00:12:34.600 other colonies to give their opinions to british parliament the british government got the views

00:12:40.620 of the governors appointed by the king but the assemblies wanted to have their voice heard and

00:12:45.620 franklin lived in london and he thought oh my gosh this is the best place this is even better than

00:12:50.460 philadelphia he moved in the most intellectual circles the most enlightened circles he made friends

00:12:57.660 he had all sorts of new fans of his they embraced him they tried to persuade him to move to london

00:13:04.080 permanently and now when we think about how things turned out i think oh my gosh what a big deal that

00:13:10.540 would have been but in fact people did that all the time people were moving from america to london from

00:13:16.220 london to america and it was just like i mean today if you know move i'm in texas you know my children

00:13:22.720 live on the east coast to move from the colonies to england no big deal it's all part of the same

00:13:27.980 thing and franklin would have made the move permanently had his wife been willing to go

00:13:34.200 along with it but she was a philadelphia girl and she didn't want to leave she knew she wouldn't fit

00:13:38.320 in in london so he was just a long time visitor but it is interesting to imagine if she had agreed if

00:13:45.840 debbie franklin had agreed to move to london then it's not inconceivable the outcome of the american

00:13:50.980 revolution would have been different franklin was one of the two indispensable people to make

00:13:56.100 the revolution work george washington was the other one but if debbie had agreed to move to london in

00:14:01.240 the 1750s when franklin originally went 20 years before all these troubles began then when the

00:14:06.180 revolution broke out he would have been on the other side so it was it's those sorts of things i can see

00:14:12.020 this in terms of history moving on two tracks there's a track of big history these are the public policy

00:14:18.320 questions these are the matters of war and peace these are the stuff that make the headlines in the

00:14:22.940 papers of the day and the chapter headings in the history books written thereafter that's big history

00:14:28.380 then there's little history little history is the history of individual lives of what happened to this

00:14:33.760 particular person on that particular day and why he or she fought the way they did and so what i try to

00:14:40.060 do in the book is to see where these two streams of history the big history and the little history

00:14:44.840 intersect and in franklin it's a very personal thing it finally comes down to the fact that the british

00:14:51.940 government refused to grant him the respect that he thought he deserved and respect this can be a

00:15:00.680 powerful motivator more precisely a sense of lack of respect can be a very powerful motivator in politics

00:15:08.500 and we see it again and again in history where people say they they've been disrespected and therefore we can't

00:15:15.100 put up with this and franklin there was a moment in his life where i mean it's almost the moment where you see

00:15:21.000 the the switch flip where he goes from being a britain to being an american going from being an englishman to go to

00:15:26.600 being an american it's when he's hauled before the british privy council this is in the very beginning of 1774 and he's made to

00:15:34.440 answer for the sins of the colonists especially the ones in boston the boston tea party has just occurred

00:15:40.380 and he's brought in and he's you know told that he's responsible for this and he has abetted all this

00:15:46.260 and he just you can almost see the steam coming out of his ears where he realizes i'm much more

00:15:54.260 competent i'm much more loyal to the idea of the british empire than these people are but if they're not

00:15:59.920 going to let me be a full member of the british empire then to hell with the british empire i'm

00:16:05.260 going to become an american so yeah we'd say respect i imagine franklin and those guys back then would

00:16:11.180 say honor like their sense of honor was probably insulted yeah yeah so it was a personal thing

00:16:16.460 right again you talked about there's big well it's a the thing is it's it's a combination of a personal

00:16:21.480 thing and then the policy stuff right because franklin thought that british policy had taken

00:16:27.780 a wrong turn at the end of the french and indian or seven years war the british government decided

00:16:34.520 that it was going to try to balance its budget just had war debts to pay and it was going to try to pay

00:16:40.080 those on the backs of the american colonists among other people now the colonists were not heavily taxed

00:16:46.900 in the context of british imperial history but they were going to be taxed more than they had been taxed

00:16:54.440 before franklin thought this was a really bad idea he thought that the british were being very

00:16:59.880 short-sighted in fact he thought the british were being very badly led that the politicians in britain

00:17:06.180 the ones in charge of the government then were making these very short-sighted actions he tried

00:17:11.240 again and again to get the british government to realize that the british empire could be the greatest

00:17:18.360 thing in the world for a long time to come if only people living in britain the british government in

00:17:25.300 particular would recognize the growing strength of the american wing of their empire the population of

00:17:32.800 the american colonies was growing much faster than the population of the british home isles and franklin

00:17:38.380 imagined this two pillars holding up the future british empire one is the old pillar of old england

00:17:46.160 and the other one is the new pillar of new england and the rest of the american colonies and he said

00:17:51.140 if you guys can just give us room to grow then this british empire will go on and on and on but they

00:17:58.000 wouldn't listen there were merchants in britain who wanted to have monopoly of the american market

00:18:03.880 there were politicians in britain who didn't want to share power the idea that these colonials would

00:18:11.320 have the effrontery the gall to think that they should be equal no no no they're not going to do it

00:18:16.500 so it wasn't that franklin had a problem so much with the idea of the british empire it was the execution

00:18:24.560 of british policy by these very short-sighted politicians and and so he didn't have this policy decision

00:18:32.800 where he said you know he didn't wake up one day and say i got to be independent it was these are bad laws

00:18:37.960 bad laws i keep telling them to change them they're not going to change them maybe they won't ever

00:18:41.940 change them maybe we really have to sort of kick them in the head to make something happen so uh

00:18:47.180 benjamin franklin he had a son named william this is an illegitimate son yeah and william unlike his

00:18:53.220 father remained a loyalist yeah so why why did william remain a loyalist while his famous father

00:18:58.720 became a patriot well so this is where we have to get to the little history as it relates to the big

00:19:05.360 history now there was some there was something in franklin genes or at least the genes of males in

00:19:12.280 the franklin family that made them do the opposite of what their parents thought they ought to do

00:19:19.520 so benjamin franklin revolted against the apprenticeship that his father had imposed on him

00:19:28.240 which made him an apprentice to his elder brother and franklin thought now this isn't right i'm as good

00:19:34.100 a printer as james is i'd be able to allow to do more stuff but mostly it was a matter of i'm going

00:19:38.780 to be my own person i'm not going to simply inherit imbibe and pursue what my parents do now this is not

00:19:48.100 uncommon among young younger generations it's not ubiquitous doesn't always happen but it seemed to run

00:19:55.200 in the franklin family because for franklin to reject his father meant running away from home

00:20:02.980 breaking his indenture setting himself up in a different part of the country and in fact from the

00:20:09.080 time he left boston until his mother and father died he rarely saw his parents so benjamin franklin's

00:20:16.180 revolt as a young man was against his parents so he goes on and eventually then he revolts against

00:20:23.620 the king george now one doesn't want to be true for freudian here and draw you know a connection

00:20:29.400 saying in revolting against king george he's all again revolting against his parents now i i think

00:20:33.800 it's gone beyond that uh franklin by that time was 70 years old so he's not working that stuff out

00:20:38.800 but but this is this is where there's this irony and in parents and children especially when the

00:20:45.860 children become adults they see this again and again where benjamin franklin as a young man thought

00:20:52.360 he had to revolt against his parents but as a grown man in fact as an old man he assumed that his son

00:21:01.120 would follow his own lead but william franklin in not embracing the revolution was revolting against

00:21:10.640 his own father so that was part of the story it's not and i don't mean to say by any means that this

00:21:16.980 personal stuff overrides everything else in human lives multiple influences affect decisions and in

00:21:26.520 william franklin's case part of the issue was that he had a good job in the british empire and one could

00:21:34.860 say that he realized if he revolted against the king he'd lose the job yeah that's it but one of the

00:21:40.820 reasons he had the job was he believed in the british empire and there wasn't really that much difference

00:21:49.120 between benjamin franklin and william franklin up to the moment of decision benjamin franklin thought

00:21:56.960 that british laws were misguided william franklin thought those british laws were misguided too

00:22:03.940 but william franklin was more willing to grant that british policy british politics could be reformed

00:22:12.720 benjamin franklin thought for 10 years it could be reformed but finally said no no it can't be

00:22:18.300 reformed it can't be reformed soon enough so up to the moment when benjamin franklin signs the

00:22:24.420 declaration of independence he and his son william franklin are not that far apart but once benjamin

00:22:29.900 franklin takes that step then all of a sudden the gap widens and he tries to persuade william to take

00:22:37.540 this step but william won't take this step he won't take this step for two reasons one is he's he's

00:22:44.300 going to show his independence of his father just the way his father had showed independence from his

00:22:49.640 father but also because he believed that on balance the british empire was still this thing worth

00:22:58.320 supporting and then this is the way the story unfolds because until we get to this moment of

00:23:06.140 decision basically the declaration of independence do you support it or do you not the loyalists the

00:23:13.360 patriots the ones that are going to be come called loyalists and patriots they're often very close

00:23:18.320 together they're almost indistinguishable but once the decision is made then then you have to choose

00:23:24.420 you have to choose one road or the other and then once the fighting follows the declaration of

00:23:29.280 independence then emotions take hold in a way they hadn't before so if the guys on your side start

00:23:34.900 shooting at the guys on my side and start killing people that i know then there's a whole additional

00:23:40.340 emotional element that kicks in we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:23:44.800 and now back to the show so you mentioned another founding father that we take for granted that's a

00:23:53.920 founding father it's george washington but you point out if you look at his history there's nothing that

00:23:59.260 would indicate that he would become the commanding officer the commanding general of the revolutionary

00:24:03.440 army one of the richest men in the colonies he had a very successful career in the british military

00:24:09.860 what was the moment like what caused washington to realize you know what this british empire thing's

00:24:14.960 not going to work out for me anymore i need to do something else and rebel well this is kind of a

00:24:19.880 reminder that as much as someone can have it's always tempting to want more so 99.9 percent of the

00:24:29.280 people living in the american colonies in virginia and the other colonies in the 70 early 1770s would look

00:24:34.280 at george washington say george you know what more could you want and washington said well it ultimately

00:24:43.420 came down to the same sort of thing that benjamin franklin said and that is respect respect as an equal

00:24:49.880 within the british empire that's what franklin wanted and that's what george washington wanted in a

00:24:56.220 specific area george washington well actually i'll draw the parallel so benjamin franklin was a brilliant

00:25:03.300 scientist intellectual thinker writer and despite all that he simply was not accepted as a political

00:25:12.660 equal within the british empire for george washington it was a military question george washington discovered

00:25:18.820 as a young man that he was good at soldiering he was a wonderful horse rider which was a big deal

00:25:26.820 he was a big strong man which was also a big deal in military affairs in those days he had a sense of

00:25:35.820 himself and a sense of command people listened to him when he spoke and i mean one of the reasons they

00:25:43.020 did is he didn't waste his time on small talk he didn't speak often so when he did speak people

00:25:49.820 listened but he was also he had a head for military strategy and tactics he had a way of appealing to

00:25:59.700 the martial virtues in people so george washington as a young man when he was fighting on behalf of the

00:26:08.160 virginia militia and then fighting alongside british regulars in the french and indian war especially

00:26:16.180 at a crucial battle the battle of the monongahela the one at which the british commanding general

00:26:22.660 edward braddock was killed washington observed himself in battle and measured himself against

00:26:30.480 british officers in battle and realized that he was braver he was more competent he was a better

00:26:37.820 leader than they were now part of this was due to the fact that british officers in those days

00:26:44.020 typically purchased their commissions so they didn't rise through the ranks because of their

00:26:50.400 ability it was their political connections and their wealth whereas a colonial like washington he rose i mean

00:26:58.060 he was wealthy but he advanced because he was really good at what he did and so in washington's case it was

00:27:06.020 a matter that washington realized i'm the best soldier in north america but the british will not

00:27:13.440 acknowledge it they will not give me a commission in the british army they will not allow me to

00:27:18.920 advance in the british army why because i am a mere colonial and despite all the other stuff that

00:27:26.080 washington had that was the thing that finally stuck in his craw the thing that he couldn't get over

00:27:31.680 and in washington's case so that's sort of washington's little history now there's a big history that

00:27:37.960 becomes shaded by washington's little history when the british start passing laws that washington

00:27:44.680 doesn't like the stamp act for example there was this was protested in all across the colonies there's

00:27:51.600 a new tax on paper and licenses and stuff like that that had to receive this royal stamp and then various

00:27:57.560 import taxes duties the towns and duties that puts the import taxes and all sorts of things

00:28:04.120 washington talked about if we allow these laws to stand because these were novelties in america

00:28:11.120 if we allow these laws to stand then we will become no better than slaves now for somebody in the 21st

00:28:20.220 century reading washington's letters writing this it's really tempting to say boy george that's pretty

00:28:26.460 rich he's saying it'd be like slaves what do you know about slaves oh you own 200 of them

00:28:31.760 so george you think you're going to become enslaved in that way and so it's tempting to say boy what a

00:28:39.340 hypocrite he complains about this slavery the rich guy like him might have to suffer under british well

00:28:47.060 he'll have to pay a few more taxes when he enslaves all these other people but in fact washington took this

00:28:54.160 very seriously and what he meant was he sort of zeroed in on what he considered to be the essence of

00:29:00.460 slavery the essence of slavery is you are not free to command your own destiny and that was it and so

00:29:08.360 washington was a proud man there's no question about it he looked around he said well first of all i'm

00:29:14.260 rich and all that but i'm also talented he knew he had a talent for leadership and he had hit this glass

00:29:19.760 ceiling in the british army and what and franklin basically hit the glass ceiling in british politics

00:29:26.280 and so as good as the lives of these two men were and i identify them as the two most unlikely

00:29:33.440 revolutionaries they had wonderful lives they weren't oppressed in any kind of obvious way not

00:29:39.200 oppressed in a way anybody else would have noticed but it it graded on them and so washington says yep

00:29:45.960 okay i'm for independence now some of it in washington's case i think is a knowledge that

00:29:53.460 he still has a few chapters in his leadership life ahead for franklin it's different franklin is 70

00:29:59.760 by the time the by the time he signs the declaration of independence so he's not expecting a further

00:30:05.280 career but with washington i'm a great man in virginia but i'm never going to be a great man in the british

00:30:11.480 empire but i might be a great man who knows in a united states of america or something like that so

00:30:15.760 so to command an army not just a regiment of virginia militia that was appealing although

00:30:22.040 washington for the rest of his life would complain about the burdens of office and how he didn't

00:30:27.400 really seek this and he all he wanted to do was go back and be a farmer at mount vernon you know

00:30:33.640 that's after a while you don't really take that part very seriously so there was ambition involved

00:30:38.000 there were policy issues so it's a it's a combination of all of these things well another founding

00:30:43.780 father that you explore why he turned patriot and ambition was involved with him was john adams

00:30:49.840 and you talk about when you introduce him and his decision to turn patriot you highlight journal

00:30:55.620 entries and letters where he just talks about i really want to be famous like i want to be

00:30:59.660 i want to have a reputation how did adams drive for reputation or fame compel him to become a patriot

00:31:06.800 you've hit on the reason that adams has been such a favorite for historians because

00:31:12.820 he just bears his soul including aspects of his soul that don't reflect particularly well on him

00:31:20.540 in his letters in his diaries so yeah as a young man he says you know i want the world to know about me

00:31:27.840 and he's this pretty undistinguished guy growing up in boston he gets into politics he gets into law

00:31:36.280 first and then he gets into politics but he's always thinking what can i do to make the world know that

00:31:41.980 john adams lives and if he had lived in new york if he had lived in philadelphia his career

00:31:49.240 the trajectory of his arc in history might have been actually very different but boston happened to be

00:31:55.420 the place that was the hotbed of what we can call revolutionary activity of opposition to the british

00:32:01.820 and so for john adams to distinguish himself on all of this it's will the world know that i'm here

00:32:09.700 the context that he operates in keeps sort of pushing him further we'll say to the left in a

00:32:16.220 more revolutionary direction because boston was at the left wing of all the stuff going on

00:32:21.320 in the politics between the american college and the british home government and so adams is going to

00:32:28.480 stand out there so he's thinking about you know what he can do he wants to get involved in this

00:32:32.200 but he also i say butter and he has this he also has a very rigid sense of morality there are a lot of

00:32:40.700 nearly everybody figures out a way to make their morality match their objective circumstances and

00:32:46.660 their interests and adams did too but he could be kind of counterproductively honest at times and so

00:32:54.700 following the so-called boston massacre the killing uh civilians in boston by some british soldiers

00:33:01.640 he volunteers to defend the british soldiers who were charged with murder in this because he thought you

00:33:10.460 know this isn't right and they shouldn't have to suffer for the politics he knew the circumstances

00:33:16.240 these guys feared for their lives the crowd was really getting ugly and they're tossing rocks and

00:33:21.360 big chunks of ice at them and so and he defends them and he gets them off i mean they aren't

00:33:28.520 paying for murder or anything they're manslaughter for a couple of them but and so he has this sense

00:33:33.620 of righteousness that that carries him forward the people who knew him sometimes thought well okay

00:33:39.700 he's an honest guy but he can get these strange notions in his head benjamin franklin got to know

00:33:46.340 john adams very well and he thought he's you know as honest as the day is long but he's sometimes just

00:33:51.640 quite crazy with adams to the end of his life he believed that history would not appreciate him in

00:33:59.220 fact he he wrote a letter to a friend benjamin rush who was somebody who knew everybody else at the time

00:34:05.280 and adams says that when the history of our life of the revolutionary events that came after is written

00:34:10.940 it's going to be a pack of lies from beginning to end and the gist of the story is that dr franklin

00:34:18.420 benjamin franklin smote the earth with his lightning rod and out jumped general washington and between

00:34:26.160 the two of them they conducted all the affairs of war and peace and the rest of us had nothing to do

00:34:32.580 with it so this this was adams even after he'd been president and everything else thinking you know

00:34:38.220 i'm just never going to be appreciated but adams was one who wanted to make his name and in

00:34:43.100 revolutionary times the way he was going to make his name was to jump to the forefront of the

00:34:48.200 revolutionaries so for him there were policy things he cared about but personal ambition played a role as

00:34:54.120 well yeah and in fact so to expand on that just a little bit it was and i alluded to this when i was

00:35:00.440 talking about benjamin and william franklin it was a fairly close call between independence and

00:35:07.020 loyalty up until the moment of the declaration of independence nearly everybody in america and a lot

00:35:13.920 of people in britain too and i should point this out they thought that these laws that parliament had

00:35:19.600 passed were stupid laws they were counterproductive they were making the americans mad to no good purpose

00:35:25.420 back in england but it served some politicians purpose to do this and so it was you know okay so do we

00:35:34.440 keep pressing for reform and what happened is that several of the people who remained loyalists they

00:35:42.280 say let's give reform one more try whereas people like john adams said we've tried enough finally we have

00:35:50.260 to say we're out of here and so at that moment so with john adams on one side benjamin franklin

00:35:56.960 let's say joseph galloway the loyalist that i write about he is just barely on the other side he said

00:36:02.260 and one more try it reform but once the decision is made that's when the gap suddenly yawns widely

00:36:09.800 open because those people who announced for independence they have become in effect and in

00:36:15.420 law traitors to the british empire and so if the war ends badly they might very well be hanged as

00:36:22.920 traitors and what they do immediately is to turn around and say no no we're not the traitors the

00:36:29.760 traitors are the ones who remain loyal so william franklin i mentioned that the loyalists they just

00:36:35.940 kept doing what they were doing he kept going to the office he was the royal governor of new jersey so

00:36:41.000 he would go to the office of governor of new jersey and keep doing his stuff he wakes up one morning

00:36:46.580 after independence has just been declared and now this new self-declared new jersey assembly says

00:36:53.360 you are the traitor now so you must break your ties to the british crown or we're going to treat you as

00:37:00.260 a traitor and he's thinking traitor i've just been doing the same thing i've been doing all along

00:37:05.680 but this was the strange world of the american revolution where things that had been signs of

00:37:13.280 loyalty just you know recently all of a sudden get you marked as a traitor and in fact william franklin

00:37:19.160 was imprisoned he almost died in prison he was suffered exposure and illness in prison and for

00:37:27.700 doing what for simply remaining loyal to his oath of office so it was a time that really was confusing

00:37:35.620 for people who like to think that history moves on predictable paths another interesting character

00:37:42.100 during the american revolution is benedict arnold who famously he was a loyalist at the start turned

00:37:48.020 patriot then went back to loyalist so what was driving his allegiances ah with benedict arnold

00:37:54.680 well benedict arnold had the advantage but also the grave disadvantage of being a natural soldier

00:38:01.320 he was the best lieutenant that is the best second in command the george washington had he was he could

00:38:09.020 inspire his men in battle he had a sense of logistics and strategy and washington really was pleased

00:38:16.820 at benedict arnold's performance and washington gave benedict arnold some of the most difficult

00:38:23.260 dangerous assignments and for the most part benedict arnold came through george washington

00:38:29.600 who had no natural born children started looking on benedict arnold as something of a surrogate son

00:38:36.680 but then but then benedict arnold well he was he had some of the same traits as john adams

00:38:44.260 benedict arnold wanted to be recognized and he did not like being disrespected or as to use your term

00:38:53.320 i think which is quite appropriate dishonored and he ran afoul to some degree of the politics of the

00:39:00.780 american revolution politics in the context of the american congress the continental congress which

00:39:07.760 would become the confederation congress but the congress of this new united states which was very

00:39:12.940 jealous of its own authority and of handing any authority off to the military or within the military

00:39:23.360 to people of one state rather than another state and so arnold should have received a number of

00:39:29.900 promotions for his exploits for his accomplishments on the battlefield but congress wouldn't approve the

00:39:36.240 promotions because somebody else had been promised for political reasons this promotion rather than

00:39:40.840 that and arnold felt badly used even to the point where he was court-martialed and congress could do this

00:39:47.120 sort of thing and so he felt this is a terrible thing he had been given the dick fault task of presiding

00:39:54.040 over philadelphia after philadelphia is recaptured from british control but in benedict arnold's case

00:40:03.020 and this boy this is the the oldest story going back to homer and previous storytellers before that where

00:40:10.280 love got in the way benedict arnold fell in love with a woman who had loyalist connections and

00:40:18.540 so she introduced him to members of the british military including the people who sort of basically

00:40:28.240 ran the counter-revolutionary the counter-insurrectionary activities and so they realized that the british

00:40:37.320 government learned that arnold was unhappy with the situation with his treatment at the hands of the

00:40:44.600 continental congress so they began talking well you know we could probably do better for you we would

00:40:50.540 recognize your talents we would reward your skills and accomplishments in all of this i should add that

00:40:57.400 everybody who made a decision one way or the other and i point out that pretty much everybody in the

00:41:03.560 colonies had to make this decision at some level and with some degree of autonomy you have to choose are

00:41:10.940 you going to be on the loyalist side or the patriot side well one of the things that contributes to

00:41:17.180 this question is which side do you think is going to win and you might think okay you know american

00:41:26.000 independence would be a nice idea but we're never going to win so all right you kind of hold your tongue

00:41:32.380 and maintain your loyalist position on the other hand if you think the americans are going to win

00:41:37.320 then maybe independence looks more appealing so benedict arnold has the tugs of romance of love for

00:41:45.800 this woman who's going to become his wife and he also hears these flattering remarks from the british

00:41:52.240 and he starts to think you know the americans are never going to win this war and i should add i should

00:41:57.120 add that until the battle of yorktown until this climb what we now know is the climactic battle of the

00:42:05.400 war it was a fairly safe bet that the americans wouldn't win in fact washington really didn't win

00:42:14.800 the commander of the continent army he really didn't win any major battlefield victories until the last

00:42:20.740 one as late as 1780 early 1781 it's quite possible to think okay the americans are going to lose

00:42:27.620 and so uh how's this going to turn out well thanks arnold if i help the british government then maybe

00:42:35.040 i'll get a better sort of landing place when the american side loses so it's really important i think

00:42:42.000 i mentioned at the very beginning to understand how this stuff plays out readers students of history

00:42:47.560 have to do something that sounds sort of counterintuitive and that is they have to forget they know

00:42:54.060 how it turns out because washington didn't know how it was going to turn out when he accepted command of

00:42:59.740 the continental army benedict arnold didn't know how it was going to turn out when he switched sides

00:43:04.240 benjamin franklin william franklin none of them knew how it was going to turn out and so they're kind of

00:43:10.040 making this bet in the case of benedict arnold he made a bad bet and the bad bet was he he leaped from

00:43:18.040 the side of the americans when he thought the americans were losing but he got to the british side

00:43:24.020 just in time for the british to lose with the result that well if he'd been more insightful than

00:43:31.600 he was he might have realized he was never really going to be appreciated by the british because they

00:43:38.380 would recognize that somebody who fights on one side and then switches sides isn't someone for whom

00:43:44.120 loyalty is a big issue so if he gets a better offer from the americans again he might jump right back

00:43:49.800 so he was never embraced really by the british and of course he was loathed by the americans and so

00:43:57.300 arnold he had a good thing going on the american side but he just it wasn't good enough and again this

00:44:04.620 kind of a theme i mentioned with washington and franklin no matter what you have if you want more

00:44:09.980 than you can be and we speaking from an american perspective think that washington and franklin were led

00:44:17.240 a right by their dissatisfaction in arnold's case he was led awry by his dissatisfaction

00:44:24.720 so the big takeaway i got from your book was that when these individuals were deciding to become

00:44:30.080 patriot or remain a loyalist there were like you said there's two tracks involved there's that big

00:44:35.160 history track which is politics and policy but for all these men they had there was a personal track as

00:44:42.040 well there was small history going on decisions that they had to make about their own personal

00:44:47.640 futures and fortunes that dealt with ambition and sense of respect and things like that

00:44:52.800 and so i think whenever i read history books now i'm always going to ask myself well this is the big

00:44:58.080 history stuff what's the little history going on in this as well and i think you know also apply to

00:45:03.120 our own personal decisions that we make as citizens or in politics there's a bit there's big history

00:45:09.340 stuff big stuff going on but underneath that there's also personal things like how is how's

00:45:14.340 our personal desires helping us make these decisions well hw this has been a great conversation where can

00:45:19.940 people go to learn more about the book in your work well they can go to my sub stack account and

00:45:25.760 it's called a user's guide to history so just sub stack user's guide to history they can also go to

00:45:29.800 my twitter account at hwbrands fantastic well hwbrands thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:45:34.320 good to talk to you brett my guest today was hwbrands he's the author of the book

00:45:39.000 our first civil war it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more

00:45:43.480 information about his work at his sub stack hwbrands.substack.com also check out our

00:45:48.920 show notes at aom.is slash patriot where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this

00:45:53.320 topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:46:05.100 art of manless.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:46:08.880 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of and if you haven't done

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00:46:24.200 continued support and until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to listen to aom podcast

00:46:28.280 but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 03, 2023

Would You Have Been a Patriot or a Loyalist？

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