The Common Cause

May 2, 2016
In this extensively researched study, Parkinson, assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, explores the roles played by concepts of inclusion and exclusion among the supporters of the patriot cause in the American Revolution. Drawing primarily upon an immense array of colonial American newspapers, Parkinson emphasizes the methods by which leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, and both John and Samuel Adams mobilized the printed word in countering the “catalog of forces acting against American unity.” To undercut the divisiveness of issues such as voting rights, land distribution, religious heterodoxy, and slaveholding, these revolutionaries focused their readers’ hostility against both their British rulers and perceived enemies within their own communities. Their literature increasingly centered on the supposed dangers presented by Native Americans and slaves—groups that the British urged to revolt against local authorities. The book is academically focused, offering a detailed and insightful analysis of how newspapers became loci of communication and shapers of individuals’ and communities’ senses of themselves as political actors. Moreover, Parkinson persuasively explains the intensely racialized nature of citizenship in the newly independent U.S. and the long-standing problems posed by the exclusion of Americans of indigenous or African heritage from the “common cause” of the Revolution.

Starred review from May 15, 2016

"Common cause" was a phrase often utilized in Europe during the 18th century to justify imperial alliances against a shared enemy. In this engrossing monograph, Parkinson (history, Binghamton Univ.) recounts how colonial leaders, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, co-opted the phrase through colonial newspapers to bind the 13 colonies to fight the American Revolution. Their aims were achieved through the constant publication of inflammatory articles alleging that Great Britain was arming Native Americans and Africans to wage war on the respective colonies. While kernels of truth existed in a fraction of the stories, they were at best gross exaggerations, if not outright fabrications. The consequence of the tactic was that when the war was over, it ensured that there was no place in the new country for Native peoples or Africans and their descendants. This included those people of color who were devoted patriots who had fought and died alongside the colonists for the common cause. VERDICT A must-read for anyone interested in the American Revolution and issues of race. For further exploration, consider James Corbett David's Dunmore's New World.--John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

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