The Common Cause: Public Opinion and the Legacies of Mobilization during the American Revolution

When the smoke cleared from Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 and the American Revolution began, the Patriots faced a series of serious questions: What were they doing? What did they want? And, most importantly, who were they?  They called themselves Patriots, the true defenders of liberty and freedom, but their opponents saw them as rebels and traitors.  My research addresses the contours of the Patriots’ appeal to their fellow colonists, what soon was known popularly as “the common cause.”  I argue that “the common cause” was successful – but not only because it appealed to the angelic side of American hearts and minds.  Instead, the mobilization of Americans to fight the British depended on the careful management of fear on the part of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington and other so-called “founding fathers.”  By publicizing war stories that indicted the British for encouraging slave rebellions, Indian massacres, and hiring German mercenaries to slaughter them, the Revolutionaries played upon – and deepened – American ideas about race.  The “common cause” matters, in short, because it laid a foundation for determining who was eligible to become an American citizen – and who was not.