The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

"The Glorious Cause is the first volume of the Oxford History of the United States , which Oxford University Press commissioned back in the 1950s, guided by Richard Hofstadter and C. Van Woodward . Middlekauff covers the military aspect of the Revolution. It is one of the best accounts of the war between the colonies and Great Britain. If you declare independence, then you’ve got to fight for it. And the colonies were taking on the greatest military power in the world at the time. Great Britain had emerged from the Seven Years’ War as the greatest European power, having defeated both France and Spain. For the colonists to vanquish the British was a goal that was not easily achieved. July 4th would have been meaningless if the colonies had been defeated. After the colonists declared their independence, in 1776, they had to fight for it. That fight went on for eight years. The Revolution goes well beyond the military victory, but victory in the Revolutionary War was certainly a prerequisite to independence. Bob Middlekauff illuminates how the war was run and how the war was won."