The Common Cause

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768 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 22 halftones, 1 fig., 7 maps, 32 tables, notes, index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-5218-4
Published: February 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-2663-5
Published: June 2016
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-2692-5
Published: May 2016
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-5055-3
Published: May 2016

Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press

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Omohundro Institute Website

Awards & distinctions

2017 James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians

AEJMC History Division Book Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Robert Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and fears about insurrectionary slaves and violent Indians. Manipulating newspaper networks, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow agitators broadcast stories of British agents inciting African Americans and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion. Using rhetoric like “domestic insurrectionists” and “merciless savages,” the founding fathers rallied the people around a common enemy and made racial prejudice a cornerstone of the new Republic.

In a fresh reading of the founding moment, Parkinson demonstrates the dual projection of the “common cause.” Patriots through both an ideological appeal to popular rights and a wartime movement against a host of British-recruited slaves and Indians forged a racialized, exclusionary model of American citizenship.

About the Author

Robert G. Parkinson is associate professor of history at Binghamton University.
For more information about Robert G. Parkinson, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“Brilliant, timely, and indispensable. . . . Parkinson writes with authority on military, political, social, and cultural history, reconstructing the story of this critical period as it actually unfolded, with everything happening at once.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books

“Wonderfully written and deeply researched. . . . Reveals a very different and much darker picture of the revolution. . . . Full of illuminating insights about familiar events.”—William and Mary Quarterly

“Parkinson has captured something of the panicked and often explicitly racially demonizing culture of the revolutionary period with this new and valuable take on familiar sources relevant to the field of early American studies.”—American Quarterly

“Convincingly demonstrates that race and racism were not afterthoughts to the rhetoric of equality of rights but were deeply integrated into the founding years of the United States.”—Journal of American History

“Clear prose and logical structure make it a joy to read. . . . Parkinson’s impressive analysis . . . will force future scholars to engage with his uncomfortable argument that American independence rested on racism and ethnocentrism.”—Common-Place

“Engrossing. . . . A must-read for anyone interested in the American Revolution and issues of race.”—Library Journal, starred review