A New Age Now Begins: A People's History of the American Revolution, Vol 2 by Page SmithMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The six years between the Battles of Trenton and Princeton to the concluding Treaty of Peace to end the War of American Independence were trying times not only for Americans but the British and many other as egos needed to be checked. A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution Volume Two is the second half of Page Smith’s historical look at the American Revolution and the second installment of his A People’s History series.
Given this book began continuing the page count from the first installment, thus representing that Smith’s original manuscript was very long, the historical narrative continues in the aftermath of Continental Army’s 1776-77 Winter Campaign. Smith continued his critical look at British political leadership whose fumbling since the Stamp Act and now during the war brought the most powerful country on the edge for revolt, with the only thing saving them the patriotic feeling against France and Spain. Also highlighted were the failures of the Continental and later Confederation Congress when it came to financing anything and everything then later the ineptitude of instructing its diplomats who decided to what was best for the nation not the French alliance. To Smith, the French military alliance came to nothing save for the French navy in the Chesapeake during the Yorktown campaign. In fact, to Smith Washington only became the “Deliverer” of his country because of the campaign—he believes history would have given that title to Nathaniel Greene (who was a better tactical general than Washington to be sure) due to his campaign in the South after the failures of three different generals before him—after almost three years of inactivity in which his keeping the Continental Army together and creating a sense of national union which he came to embody as seen in the march to the Virginia but only was enhanced by the victory. Of everything in this book the biggest criticism, which honestly makes me looking questioningly back at Volume One, was Smith’s look at the war on the western frontier against and with the various Native American nations or to be exact his total butchering of who did and didn’t belong to the Iroquois Confederacy because the War of American Independence resulted in a Iroquois civil war that damaged it for generations and even in 1976 there is no excuse for Smith to bungle to badly. Even with that major issue, Smith’s perspective on what he believed the actual American Revolution was—not the unwinnable war the British fought to keep American dependent—and seeing the War of American Independence as revealing to the population the need to unite for a greater whole was very informative and thought-provoking.
A New Age Now Begins (Volume Two) is the second of a double volume history of the American Revolution that details the final six years of the War for Independence that revealed the need for the new American states to unite to form a new nation and complete the formation of a new type of people.
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