“Better becoming a band of robbers”: army, society, and ideology in America’s first wartime state

This thesis investigates how the American state conducted the War of American Independence. Primarily, I look at how, in the absence of a strong centralized national government, American military leaders used alternative methods to support their army. I argue that the Continental Army constituted a source of national authority and sovereignty which effectively maintained the military struggle even as the Continental Congress abdicated responsibility for directing the war effort. Moreover, I demonstrate that the strains of waging a protracted war with little support from the national government had adverse effects on America’s social cohesion. Overall, this thesis serves to complicate both military historians’ conceptions of the War of American Independence as well as political and social historians’ understandings of republican political culture and American society during the revolutionary era. More broadly, I hope to show that the War of American Independence is integral to the understanding of the wider forces at work during the American Revolution.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby Steven Elliot