A Dusty Tomes Audio BookIn Cooperation with Spoken Realms
The American Revolution, 1776—1783 by Claude Halstead Van Tyne, PhD, Assistance Professor of American History, University of Michigan
Volume 9 of 27 in The American Nation: A History published by Harper Brothers (1904—1918). Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University
From the Editor's Introduction to the Series: That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused. On the one side, there is a necessity for an intelligent summarizing of the present knowledge of American history by trained specialists; on the other hand, there is a need for a complete work, written in untechnical style, which shall serve for the instruction and the entertainment of the general reader.
From the Editor's Introduction to Volume Nine: No more difficult task can be found in the twenty-six volumes of The American Nation than to write a fresh and original account of the Revolution...The fundamental thought of this volume is that the Revolution was a close struggle, in which the Americans suffered from inexperience and from the difficulty of securing common action, and the British from ineptitude; that to a large degree it was also a civil war, in which the Tories in actual numbers were not far inferior to the patriots; that it was further a remarkable school of political science from which emerged trained statesmen, vigorous state governments, and a weak and ineffectual national government. The point of view of the author as to the relative origins of the states and the nation is his own; it is no part of the scheme of the series to adjust the conclusions of the individual writers to the editor's frame of mind.
