Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with T. H. Breen, author of The American Revolution on Trial: A New Nation Confronts the Burden of Independence

What inspired you to write this book? 

Inspiration of this book came quite unexpectedly from an advertisement for rare books. A listing of items—most of which I could not afford—contained a curious entry for a trial held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1778. What struck me as extremely strange about the offering was that it chronicled a legal battle involving General John Burgoyne, who at that moment had just surrendered an entire army at Saratoga. As a prisoner of war, he had the audacity to accuse a young, highly decorated Continental officer of a major crime. Not only that, Burgoyne demanded a full court martial and then, even more brazenly, insisted on acting as the prosecutor in an American court. How could this have happened, I asked. The outcome of the war remained very much in doubt, and yet the American officers in charge—men such as General Glover, who had transported Washington’s troops across the Delaware River—acceded to Burgoyne’s unprecedented requests. As I unraveled the mystery, I discovered that this bizarre trial dramatically revealed how ordinary people explained the American Revolution to themselves.

What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book? 

Writing this book brought home a point about the Revolution that most historians—including myself—had not fully appreciated. The narratives that Americans learn at school focus largely on the Declaration of Independence. Although that was a key event, we should also remember that declaring independence was fundamentally a political act, which had to be supported by sustained military resistance to Great Britain. The problem with this familiar story is that it deflects attention from how difficult it was for ordinary Americans to comprehend the full burden of cultural independence. Most of them had grown up in a British world. However much they resisted king and parliament, they still organized their daily lives around British imported goods, read printed British books, prayed in churches founded originally in England, and enjoyed English plays and music. Not surprisingly, the bonds of culture proved harder to brake than even the most fervent founders understood at the beginning of the war. And it was precisely these traditional links to the former mother country that haunted the trial at Cambridge. Burgoyne’s challenge forced Americans to confront during the war what it actually meant to be an independence people.

What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book? 

What surprised me most about the trial—three weeks of testimony during an unusually hard winter—was how sensitive Americans were about how other nations viewed the new republic. When Burgoyne questioned whether a young country—one without an established history—could possibly conduct a fair trial, Americans countered that they were fully capable of delivering justice even in a legal contest that enflamed political emotion. Whatever else the country represented in a world of nations, the revolutionaries insisted, it stood for the rule of law. At a moment in our history when the fundamental basis for legal justice has been called into question, it was consoling for me to be reminded that at the moment of the country’s founding Americans refused to compromise the rule of law.

What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?

During the trial, Burgoyne commanded attention. An aristocrat and member of Parliament, he transformed the courtroom everyday into a theater, where in one dramatic speech after another he played on passions and fears. Many witnesses found the performance irresistible. They commented on his supreme self-confidence. Burgoyne cited events from Roman history; he referred to famous British jurists. But one man, resisted. William Tudor, the American prosecutor who had just trained at the law offices of John Adams, confronted his swaggering opponent with brilliant arguments. Tudor turned the trial into a critical analysis of aristocratic privilege, in other words, into a declaration of independence from a culture that no longer made sense in a more egalitarian society.

What’s next? 

My next project will be a book called “Passions and Emotions: What Made the American Revolution Revolutionary.”