Notwithstanding generations of prodigious scholarship, we have not appreciated the lives and labors, the sacrifices and struggles, the glorious messiness, the hopes and fears of the diverse groups that fought in the longest and most disruptive war in our history, with visions of launching a new age filling their heads. Yet the great men - the founding fathers - of the revolutionary era still dominate the reigning narrative. We now possess a rich and multistranded tapestry of the Revolution, filled with engaging biographies, local narratives, weighty explorations of America's greatest explosion of political thinking, annals of military tactics and strategies, and discussions of the religious, economic, and diplomatic aspects of what was then called the"glorious cause." For more than two centuries, historians have written about the American Revolution, striving to capture the"life and soul" of which Jefferson spoke. The life and soul of history must be forever unknown." "Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?" Thus wrote John Adams in 1815 to Thomas Jefferson."Nobody," Jefferson replied from Monticello,"except merely its external facts.
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