How to Run the American Revolution: Belated Advice

In the spirit of historical course correction, I herewith submit some thoughts to those who may find themselves in an American Revolution between 1774 and 1783.

1. Rule number one. Don’t cooperate with any leaders, even if you appointed them. If you do, such cooperation will later be taken as proof that you were just obeying the commands of some “sovereign” authority the whole time. Watch out especially for the more ambitious lot in the Continental Congress. You know their names.

2. Rule number two. Don’t volunteer to be in any army, Continental or otherwise, that adopts any European-style rules under which you can be flogged, or even murdered out of hand, for a long list of trivial offenses. If you contribute to the coming-into-being of such a structured, half-British, half-Prussian entity (thanks much, John Adams!), you and yours are bound to hear, later, that this necessarily means that whoever made the rules and directed that army: the Continental Congress, George Washington — people like that, had hold of some big, immeasurable thing known rather grandly as “the war power.” The same claimants will say that since they held this war power – a noteworthy “incident of sovereignty” (they will quote you great reams of Vattel, Pufendorf, and some Dutch guys on this point) — they must indeed have been “sovereign,” or at least entrusted with the sovereign power, the while.

More