The Mentor 1913.12.08, No. 43,
The Revolution

THE STORY OF AMERICA IN PICTURES

THE REVOLUTION

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART

Professor of Government, Harvard University

GEORGE THE THIRD

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Words wear out after using them a thousand or a million times. “Liberty,” “The Constitution,” “The People’s Government,”—people take those terms into their minds nowadays as they take a chocolate cream, without stopping to think of its contents. So with “Revolution.” When we hear the word we feel a pleased sensation of a good, great, glorious time, intended by Providence to prepare the way for our various patriotic organizations. The Revolution? Why, yes, that was when our forefathers tied the first hard knot in the British lion’s tail! All the people were patriots, and all the patriots were as wise as college professors, and as brave as Albanians, and as great as a president. All the statesmen wore silk stockings and red velvet suits and powdered wigs. All the ladies were lovely, and spurned the offers of marriage made by British generals.

THE MILITARY REVOLUTION

GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE

His courageous work in the South greatly helped the American cause. (From painting in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

What is a revolution but an overturning, a spinning of the wheel, left to right, and bottom come uppermost? Likewise, since the right believes itself right, and the top is sure that the world exists in order that it may be the top, most revolutions mean force, arms, big guns booming, troops marching, bullets flying, heads cut off with axes or caught in a hangman’s noose; also arms and legs cut off, and the ground soaked with a crimson fluid. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs,” and in a revolution there is bound to be breakage of heads and hearts, and banks and constitutions.

We know that the American Revolution was a military contest, because the pictures in our first textbook of American history show General George Washington, in buff and blue, leading his Continentals up to within sixteen feet and eight inches of General Howe, in a magnificent red coat laced with gold, in vain trying to rally battalions of craven Hessians wearing highly inconvenient bearskin caps.

THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT

Commanding officers of opposing armies are not really so intimate as that; but Americans are justified in immense pride over the military success of the Revolution. The simple fact was that three million people, of whom about a fourth were negro slaves, put up a fight against a mother country having four times their population.