The Secret War of Independence - hardcover

The American Revolution was so rich and complex that an hour's browsing among its records is sure to yield surprises. Years ago I happened on an article by Professor J.F. Jameson about the role of St. Eustatius in the War of Independence. I had never heard of that tiny island, or realized that the Caribbean was intimately bound up with the struggle on the mainland. The surprises multiplied. It was soon clear that the Caribbean's role in the Revolution was only part of a larger, vastly important pattern which centered around Benjamin Franklin. This commercial-maritime-diplomatic complex, which explains how we were able to win independence, has dropped out of sight. Some of it was secret, and much of it, involving as it did privateering, international gunrunning and intrigue, and war profiteering, was suppressed by the generation which bequeathed to us the Parson Weems attitude. The present attempt to recapture that story is made in no muckraking spirit; on the contrary, the records provide many new reasons for gratitude to the sea captains, the merchants on both sides of the Atlantic, and above all to Franklin, whose share in winning the War of Independence seems to have been underestimated.