The American Revolution: The First Major Mobilization of a Nation's People

It is the American Revolution, not the French Revolution of 1789, which was the first example of a war being fought through a mobilization of a nation's people, and thus fundamentally different from the wars that had been previously fought at the behest of sovereigns. Lexington and Concord were but a single day in what would be nine years of fighting in the War of American Independence. Nonetheless, that day was a remarkable mobilization of Americans in response to a British patrol. By 1775...