Rise To Rebellion

67 pages • 2 hours read

Rise To Rebellion: A Novel of the American Revolution

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 5

Part 1, Chapters 6-11

Part 1, Chapters 12-17

Part 1, Chapter 18-Part 2, Chapter 23

Part 2, Chapters 24-29

Part 2, Chapter 30-Part 3, Chapter 35

Part 3, Chapters 36-45

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “The Right and the Power”

Introduction Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide depicts violence and death.

As England struggles following financial losses from war with France, King George III and his chancellor of the exchequer impose taxes on the American colonies. The colonists resent paying for England’s wars, and a resistance, led by Samuel Adams, grows. To deal with the unrest, the king sends in additional troops. The king and his allies in Parliament are unaware of the mood in the colonies, astounded that they would be unwilling to pay for the protection of the king’s army.

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Sentry”

March 5, 1770

Hugh White, a private in the king’s army, guards the Custom House in Boston, a city seething with tension between Bostonians and the occupying British troops. The colonists’ resentment has turned violent. White sees a group of angry young men approaching the guardhouse. They throw snowballs, ignoring his orders to disperse. As the violence escalates, White loads his musket, prepared to shoot. Two men approach the mob, calming them. As the crowd seems about to disperse, a bell tolls, and a cry to fire rings out. The mob turns on White once again. As the crowd presses in closer, reinforcements arrive, a squad of elite grenadiers. When the crowd begins fighting with the soldiers, a shot rings out, and a colonist falls. Chaos ensues, and White fires into the crowd.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Adams”

Hearing the fire alarm, John Adams rushes outside. He is told of a riot instigated by British troops. He runs toward the Custom House. Adams knows that the shooting of colonists will resonate beyond Boston. At home, Adams worries about the health of his wife, Abigail. Pregnant with their fourth child, she still grieves over the death of their month-old daughter. Adams, eager for the truth, worries about the consequences of mob rule.

The following day, Adams sits in his law office, restless for news, when fellow lawyer Josiah Quincy enters with a client seeking counsel for Thomas Preston, the officer in command during the Customs House shooting. Preston has been charged with murder, and Quincy’s client asserts his innocence. No other attorney will take the case. Eager to uphold the principle of fair justice, Adams agrees to represent him.

Adams and his cousin, Sam, discuss the case. Sam argues that the shooting is a wake-up call to a population grown complacent. If the colonists passively accept the king’s actions, he will grow bolder. Ever the instigator, Sam frames the shooting as a massacre of peaceful civilians. Adams fears his cousin is inflaming the mob, but he resolves to adhere to the rule of law.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Gage”

New York, April 1770

Lieutenant General Thomas Gage and his American wife, Margaret, prepare for a party. The first guest to arrive is Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson. After dinner, they discuss troop allocation in the wake of the shooting. Hutchinson promises a fair trial for Preston but worries about Sam Adams and his control of the mob. Gage suggests they arrest Sam and send him to London to stand trial for sedition. When Hutchinson complains that his authority is not respected, Gage angrily responds that if the mob continues its rabble-rousing, he will use force to suppress it.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Franklin”

London, May 1770

Benjamin Franklin relishes his time abroad, but it creates an emotional distance from his wife. Although Franklin is the colonies’ official representative in Parliament, he knows his voice carries little weight. As he approaches the Parliament building, he reads the account of the “Boston Massacre,” an account he finds biased: “Sounds like the hand of Sam Adams” (36). In Parliament, he expects opposing parties to spin the story to benefit their own cause. He grows tired of the partisanship, though he understands conflicting arguments are necessary to find the truth. Instead of observing Parliament, he invites Samuel Johnson—former colonist, Anglican priest, and essayist—to tea. Johnson argues that the colonists “strike out and bloody the very hand that provides comfort” (39). Franklin responds that the colonies are becoming self-sustaining and deserve a measure of independence. Hang the instigators, Johnson suggests, and the protests would die. Realizing that Johnson’s mind is set, Franklin leaves.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Adams”

Braintree, August 1770

John and Abigail Adams retreat to their country home in Braintree, Massachusetts, where she gives birth to a healthy boy. Now that English troops left Boston, the mood is calmer, and Adams prepares his defense of Preston. Strolling across his open farmland, Adams considers the expanding colonies developing their own identity distinct from England for over 100 years. They have been allowed to prosper and grow, but now England fears their independence. Adams anticipates more protests leading to greater violence.

Boston, October 1770

Preston’s trial begins, and Adams’s defense argues the commander never ordered his troops to fire. Josiah Quincy pressures Adams to argue that the mob was an organized ploy to goad the troops into violence, but Adams believes that argument would undermine his case. After only three hours, the jury finds Preston not guilty. He boards a ship for England before a mob seeks retribution. Before he leaves, he asks Adams to defend his regiment—currently bivouacked in Castle William, a fortification on a small island in Boston Harbor—from the same murder charges. Adams agrees.

December 1770

Of the eight members of the regiment, six are acquitted, and two are convicted of manslaughter. Despite the controversial verdicts, Adams is not threatened. He takes pride in America’s judicial process: They are “fully capable of exercising a system of law and justice every bit as civilized as [England’s] own” (56).

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 5 Analysis

This first section introduces the primary characters and provides context for the impending conflict of war. In the “To The Reader” section, Shaara makes clear his purpose to portray the primary American characters as heroic figures who created a nation. In the opening chapter, the inciting incident is presented, as seen through the eyes of Hugh White, a private in the king’s army. This event, an altercation between an angry mob and British troops outside of the Custom House in Boston, presents a tense setting, with two groups on the brink of war. The seeds of rebellion are planted by radicals like Sam Adams who seek independence from the British Empire, which he views as repressive and overbearing. Others, like his cousin, attorney John Adams and the England-dwelling Benjamin Franklin, understand the desire for independence but take a more measured approach. While not protesting in the streets, their rebellious spirits are still evoked when confronting their British occupiers face-to-face, who are incredulous that the colonists would have the ingratitude to challenge the crown. However, even this more measured approach to British occupation presents tension, as John Adams and Franklin wrestle with themselves, aware of America’s ability to govern itself but wary of war. John Adams, in particular, is presented as a nuanced character, believing firmly in justice; he promises not to let an American mob go after the remaining British soldiers following a trial that favored the British. Franklin, meanwhile, feels out friends in England, but he, like John Adams, senses the inevitability of war. However, to loyalists in Parliament and many British citizens, the benefits of the Empire are self-evident and beyond question, and that the colonists should oppose taxation to pay for those benefits borders on treason. The view of British citizens and loyalists is the opposite of radicals like Sam Adams, setting high stakes for resolution, as an unwillingness to negotiate is established early on, and the texts open with violence.

England’s fatal flaw is misreading the mood of the colonies and underestimating their deep desire for autonomy. America has grown, become prosperous, and expanded west. It has become self-sufficient, and it chafes under the king’s leash of taxation. King George III cannot understand why the colonies don’t simply behave like the rest of the Empire, perhaps unable to see that a then-uniquely American identity had emerged, highlighting the theme of The Tension of Conflicting Identities and The Radical Concept of Self-Government. To many in favor of independence, an American identity was more important than a vaguely British identity.

The theme of The Tension of Conflicting Identities intersects with The Privilege and Abuse of Power to explore colonial attitudes toward British rule in this section. A fitting allegory for these intersecting conflicts is the expansion west. While many colonists initially built their towns and homes along the Atlantic coast, maintaining metaphorical contact with England via the ocean, as the western frontier beckons, many begin to leave the coast and move inland, looking away from England and toward the west, which represents a future free of British rule. That conflict of identity is clear in the British presence on American soil. In many ways, the colonies are still subjects of the crown—General Gage entertains American dignitaries at his New York townhouse, British goods are the sole imports into American ports, an American attorney defends a British soldier against murder charges, Benjamin Franklin is feted throughout Europe, and he admits to relishing life in London. The two countries are beginning to experience a cultural schism, but the ties that bind them are, in many ways, still strong. The battle for American independence is not only political and military but also a battle for an American identity.