Lender, Mark Edward/Martin, James K. War Without Mercy

Liberty or Death in the American Revolution

This history of the American War of Independence clearly shows that those involved believed they had nothing to lose by fighting without regard for the rules of so-called civilised warfare. The call to arms, liberty or death, was far more than mere rhetoric. In its most brutal form, it was a conflict in which military restraint was the exception rather than the rule, a struggle in which the combatants believed that their very existence was at stake. This led to violence against persons and property being more readily accepted than defeat, which was equated with political, cultural and even physical annihilation. It was a war in which cruelty and brutality were expected and accepted all to avoid defeat. A number of historians have already concluded that the struggle to establish the United States reached a level of cruelty that few Americans today associate with the independence movement. However, these studies describe what happened without examining in detail why the conflict took such a violent turn. The book War Without Mercy, written by two renowned historians of the Revolutionary Wars, does just that. Based on years of research and enlivened by little-known primary sources, this is a fascinating and new look at an era of history we thought we knew.