The Critical Role of Communications
in the American Revolution
The American revolution
was only possible was people who lived at great distances from
one another and under very different circumstances managed to
come to an agreement about what they believed and what they needed
to do. The extraordinary challenges of developing cohesion
among the colonies made the revolution particularly worth study
for John Adams. He marveled:
The complete accomplishment
of it in so short a time and by such simple means was perhaps
a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks
were made to strike together: a perfection of mechanism which
no artist had ever before effected.
Adams hinted at the nature of
the "mechanism" when he directed Americans interested
in finding how the Revolution had come about to look at the "records,
records, pamphlets, newspaper, and even handbills, which in any
way contributed to change the temper and views of the people,
and compose them into an independent nation."
So effective was the exchange
of every mode of print, speech, and handwritten material as a
means of uniting the colonies, that, for example, "revolutionary
language by 1773 was sounding in virtually every adult ear in
Massachusetts, and that there was a fluid continuum of discourse
joining the Boston press and town meeting and the talk in meetings
and taverns throughout the Province." (Bushman, “Massachusetts
Farmers and the Revolution,” 79-81 quoted by Ray Raphael
in The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord,
p. 35.)
Reading the Declaration of Independence. By John Nixon,
From the Steps of Indepence Hall, Philadelphia July 8
1776 - p.573 Harper's Weekly 15 July 1876
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Building consensus and a communal identity
required a shared understanding that could only be developed through
an ongoing civic conversation that took place through the use
of informal conversations, letters, speeches, meetings, newspapers,
pamphlets, broadsides, and books. And, of course, these
"conversations" in many cases could not have taken place
without the systems that were developed before and during the
revolution for disseminating information across great distances.
In a very real sense, it is unlikely that the revolution could
have taken place without the "modern" postal and transportation
systems that were changing late eighteenth century American life.
See Also:
Getting Out the Word: The
Communications Circuit
Finding the Right Words: The
Rhetoric of Revolution
