The Minutemen and Their World
Robert A. Gross in his book, “The Minutemen and Their World”, takes a nearer look at the American Revolution by investigating the lives of the people that exist in Concord, Massachusetts. By exploring and understanding court records, diaries, colony records, families’ trees, and private papers the writer begins to illustrate a civilization prior, during, and subsequent to the American Revolution.
He in addition succeeds in producing an excellent written chronological text that is simple to read, understand, and enjoy. It can be thought that Gross achieves this by providing the reader an enhanced sense of the living of a person in the period of the American Revolution. As well, the writer provides the true information that not only were the people of Concord experiencing a Revolution to battle for their autonomy, but they were furthermore undergoing economic, social, agricultural, and religious revolutions.
Prior to the Revolution, Concordians were living in their own world, symbolically and accurately speaking. The social order of Concord was well developed and controlled issues domestically. These problems hampered with the daily social and economic environment. For instance, relationships between parents and their children were deteriorating. Also, the soil was being used up for the reason of excessive farming which led to the problem of too man sons and not enough land to be divided up between them.
The generation gap between social classes was also broadening and political offices were held by a privileged few which were passed down almost as an inheritance through families. These domestic problems were temporarily put on hold with the appearance of the characteristic of a Revolution. The harmony necessary to conquer the reliance by the British Crown was much more significant to the people of Concord than their somewhat small problems and bickering. The most important feature behind the people’s determination to stay free was that they desired to preserve and defend their traditional life, on the other hand by combating to protect that life, Gross would point out that the Concordians in consequence opened themselves to change.
The mainly convincing argument Gross makes reveals the loss of patriarchal control in Concord, and apparently across the colonies. He portrays the manners sons rely on fathers for land, and daughters depend on fathers for dowries. As the financial environment changes, dowries are condensed, local fruitful land turn out to be limited and mature children have enticements to leave the relatives to trail the frontier. This outlays the father his basis of labor and outlays the children the resource of heritage and constancy.
The changes the Revolution had on the people of Concord were the building blocks of the democratic society as one recognizes it today. By joining together to depose the crown the people of Concord defeat the “barriers of residence and wealth”(61). Men in all positions of the society desired to defend their freedom, consequently after the Revolution the severe rules relating to the elitist model of government in Concord seldom existed.
Gross points out that after the Revolution the “newly elected delegate” was sent a “strict set of rigid rules” for him to follow “in court”(163). With new prominence placed on the people and their rights, politics was hardly ever about religious status any longer but more about equal representation. Also, after the revolution, Gross indicate that by 1790 there are no slaves in Massachusetts. With the Concordians fighting for their autonomy in the Revolution, it would be archetypal for the Concordians to see enslavement of any persons as hypocritical; when that is the very thing they were fighting against.
Agriculture also was alleviating by restructuring and intensive farming. This resulted in a better-off social life and landscape. In general, the competition between generations was declined and sons continued with their families instead of moving away. All things considered, a better-off economic and social approach developed the people of Concord after the Revolution, though not right away.
Robert Gross carried out a marvelous quantity of research to uncover information about persons whose names and achievements have long since been elapsed by the world, but he enlightens their tale so systematically that he permits the reader to overlook what a demanding assignment he took upon himself. With the closer look at Concord, Gross means to symbolize Concord as a representation of an ordinary colonial settlement during the Revolution. The characters in the book provide the reader logic of why the people in this town opted to rebellion. By representing the people of Concord and their causes to battle, Gross efficiently signifies all of the colonies that battled in the Revolution; as Gross describes the Concord fight as a happening in a wider war.
The Minutemen and Their World was ground-breaking in personalizing a Revolution. The author prolonged past proceedings and statistics into a persuasive account of people both normal and great. The points of view are concrete due to the heavy quantitative research.
Works Cited
Gross A. Robert, (April 30, 2001), The Minutemen and Their World, Hill and Wang; 25th Ann edition, IS
