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  • Tories

  • Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War
  • By: Thomas B. Allen
  • Narrated by: Jeremy Gage
  • Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (6 ratings)
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Tories

By: Thomas B. Allen
Narrated by: Jeremy Gage
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Editor reviews

The story of how America rallied together from a collection of colonies under British rule to an independent nation brings a sense of unity, pride, and patriotism. It's easy to forget that there’s another side to the story of the Revolutionary War and America’s independence — that some Americans did not want to break from the leadership of the British monarchy. Prolific historian Thomas B. Allen’s latest, Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War, provides a fascinating look at this opposition on the home front.

Jeremy Gage narrates Tories with an inquiring tone that complements the investigative nature of Allen’s prose. Although many American history textbooks seem to gloss over British loyalists on American soil, Tories takes a road less travelled by presenting a history of the Revolutionary War as a civil war between colonists, highlighting the conflicts that often tore apart communities as Americans went about persecuting each other in a divided fight for independence. It is a disenchanting view but a powerful exploration, and Gage is more than willing to take the plunge into the darker side of the war that gave birth to the United States of America. His performance captures the bitterness between opposing sides inhabiting the American colonies during the war, which crescendos as the Patriots start winning battle after battle, leading up to the ultimate flight of 8,000 Tories to Canada to escape persecution.

Tories allows the listener to experience the Revolutionary War from a different perspective as it sheds light on some of the darker corners of the American war for independence. While the war is most often remembered with an overwhelming feeling of patriotism, the reality is that both sides were indelibly cruel to one another during those years. Gage serves as a guide, bringing nuance to each conflict presented in this revised look at the American Revolutionary War. —Suzanne Day

Summary

A Sweeping, Dramatic History of the Americans Who Chose to Side with the British in the Revolution....

The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.

In this outstanding and vital history, Allen tells the complete story of these other Americans, tracing their lives and experiences throughout the revolutionary period. New York City and Philadelphia were Tory strongholds through much of the war, and at times in the Carolinas and Georgia there were more trained and armed Tories than Redcoats. The Revolution also produced one of the greatest and least known migrations in Western history. More than 80,000 Tories left America, most of them relocating to Canada.

John Adams once said that he feared there would never be a good history of the American Revolution because so many documents had left the country with the Tories. Based on documents in archives from Nova Scotia to London, Tories adds a fresh perspective to our knowledge of the Revolution and sheds an important new light on the little-known figures whose lives were forever changed when they remained faithful to their mother country.

©2010 Thomas B. Allen (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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An extremely biased history

I purchased this book in the hope that it would be a balanced account of the period, sadly my hopes were dashed.
The authors casualty statistics are to frank ludicrous and so biased in favour of the Continental rebel army as to be quite funny.

I have always found American authors to be quite unsound on the true reasons for the conflict (almost entirely colonists being unwilling to pay there fare share for of the huge spending by Britain during the French and Indian war which was fought at the cost of thousands of British troops lives to defend the aforementioned colonists. Then when taxes were levied to pay for it the colonists claimed they were excessive in spite of the Colonists paying less than half the amount of tax a mainland Britain was paying at the time.)

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