ark work in 1926. More accurately, it was a collection of four lectures that were subsequently collected into a hundred-page book. His basic premise was that the war was a social revolution. He made four main arguments (coincidental with the four lectures), which follow. First, Jameson argued that the status of persons was changed. He maintained that slavery was ended in a significant region by the war, and that abolitionism became fashionable and real as a political force. In order to contest this conclusion, it is a simple thing to counter-argue that since Massachusetts had but five slaves in 1776, it seems that slavery was definitely on its way out before the war even began in earnest. Moreover, it would be obvious to point out that abolitionism was certainly not new to the Northern States before and during the war. In short, the arguments regarding the status of people and how that status changed as a result of the war really do not hold up under scrutiny. Second, Jameson argued that the nature of the land promoted change in the people. He claimed that the geography of New England made for revolutionary thought among small holders and freemen that was not so evident among those in the tidewater south. But the colonists were “different sorts” to begin with; the Pilgrims and Puritans of the North were outcasts before they came across the Atlantic. The middle-staters of Pennsylvania--the Quakers--and especially Maryland--Catholics, Huguenots, and Presbyterians--were already in search of a place where they could be different and be at least quasi-independent. To lay the responsibility for the revolution on mountains and streams, thereby ignoring the nature of the people before they arrived, is a bit much to swallow. Did the land change the colonists, or were the human changes to the land merely a reflection of the ideas the colonists had with them already, and of the institutional-cultural heritage of these people? At the ve...
