BROAD OVERVIEW

Even before the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Americans and their British adversaries began efforts to document this struggle. Many of these early histories have been reprinted in modern editions and offer insights into how the Revolutionary generation saw the struggle for independence. Among the earliest general accounts of the conflict are David Americans remained loyal to the British Crown, John Adams estimated the number as high as one-third of the population, and Peter Oliver's Origins and Progress of the American Revolution (1781, San Marino: Huntington Library, 1961) wrote one of the earliest histories from the loyalist perspective.