The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789

Although editors C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter had embarked on the series in 1961, multiple other candidates to write the volume on the American Revolution fell through before Middlekauff was assigned to the task in the 1970s.

Multiple reviewers criticized the absence of social history and the limited coverage of Loyalists,[a] women, American Indians, and Black people.

The new edition contains more social history, including coverage of American Indians, Black people, Loyalists, and women, though it remains focused on politics, war, and constitutionalism.

[10] Initially, Hofstadter and Woodward sought to persuade Bernard Bailyn to write the series' second volume, planned to cover the American Revolution.

[41] The Glorious Cause characterizes the American revolutionaries as having been widely influenced by fervent Protestantism,[42] portrays the Founding Fathers as having been pious and providentialist,[f] and avers that their ancestors were religiously motivated to leave England to establish a new society in North America.

[44] In the words of reviewer Morgan Dederer, Middlekauff "perceives the American colonist's [sic] break with Great Britain almost as a religious event couched in philosophical/political terms".

[3] The first edition's dust jacket bears artist John Trumbull's painting The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775.

[49] Historian Jack P. Greene praised the book's readability, summing up that the "style is lively, the narrative flow rapid, and the scholarly analysis unobtrusive".

[51] Historian William W. Freehling noted the book's affordability for everyday consumers, averring that its price "will not dent the family budget horridly".

[53] Historian Ann Gorman Condon considered the detailed coverage of "[m]ob scenes, battle tactics, Washington's leadership qualities" the book's "superb moments".

[55] Literature professor Robert Reynolds wrote that although Middlekauff "is a very intelligent writer" with "interesting views and judgments which he backs up effectively", the book is challenging to read, as The Glorious Cause on multiple occasions presents events and figures without reminding readers of what or who they are, and occasionally without introducing them at all.

[57] Oxford University Press editor Sheldon Meyer suspected that Wood's review of The Glorious Cause partly motivated the 1985 departure from the series of T. H. Breen, who had agreed as early as 1970 to write the volume on the colonial era.

[68] According to historians Robinson, Wallace Brown, and Kristofer Ray, The Glorious Cause is inattentive to the role and experiences of Native Americans, such as the Cherokee and Haudenosaunee.

[53] John E. Selby called The Glorious Cause a "traditional comprehensive work" that "incorporate[s] the newer insights" of the field of American revolutionary history.

[72] According to Condon, the first and third sections—covering the lead-up to the war for independence and the postwar period—are unbalanced and flawed but the second section, focused on military history, is "full of solid information and good insights": Middlekauff "skillfully assesse[s]" both sides' military commanders, sympathetically captures the human experience of the conflict, and thickly details the life of "the common soldier: his recruitment, training, life in camp, medical attention, wives and mistresses, and abiding loneliness".

[74] At the time of The Glorious Cause's publication, Gibbs and Robinson praised the novelty of Middlekauff's argument that religion played a major role in motivating the American Revolution.

[78] According to James, The Glorious Cause mentions but deemphasizes socioeconomic clashes among American colonists, carrying on a "patriotic tradition" of history that makes "Loyalists seem innately to have been aliens in their own land".

[81][b] Higginbotham considered The Glorious Cause "reasonably compatible with the neo-whig or consensus" schools of thought that emphasized disastrous British policy, deemphasized economic history, and centered the Revolutionary War.

[82] Historian Kristofer Ray argued that The Glorious Cause was part of a Cold War-era historiography shaped "by neo-Whig insistence" on the "inevitability of American independence".

[83] Burnard called The Glorious Cause a "neo-Whig book" and averred that Middlekauff "virtually ignores" historical scholarship that argues the Revolution and Constitution were controversial and divided early Americans.

[90] Kathleen M. Lynch designed the front cover, which bears American painter John Trumbull's 1820 artwork, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.

A stone building on an asphalt street. A wrought iron fence separates the building and street. Four columns flank the entrance, a high archway over which is chiseled "OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS". Architectural wings extend from either side of the main section of the building. A bright blue sky is visible in the background.
Oxford University Press , publisher of the Oxford History of the United States and of The Glorious Cause
The central focus of the painting is Warren's body, dressed in white, and John Small, a British major, dressed in a scarlet uniform (holding a sword in his left hand). Small, who had served with colonial general Israel Putnam during the French and Indian War, is shown preventing a fellow British soldier from bayoneting Warren. Trumbull wanted to express the poignancy in the conflict of men who had earlier served together. On the far right of the painting is a colonial officer, Thomas Grosvenor, with a black man holding a musket behind him. The black man was long thought to be Peter Salem, a freed slave who served in the cause of American independence. Later research identified him as a slave belonging to Grosvenor. The foreground is littered with bodies from both sides of the conflict, and the background includes clusters of colonial and British troops carrying flags. Boston Harbor is also visible in the distance. The sky is partially obscured by smoke rising from Charlestown, which had been torched by the British.
The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775 by John Trumbull
A Caucasian man with thin white hair. He is visibly older, with a somewhat wrinkled face. He wears round glasses, a blue button up shirt, a red necktie, and a black suit jacket. He stands at a podium with two microphones in front of him. He is in the middle of speaking.
Gordon S. Wood wrote a critical review of The Glorious Cause in 1982 and recommended it to Five Books readers in 2020.
A woodcut of a woman. The color is mostly brown with black lines. The woman stands center, wearing a tricorn hat and a dress with sleeves to her elbows and a skirt to her shoes. She faces the viewer. In her left hand she holds the end of a rifle, its buttstock resting on the ground. Her right arm crosses her waist with her hand clasping something at her left hip that is curved; possibly a horn? Or a waterskin? In the background in the lower left, a flat waves off in the distance.
Some reviewers criticized The Glorious Cause for its marginal treatment of women's history .
A black-and-white engraving depicting George Washington, wearing a cloak and dressed in the apparel of an eighteenth-century military officer, down on one knee in the center of the image, his hat doffed and lain next to him, surrounded by leafless trees in a winter scene. In the background to the right, a few soldiers—likely meant to imply the Valley Forge camp—are visible.
Middlekauff argued that religious motives played a significant role in the American Revolution .
In the center of the scene, American General Benjamin Lincoln appears mounted on a white horse, facing the audience. He extends his right hand toward the sword carried by the surrendering British officer, General Charles O'Hara (on the left in the image), who heads the long line of troops that extends into the background. To the left, French officers appear standing and mounted beneath the white banner of the royal Bourbon family. On the right are American officers beneath the Stars and Stripes; among them are the Marquis de Lafayette and Colonel Jonathan Trumbull, the brother of the painter. General George Washington, riding a brown horse, stayed in the background because Cornwallis himself was not present for the surrender. The Comte de Rochambeau is on the left center on a brown horse.
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull (1820)