But what of the people who worked the Revolution, the men and women who were not among the ranks of fighting men, the majority of the population who remained at home and in the shops and in the fields? What of their contribution to this American cause of independence and freedom? While most are expected to be familiar with events like the Boston Massacre and with revolutionaries such as Benjamin Franklin, the often overlooked side of American history itself suffers similar downplay in the general study of the American Revolution. And like labor history in the United States post-1800, working in the Revolution, too, warrants its due attention.
At the time Tom Paine's Common Sense was going to the presses in 1776, the American colonial population was around 2.5 million. An estimated half-million of these were black Americans, slave and free, and were the second largest ethnic group behind the English. Women obviously comprised a significant portion of the entire population. Urban dwellers constituted only about five percent of the total colonial numbers, while independent small farmers remained the largest demographic. Estimates indicate that one out of every two or three adult males (roughly 250,000) served in the military against the British, while another 50,000 served in the British Army as loyal to the King.1
Even with all these people, emphasis on the famous battles and the soldiers who fought them seems to be most commonplace in the study of the American Revolution. Solely stressing the importance of the Continental Congress and its work throughout the war de-emphasizes the momentous contribution of the everyday colonial citizen.
An everyday citizen during the Revolution could have been the urban laborer. Although not a significant demographic in Colonial America, the city dweller nonetheless made significant contributions to the colonial and revolutionary economy, and was often the hardest hit as a result of wartime inflation and other war-related difficulties. He was a skilled artisan or craftsman, the owner of a family-owned shop working to make ends meet, a maritime worker, or an unskilled laborer or servant - many of whom, in fact, comprised the victims of the famous Boston Massacre.2 By the time of the Revolution, the "largest sectors of the wage-earning labor force were sailors, journeyman artisans, women and girls employed as domestic workers or in cloth and clothing production, and men and boys who...hauled freight and performed other backbreaking jobs...."3
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