“This is a book about a cruel and ruthless war—a war without mercy—in which those caught up in it believed they had nothing to lose by fighting without regard for the rules of so-called ‘civilized warfare.’ It was the War for American Independence. At its grimmest level, this was a confrontation in which military restraint was more the exception than the rule, a struggle in which combatants believed their very existence was in question.”

Those are the words of my guest Mark Lender and his co-author, the late James Kirby Martin, from their book War Without Mercy: Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. While a growing number of historians have shown that the Revolutionary War was often far more brutal than Americans like to remember, few have attempted to explain why it became so brutal. Lender and Martin argue that the answer lies in understanding the Revolution as an existential war: a conflict in which participants believed defeat threatened not merely political loss, but the destruction of their families, communities, and way of life.

Mark Lender is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University and most recently served as advisor to the 250th Anniversary Exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Army. He and James Kirby Martin also co-authored A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789.