The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution

Anderson (history, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) explores the themes of treason, loyalty, and social connections in her retelling of the American Revolution (1765–83) from the perspectives of solider-turned-spy Nathan Hale and Capt. Moses Dunbar, both of whom were later executed. The author asks readers to question their education concerning the Revolutionary War and its black-and-white rendering of patriots as good and loyalists as evil. In the process, Anderson successfully documents not only the injustices done to colonists by the British, but also the mistreatment of loyalists by the Whigs, a subject that is often overlooked. Readers will gain an understanding of colonists' frustration and hesitancy to conform to the ideologies of the majority, whether British or Whig, as tensions escalated and became lethal. Similar to Ruma Chopra's Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America, Anderson's work argues that men of similar backgrounds can end up on different sides of the same war.