Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 90

divided New England from the rest of the colonial
insurgents or allowed them to unite. Conflicting claims
issued by New York and New Hampshire to the area
that eventually became Vermont turned the skirmishes
into a civil war.
This struggle is the subject of Corbett’s book. He
begins with the 1763 treaty, which opened the region
to British settlement. He shows how regional religious,
political, economic, and family fractures formed and
how their differences framed the regional struggle for
colonial independence, which the decisive victory at
Saratoga did not influence. He shows that the war in the
north was identical to the war in the south. He ends, not
with the successful achievement of independence but
with its aftermath—the debtor rebellions in the 1780s.
Corbett argues that the war for American
Independence was a multi-sided struggle pitting rebels,
loyalists, and their allies against each other. There was
a struggle between the governments of New York and
New Hampshire for control of the territory that became Vermont. Settlers holding land grants transferred
their loyalty to whomever provided protection and
recognized their claims. Colonists took sides based on
their own interests, family, social c