- In August and September of 1776, New York City was the locus of the Revolution and the place where the Americans nearly lost the war. Russell Shorto, who wrote the definitive book on the Dutch in Manhattan, The Island at the Center of the World, recounts these events and provides a terrific virtual tour of the city in When New York City Was a (Literal) Battlefield (The New York Times, 19-Nov-2017)
When New York City Was a (Literal) Battlefield
What ultimately convinced Americans that they must revolt in 1776 was not that they were naturally and inevitably republican, for if that were truly the case evolution, not revolution, would have been the eventual solution. Rather it was the pervasive fear that they were not predestined to be a virtuous and egalitarian people that in the last analysis drove them into revolution in 1776. It was this fear and not their confidence in the peculiarity of their character that made them so readily and so remarkably responsive to Thomas Paine’s warning that the time for independence was at hand and that delay would be disastrous. By 1776 it had become increasingly evident that if they were to remain the kind of people they wanted to be they must become free of Britain.
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776—1787 (1969)