>> mistaken idea that our war of independence was a revolution
Please say more about that. If it wasn't a revolution, what was it?
It was a war of colonial independence. Off the cuff, I would propose a typology like this
1. Revolution.
This is like the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution. The people who believe themselves to be oppressed by those in power attempt a "revolution" meaning an overturning of power and those at the top go to the bottom and those at the bottom go to the top. The goal is to remake the social order. It never works like that, but that's the idea and that's why it's such a messy business and why there are ebbs and flows and purges - nobody has any clear idea of when the revolution is over.
2. Revolt
This is like the Northern Rising in England or perhaps the Fronde in France or any number of peasant or noble revolts. The goal is not to overturn the social order, but to get specific demands met - cheaper bread, relief from an onerous tax, etc. The goal is the same social order, but with a little more consideration for the people who got upset enough to revolt. The revolt is over when the revolters get what they want or get violently put down. In a revolution, the king is bad. In a revolt, the king has bad ministers and if we can only get the ear of the good king, all will be set right.
3. War of Independence
The American Revolution. We didn't free the slaves, take away land from the landed gentry or really change the social order at all. We merely told the king to bugger off. Otherwise the social order was hardly changed. The war is over when the colony governs itself. Think of how radically the social order in Canada would have to change in order for Canada to quit being a monarchy and become a republic. Would anyone even notice? In a war of independence, the king may or may not be bad, but he has no business telling us what to do. In other words, he's a legitimate king, he's just not legitimately *our* king.
4. War of Secession
That's like the American Civil War. The main difference between this and #3 is that the breakaway state is not a colony, but part of the state it is seceding from. But again, the idea is not typically to overturn the fundamental social order, but rather for those who think they should be in power if not for the central government to actually be in power. In our case, the Civil War was fought because the people seceding wanted to avoid changing the social order, not because they wanted a revolution. Quite the opposite.
5. Civil War. Sort of like a revolution, but without a utopian social agenda. Think Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia. True nastiness
https://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359So in this thread, we're talking about #1. And as nasty as #4 is, the one you really don't want to live through is #1 or its close brother #5 because they are going to be the hardest ones to hide from.
In some cases, what you call it is a political choice. Traditionally, leftist historians liked to talk about the English Revolution while more conservative historians prefer the term English Civil War.
And of course, the American Civil War was a Civil War but, again, as nasty as it was, for the man in the street, at least if you're on the winning side and not of draft age, it's not all that bad living in New York during the war. But in #1, Paris and Moscow were very dangerous places no matter who you were. And in #5, well, you might wake up tomorrow and find your neighbor who was at your cookout last month hacking the legs off your daughter with a machete.
There is a French/Romanian philosopher named Emile Cioran who said that he liked to frequent criminals because they only kill one person at a time, while under saints they die by the millions. By "saints" he meant Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Cromwell and all the people who promised utopia at the expense of just a few million, or perhaps one hundred million, peasants (I believe the estimated death toll from Mao's famines was over 100 million).
