One of the fascinating oddities of the American revolution was the way many mutually hostile groups of elites in America decided, in a brief period, to join forces in what seemed like a fool’s errand—a revolution against the imperial elite of Great Britain. Among their goals, these different and incompatible elites of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas and, eventually, Pennsylvania all wanted to reclaim and/or protect their long-established liberties, immunities, and rights of self-rule. What these different colonial elites had in common was a collective desire to fight a more distant elite that sought to control them with...