In November 1775, Martha Washington passed through Philadelphia as she traveled to visit her husband, who was camped outside Boston. The Continental Congress made a great ado about her visit, planning a ball in her honor. But the festivity did not sit well with the people of Philadelphia, whom the Congress had asked to participate in the boycotts—and accompanying shortages—of the Continental Association. It was no time for lavish parties. A friend of delegate Samuel Adams told him that if they went forward with the ball, then the City Tavern, the fancy establishment hosting it, "would cut but a poor figure to-morrow." Translation: the people of the city would tear the place down. Congressmen canceled the ball and apologized to the general's wife for the embarrassment.

As Benjamin Irvin's enlightening Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty demonstrates, this kind of encounter between Congress and the "people out of doors" was typical of the struggle to craft an independent government that could command the American people's allegiance. Congressmen self-consciously engaged in ostentatious ceremonies and rituals to replace the formerly beloved British government in the hearts of Americans. Yet people outside Congress routinely challenged the plans for war and resistance, and they questioned Congress's very claim to political power.

Irvin represents a trend among academic historians to see the Patriot movement as contested from within. Obviously, Loyalists did not support independence, but many others wished to mold the Revolution as a people's revolt, rather than acquiescing to every whim of Congress. General readers may find Irvin's book a bit difficult—it features a lot of lingo about the academic trinity of race, class, and gender. But the book also sheds fresh light on the Revolution's contingencies: the Patriot movement was a tense mixture of élite authority and popular resistance, making it even more remarkable that independence was achieved.

Thomas S. Kidd is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University, and the author of God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution.

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