The Real Story of the   American Revolution

Mission, Management, and Disclaimers

Mission | Method | Management | Site History | Disclaimers

Mission, Purpose, Goal of the RSAR  The Editorial Board of the RSAR is committed to providing a comprehensive and sound history of the achievement of independence for the United States of America -- as proclaimed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence liberty (individual rights) for the citizens of the United States -- as specified in the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 through 10). This includes extensions of the right to vote for representation in the U.S. Congress:     Amendment 15 (race, color, servitude)     Amendment 19 (gender)     Amendment 26 (youth age 18-20) respect for the rights of individuals in minorities (for example small states, unpopular points of view, and multiple cultures) within a republic governed through majority vote and with a mainstream culture -- as provided through the Constitution of the United States (as amended), which is designed to minimize ungenerous actions through a balance of powers between the population-representative House, the state-representative Senate, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court. These achievements are incorporated in the U.S. motto,            e pluribus unum. The literal translation of this Latin phrase is,            Out of many, one. A more explicit interpretation of the phrase is,            Here people with a wide variety of views            and cultural backgrounds are committed            to building a single strong community.

Methodology  Education: The Editorial Board of the RSAR is developing educational resources to support curricula for and independent study of three key themes that are often absent from contemporary textbooks:       Discovering Liberty       Acquiring Liberty       Maintaining Liberty Enjoyment: The Board is also posting historical and heritage tourism resources to support general studies of the American Revolution and its participants in four areas:       Commemorations and Heritage Tours       Political and Social History       Military History and       Rosters and Documentation of Service Responsibility: Each RSAR page has a Page Manager who writes, updates, or edits the material. He has responsibility to provide well-sourced and well-written material to support the goals for the site. His Email address is usually posted at the bottom of the page (or the parent page in the outline structure). Please send questions or reports about problems with a page to the Page Manager, with a copy to the Managing Editor. In many cases the address is a given not as an active link but as a graphic, in which case you must write it down and then type it into your Email program's "TO" window.

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Management of the RSAR  The RSAR site will be under new management after July 15, 2008. It has been a pleasure for me to serve as Managing Editor for the past four years, and I wish the new management team every success as they continue the SAR's century-long tradition of providing reliable and comprehensive information about the history of the American Revolution. This has been a group effort, extending beyond the RSAR Committee and beyond the SAR, but those who provided most input and consultation were the RSAR committee, which for 2007-8 consisted of myself, Vice Chairs Richard Q. Fowler, Charles R. Lampman, and Ray Clapsadle; Members Robert Bowen, Roland Downing (President-General 2004-5, who initiated the concept), Leward Dunn, Charles Miller, Donald Moran, George Thurmond, Ron Toops, and Robert Yankle; and Advisors Colleen Wilson (NSSAR staff), William Clotworthy, and J. David Dameron.         --- Ralph Nelson, Managing Editor (2004-2008)

The national office of the National Society, Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR) may be contacted through Executive Director National Society, Sons of the American Revolution 1000 South Fourth Street Louisville, Kentucky 40203 Phone: (502)-589-1776 Email: [NOTE: Type this address in your Email program's "TO" window.]

History of the RSAR Site  In 2004 November PG05 Roland Downing -- who was Secretary General and Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee at that time -- appointed a task force to review what presentations about the American Revolution were already on the Web and to recommend what the SAR should do to build on that to provide the public with clear and comprehensive material that was supported by sound documentation. The task force found numerous sites with good material, but there were several things lacking. #1 -- The sites typically focused on narrow topics related to their funding or locale. The larger government-sponsored sites (Library of Congress, National Park Service, National Archives) were just beginning to post their extensive inventories of excellent material and had not developed comprehensive descriptions following the struggle for liberty from the colonists' annoyances in the early 1700s through to the worldwide rebellions against colonialism in the mid 1800s. #2 -- The sites generally overlooked the stabilizing effect of including multiple social and political groups in governance through mechanisms that protected them from the tyranny of the majority. These mechanisms have helped the United States achieve peaceful accommodation as stresses developed that threatened fracture of the social fabric. This has accomplished "e pluribus unum" (many individuals committed to a strong community) rather than "e pluribus pluribus" (many individuals who won't help anyone else). The task force recommended developing a Web site to link the good material together within temporal, geographic, and thematic frameworks that allowed visitors to comprehend the scope and appreciate the key features of the American Revolution. A draft site was created to explore various structures and to solicit suggestions for improvement from members of the SAR. The site name, domain name, and development as five areas -- educational themes, contemporary commemorations, political history, military history, and rosters -- were agreed on and the new site went public in 2005 September. During the first two years page traffic rose from 3,000 to 9,000 pages per month.

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Disclaimers for the RSAR Site  This Web site is not an official publication of the NSSAR, and the pages on this Web site are not official statements of the NSSAR. The material presented on any specific page on this Web site is solely the work and responsibility of the Page Manager noted there and others listed as contributers for that page. The inclusion of a reference to a commercial product or service is not an endorsement or approval of that product or services. The inclusion of a link to a government or other external site is not an endorsement or approval by the NSSAR of any views or content on those pages. A "target" page on an external site may become un-reachable (a 404 error) due to a change in address (URL) of the page or removal from the external site. In some cases the content of the "target" page may change so that it is no longer useful as a page linked from the "referring" RSAR page. These external changes are not under the control of the RSAR, but we should like to update the address of the "target" page or to modify or eliminate the link from the "referring" RSAR page to that page. You can help us fix the problem by sending a note to the Page Manager of the "referring" RSAR page using the Email address listed at the bottom of that page. Please include the address (URL) of the "referring" RSAR page, the address (URL) of the "target" external page, and a brief description of the problem.

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