Modern American society still talks about and references the American Revolution all the time. Its battlefields are well preserved and marked, its literature is still invoked in modern political campaigns and speeches, its symbols and quotes and prominent figures are everywhere in stone and bronze and steel and ink—at least for now. Perhaps the individual motivations for participation in violent struggle were as numerous as the individuals who participated. On a certain level, then, asking, “What were they fighting for?” is only inviting inevitable oversimplification. Even so, an attempt to spell out some of what provoked men and women to shoot at each other (or to support others in the endeavor) may serve to at least demonstrate the wide range of impulses driving the American Revolutionary War. War, like other historical phenomena, is complicated. It’s muddy….