Rather than recalling the Revolutionary War in its traditional way—as the armed struggle that lasted from Lexington and Concord in 1775 until the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781—it is illuminating in considering Jefferson to think of the struggle against Great Britain and its influence in American life as one that opened in 1764 and did not end until the Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans brought the War of 1812 to a close in 1815.77
