Recently I was in a meeting with a bunch of people, one of whom is a relatively well-known historian, the historian stated 1/3 of colonist's supported the revolution, 1/3 supported the UK and 1/3 had no idea it was going on. I had a really hard time believing that (but did not want to call bs during the meeting) and tried to find something collaborating that statement and could not. Does anyone else have more info? Much appreciated
Did he/she have a source? Generally the 1/3 breakdown (taken from a post-war letter by John Adams refers to the sections of the population that were patriots, loyalists, or indifferent. This final third knew that the war was going on, but did not actively take sides. While Adams' estimate may have been a little high (Loyalists were probably closer to ~20% of the population), it does illustrate the three main mindsets that were prevalent in the Colonies. Personally, I've never heard that the 'indifferent' group were only such because they weren't aware that a war was going on. Given that the population of the U.S. was 2.5 Million in 1776, that would be nearly 750,000 people totally cut off from even the most basic communication. Eighteenth century communication was slow and inconsistent, but not that slow. Furthermore, looking at this map of Colonial population density, its clear that much of the population was still clustered along the Atlantic seaboard, and therefore very close to lines of commerce and communication.