The American Revolution, as its story is told today, is presented as an impossibly ambitious David vs. Goliath fight that should never have worked. Using Hamilton as a contemporary example: "We are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned."
How much of this is mythmaking? So many of the Founding Fathers were men of means with a lot to lose, and it seems pretty clear from their writings that most of them were great minds too. So, given that they weren't stupid, it's a little hard to swallow that they would choose to risk their literal lives in favour of a hopeless cause?
So, was the cause less hopeless? Was there actually good strategic reason to believe that the Continental Army could defeat the British? know that Britain was also waging war against France and Spain, but the popular tale of the Revolutionary War holds that even a tiny fraction of British forces should be quite capable of stamping out the rebellion?
Or were the stakes less high for the people at the top? Certainly, the recruits were putting their literal lives on the line, but so has it ever been. Would Washington have been likely to face a firing squad or gallows if he had been forced to surrender? Would his fate have been different if he had surrendered in say 1777 vs 1782?
What about the Founding Fathers like Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison who were strong political proponents of Independence, but never actually took up arms against the British? How would a victorious Britain have been likely to treat them?
Or, is the modern myth relatively accurate and all these smart and wealthy men had sufficient ideological conviction that they were willing to gamble their very lives on a lost cause?
There isn’t scholarly consensus on this issue. First, it’s worth addressing some of the historiography. The seminal accounts of the American Revolution began with Charles Beard’s economic interpretation, which contended that the ideological rhetoric of “liberty” or “freedom” was utterly empty. Beard argued that the Revolution was purely a type of class warfare, an attempt by mercantile and landed economic interests to assert their claims. Beard’s theory, however, has largely been displaced by interpretations of the Revolution that give far more weight to the Founders’ philosophical and ideological convictions. These theories are typified by the works of Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood who both wrote extremely influential books (‘The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution’ and ‘The Radicalism of the American Revolution’ respectively) that totally upended the Beard-ian history. Specifically, they posited - pointing to pamphlet, newspaper, and other compelling primary sources - that the Founders were in fact driven by sincere ideological passions derived from genuine fear of tyranny. As I argued in this post, the Patriot economic theory revolves around a demand-side economic theory, and the mercantilist policy of Lord North was fundamentally at odds with this. While the word “economic” might seem Beardian, in fact the heart of the issue of ideological, derived from the philosophies of Locke, Harrington, Smith, etc.
As for whether the cause was “hopeless”: yes and no. The original “cause” of the Revolution was not independence; it was, as I intimated earlier, an effort to encourage a different economic theory for the colonies. This could hardly have seemed hopeless; a policy shift could very well have turned only on a favorable change in governing administration across the pond. Because no such policy change seemed imminent, however, the creeping goal of independence rose to the forefront and this, of course, was a considerably less hopeful endeavor. It is undoubtably true that the colonial military capabilities paled in comparison to the British capabilities; George Washington, for example, nearly resorted to burning New York to the ground himself just to slow the British down (and would have done so had the Continental Congress not stopped him). Indeed, this asymmetry in military might was the crux of significant debate in the Continental Congress between those who desperately and vociferously sought to pursue French aid and those who feared replacing one monarchy with another (there’s an interesting history here, for example, the feud between Silas Deane and Arthur Lee). Ultimately, therefore, yes, the military might of the colonies had zero - yes zero - chance of defeating the British. Even victories like Saratoga, for example, are not really remembered because they indicated the colonists would “win,” they are remembered because of the impending French intervention. Indeed, the only chance at victory without French aid would have been if the British just gave up.
As for repercussions, this is impossible to answer; I cannot provide evidence for a historical counter factual. With that being said, it seems pretty clear that the Founders - including those not directly involved in military affairs - would have been executed. Of course, politics play a role in everything so who knows which individuals might have been able to skirt sanction. But (and personal writings of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and others suggest this), the Founders recognized the threat of death and acknowledged it. Indeed, this was probably a not insignificant factor in the pursuit of French aid.