...speaking again of course as an enthusiast of history.

John, I am much more an enthusiast of history than a professional historian. As a beginning grad student I was concerned about my lack of breadth and I was fortunate enough to have been chosen as the graduate reader for the new French History Professor's series of courses in French History, which consisted of six courses of three semester hours each. For those I read an average of six books each, took the course myself and graded the undergraduates according to the professor's key. I probably retained as much from the lectures as I got from the readings.

Similarly with English history and Russian history. It was the National Schools period of American college curriculum, with all of the attendant problems. For Russian History I had already had an excellent series by a much better Yale educated professor while an undergrad in physics, as accompaniment to two years of Russian language. The Russian history professor was a Stanford educated neo-con who also graded the athletes' papers himself. He was a cold warrior and I was advised that declining to grade his courses would be bad for my career. It turned out that the history department as a whole was bad for my career.

I don't regret any of it, but wish I had had the sense to transfer to a better university, one more open to alternative views. The attitudes of the Russian and English History professors at the U. of Arizona were that the only thing worse than the total incomprehension most students displayed for ideas from the left was that I not only understood them immediately but actually embraced them. They considered themselves guardians at the gate of academe.

So I hardly consider myself a professional historian and I made my way in the world based on my Physics B.S. and attitude. For the next twenty years of so I spent more effort on anthropology and psychology than on history, but resumed my reading in the early '80s.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

But all the leaders were and had to be literate. Basic literacy was adequate to be the leader of a platoon, but it was important to be able to read written dispatches. The higher we go up the ranks the more important a good education became. That is why the leaders came from families that could afford to send them to school - for the most part. That could include a prosperous farmer, but, unless they had moved further onto the frontier after growing up in a more settled area and took their education with them, the frontiersmen were less likely to be 'well educated'. That said, they may will have valuable skills and knowledge that cannot be gained in school. And there were a number of self educated who had read widely in available books, but they had to be able to get the books somehow.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Power disparity in the American colonies grew slowly, because land was cheap and labour dearly expensive. Hence the outright slavery and sensitivity to tea or stamp taxes. So the colonial societies were rather egalitarian, ignoring slavery. The founding religious and social projects were hard to manage, hardly anything went according to intentions.