tl;dr
A lot of luck was involved in the American Revolution, which somehow makes it even more remarkable. There are a few myths that linger that should die first off:
The Minuteman!- sucked. It became obvious early on that ill-trained and undisciplined "militia" were more of a liability than anything. Also, no matter how patriotic a man might be, he needs to eat. Adequate payment for services rendered and too-short enlistment periods continued to vex the Continental Army throughout the war.
Taxes!- were lower in the colonies than they were in London. The crown had a costly war with France going on at the time, and made the rather reasonable decision to tax the colonists on consumer goods to fund same. We aren't talking about flour and sugar either... we are talking things like TEA. By the way, you will be proud to know, if you are one of the very few Americans who had ancestors who were 1) in the colonies at the time and 2) not siding with the established authority at the time that colonists were attempting to get around the tea tax by importing the tax-less coffee bean. They hated it. Yup, if your ancestors were Americans in 1776 then you are descended from someone who disliked coffee enough to fight a war to get duty-free tea back. Something of a gross exaggeration, but then so was...
Democracy!- for white male landowners only. Even amongst this group, the founding fathers theorized, very few people were intelligent enough to choose leaders, and thus the electoral college was born. By the way, even my beloved New York still had legalized slavery on the books until 1810.
Georgia!- sorry Georgia... at this time you were a pit of vipers. More Tories per capita than any other colony. The George it was named after was King George... the guy the Americans were fighting. Georgia's penchants for rebellion really didn't come to play until right around the Civil War. By the way, Georgia wanted to secede from the Confederacy in the event of the South's ultimate victory. In short, if you study Georgia history, things get weird early on and never really stop.
Paul Revere's Ride!- was greatly exaggerated. If you want to read about a true hero who warned hundreds of the red coats's arrival, you're going to have to look up Israel Bissel.
With all this said, the American Revolution was truly remarkable (and I am glad it happened, obviously). We sided with France, which was more than happy to bloody England's nose (we would repay them later by setting the stage for their own revolution and all but writing a how-to manual on how to depose a monarchy... oops), relied heavily on a couple thousand miles of sea-water to stretch Imperial supply lines to near-bursting and then asked for French help in cutting it off completely. We gained Independence and then almost lost it at least a half dozen times before 1812, where the UK burned the white house to the ground. Luck, and the French, played a major part in us holding on after that. We then figured out that the continent we were on was a literal (in some cases) and figurative gold-mine, and proceeded to then buy a big-ole chunk of it from... the French... who needed the proceeds to fight another war... with the British (and others). We have abolished slavery (decades behind the British but who's counting), wrote a Constitution with one of the first Bill of Rights for every American (except women, slaves, Indians... eh we figured that one out too eventually) and eventually became a super power. And all this was decades before a single one of my ancestors set foot on American soil!
