ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an example of how a critical legal approach might provide us with some insights into the complexities of identity formation that were left behind in orthodox accounts of the American revolution. It uses the various synchronic and diachronic re-readings as a way of reframing discussions of American character in general and Andre's trial in particular. Various communities on both sides of the Atlantic used Andre's hearing as a way of discussing loyalist and republican values, the international rules of martial engagement, the fitness of militias, and the importance of "civic virtue". The British prisoner's artistic abilities, his noble graces, his apparent honesty, and his brave demeanor in the face of the gallows was the very enactment of civic virtue in late-eighteenth-century enlightenment culture. Washington's officers negotiated the tensions by highlighting the ability of the upper echelons of the rebel forces while admitting the lack of civic virtue on the part of members of the lower ranks.
