by Jill Lepore
FIONA: Of course I do! He’s taxing us on silly things like stamps. That’s ridiculous!!!!!
This, I guess, was the belly of the beast, the alarming left-wing lunacy, the godless irreverence, the socialist political indoctrination taught in the public schools of the People’s Republic of Cambridge: an assignment that requires research, that raises questions about perspective, that demands distinctions between fact and opinion, that bears an audience in mind—an assignment that teaches the art of historical writing.
“Hey, Fiona!” Simon had wandered over. “What else did they tax besides tea and paper?”
“Oh, I’ve got a whole list.” She reached into her folder. “Look!”
Earlier in the year, the class had studied the Pilgrims, building colonial houses and Wampanoag wigwams out of hay and mud, and I had learned that if you put a marshmallow on top of a Girl Scout mint cookie, cover the whole thing with chocolate sauce, let it harden, and stick a butterscotch Lifesaver on it, for the buckle, it makes a pretty good Pilgrim hat. Fiona had been a star of the Pilgrim unit. In a skit on animal husbandry, she stole the show, playing, by turns, a pig, a sheep, and a chicken. She turned to Charlotte and Julie, “I think I should do this when I say, ‘ridiculous.’ ” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and pouted.
Julie shook her head. “That king must have been insane.”
I followed Simon back to the Boston Massacre, where there was much talk of Crispus Attucks.
Peter, leaning over his desk, suggested, “How about we have him say, ‘When I ran away from Framingham, I became a ropemaker’?”
Most of what happens is forgotten. Most of the past is lost, gone the way of Benjamin Edes’s spectacles and Phillis Wheatley’s unpublished poems and James Otis’s papers and Thomas Paine’s bones and Royall Tyler’s right shoe and Jane Mecom’s house. Historians sometimes rescue things. I pictured William Cooper Nell, digging in the archives and discovering that runaway ad from the Boston Gazette, and I was glad it had made its way, down through the years, and onto Peter’s desk.
“Right,” agreed Simon. “Because, remember, he’s mad at the British soldiers because they started taking his job.”
The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn’t enter into it.
Jazire, who has silver-rimmed, Franklinian glasses and who used to have a mohawk, but which was growing back in, was going to get to play Attucks, who was going to be their eyewitness. He was taking everything down with a black Sharpie. I asked him how he was going to be interviewed, given that he was killed during the massacre.
“No, that’s the good part,” he said, grinning. “In the middle of the interview, I get shot!”
In the hallway, the Boston Tea Partiers were lying on their stomachs on linoleum tiles of speckled blue, writing out cue cards on giant sheets of white-lined paper. Lucy and Zeyla were planning to be coanchors. They practiced their head-of-the-hour patter.
ZEYLA: How’s that tea doing today?
LUCY: Speaking of tea . . .
ZEYLA (to the camera): It’s November 3, 1773, Boston, Massachusetts.
LUCY: Samuel Adams said the Sons of Liberty should do something other than just talk. (cut to field reporter)
MAGGIE: Here I am on the wharf.
I asked Jeffte, who was waiting his turn to be the eyewitness, what he thought the Boston Tea Party was about.
“It was about taxes,” he said, while running laps up and down the hall. I didn’t think the Tea Party had much chance of getting to work in the hallway again. “They were taxing them on everything. If they were sitting in a chair”—he pointed to a chair, leaning against a wall, as he ran past it—“they would tax the chair.”
I headed back into the classroom. Nathalie and Sophia were glum about their project, which, it must be said, lacked a certain dramatic potential. They had to talk about four famous patriots. Their script was coming along, though, and they had found out some good stuff. “First up is John Adams, the second president. He wanted George Washington to lead the American troops. Did you know he was the lawyer for the British after the Boston Massacre? He believed everybody should get a fair trial.”
Lexington and Concord was revising a first draft. “Good morning! It’s April 20, 1775, on Colonial Times Today. Breaking news: the American Revolution has begun!”
I went over to the Battle of Bunker Hill. Grace was stage crafting.
“We’re going to have the field reporter be in, like, on a fake hill, and then—”
“A fake hill?” asked Josh. “How are we going to make that?”
There was a teacher’s assistant at the table.
“I have a feeling this group needs to do a little bit more research.”
The kids in this school, who come in every color, come from a lot of different places. Haider was from Pakistan and had only just got here. He was sitting on a rug, leaning against a bookshelf, writing. He was working on the Declaration of Independence. I asked him what the Revolution was about. He took a minute to think.
“At first, the United States wasn’t a country. They were with the British. And so the Declaration of Independence was made because Thomas Jefferson wanted the colonies to be free and he wanted the British to be a country, so they could live in their own country.”
I walked home to watch the news out of Austin, thinking how much I’d rather watch Colonial Times Today and wondering what would make a good Revolutionary snack. Later that day, the Texas School Board voted to approve nearly all the proposed amendments to its social studies curriculum. That curriculum will be revised again, one day soon. More things, too, are certain. In American politics, the story of the nation’s founding will be resurrected again and again, put to one use, and then another. A generation of historians will grow up and grow old. And I will hold dear, forever, the memory of a nine-year-old boy, sitting on a rug, quietly writing history.
The Revolution was a beginning; the battle over its meaning can have no ending. When I got on board the Beaver in Gloucester one raw winter’s morning, I remembered I had been on that ship before; in an attic somewhere, there must be a picture of me on a third-grade field trip, a red, white, and blue bicentennial feather in my Red Sox hat, standing on a crate marked TEA. There was no tea there anymore. In the bottom of the hull, bilgewater sloshed past a pile of rusty pulleys. Scattered from bow to stern were the remnants of work, interrupted: C-clamps, eyebolts, sheaves of plywood, a rumpled canvas, and a can of WD-40, missing its cap. A coil of rope occupied a bench. Down below, the ship’s rudder was bound with rope, held fast against the ocean’s everyday sway and the magnificent violence of each passing storm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Eighteenth-century books didn’t have acknowledgments, or not exactly, so maybe this book shouldn’t either. Except, thank goodness, the eighteenth century is over. Thanks, first, to Henry Finder at The New Yorker. Thanks to Brigitta van Rheinberg at Princeton University Press and to Ruth O’Brien at the Public Square. Thanks to Tina Bennett, as ever. Thanks to six historians who read the manuscript: Richard D. Brown, Eric Foner, Michael Klarman, James Kloppenberg, Jack Rakove, and Alfred F. Young. And thanks to six who commented on an earlier essay: Vincent Brown, John Demos, Tony Horwitz, Jane Kamensky, Bruce Schulman, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Thanks to members of the Boston Tea Party, who, knowing that we disagreed about very many things, took the time to talk with me, and thanks, too, to everyone I spoke with at the Old State House, the Old South Meeting House, Historic Tours of America, and the Gloucester Marine Railways. Heartfelt thanks to Jocelyn Marshall and her crackerjack third-grade class. Thanks to Hannah Goldfield and Christopher Glazek, for checking facts, and to J. C. Bell, Benjamin Carp, and Ray Raphael, for answers. For lickety-split last-minute assistance in the archives in the final days of writing this book, thanks to Latif Nasser, Natalie Panno, Bernard Zipprich, and especially Emily Graff. To everyone in my house, I promise: no more tea. Thanks, finally, to my students, who make the R
evolution interesting all over again, every time it rolls around.
Jill Lepore
Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 17, 2010
The 235th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill
NOTES
Prologue: Party Like It’s 1773
1 John J. Currier, History of Newburyport, Mass., 1764–1905 (Newburyport, MA, 1906), 66; Eleanor C. Parson, Thachers: Island of the Twin Lights (Canaan, NH: Phoenix, 1985), 13–17. My thanks to Leon Poindexter and Viking Gustafson for permission to board the Beaver.
2 Fred Pillsbury, “1973 Tea Ship Beaver II Had Rough Time Making It Here,” Boston Globe, December 16, 1973; Rick Klein, “After Blaze, Gift Shop Is History: Tea Party Museum, Ship Closed for Now,” Boston Globe, August 5, 2001; Javier C. Hernandez and Andrew Ryan, “Boston Tea Party Museum Catches Fire,” Boston Globe, August 27, 2007; Javier C. Hernandez, “Boston Tea Party Museum Catches Fire Again,” Boston Globe, August 28, 2007.
3 Rick Santelli, Squawk Box, CNBC, New York, February 19, 2009.
4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Concord Hymn,” in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), 9:158. On Emerson’s grandfather, see Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 1:120.
5 See, e.g., “Protestors Gather for Self-Styled Tea Party,” Fox News, Chicago, February 27, 2009.
6 Liz Robbins, “Tax Day Is Met with Tea Parties,” New York Times, April 15, 2009; Boston Tea Party 2009, weblog, April 22, 2009, http://teapartyboston2009.blogspot.com/.
7 William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 659–60.
8 Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: Norton, 2008).
9 Joe Biesk, “Thousands in U.S. Protest Tax Day with ‘Tea Parties,’ ” Associated Press, April 16, 2009.
10 Sean Hannity, The Hannity Show, Fox News, New York, April 15, 2009.
11 Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Boston: Thomas Hall, 1794), 6.
12 Robbins, “Tax Day Is Met with Tea Parties”; “Tea Parties Protest Government Spending,” slide show, New York Times, April 15, 2009; Michael E. Ruane, “D.C. Tax Protest Is No Tea Party,” Washington Post, April 16, 2009; Biesk, “Thousands in U.S. Protest Tax Day.”
13 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” in The Children’s Hour and Other Poems: Paul Revere’s Ride and Other Poems (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894), 1–6. On Revere’s place in history and memory, see David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New York: New Press, 2004), chap. 1.
14 Michael McDonald, “Voter Turnout,” United States Elections Project, http://elections.gmu.edu/index.html; Carl Hulse, “No Surprises in Electoral Tally,” New York Times, January 9, 2009; John Harwood, “Obama, with a Pile of Chips,” New York Times, February 14, 2009.
15 George Ticknor Curtis, The True Uses of American Revolutionary History (Boston, 1841), 1, 7–8.
16 Hannity, The Hannity Show, Fox News, May 6, 2009. On the history of the liberty tree, see Alfred F. Young, “Liberty Tree: Made in America, Lost in America,” in Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 325–94.
17 John Ridpath, “John Ridpath at the July 4 Boston Tea Party Protest,” video recording, ARCTV.com, July 14, 2009, http://arc-tv.com/john-ridpath-at-the-july-4-boston-tea-party-protest/.
18 Hannity, The Hannity Show, Fox News, New York, September 2, 2009; Glenn Beck, The Glenn Beck Show, Fox News, New York, September 2, 2009; Judy Keen and Greg Toppo, “Planned Obama Speech to Students Sparks Protest,” USA Today, September 1, 2009; Barack Obama, “Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama: Back to School Event,” September 8, 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/preparedschoolremarks/; Sam Dillon, “Presidential Pep Talk Ticks Off Year for Students,” New York Times, September 8, 2009. For CNN coverage, see http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/08/obama.school
.speech/index.html.
19 Joseph Andrew Stack, from “Joe Stack Statement: Alleged Suicide Note from Austin Pilot Posted Online,” Huffington Post, February 18, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/18/joe-stack-statement-alleg_n_467539.html.
20 Glenn Beck, The Glenn Beck Show, Fox News, New York, March 5, 2010.
21 The reenactment at the Old State House is run by the Bostonian Society and the National Park Service; I have worked as a consultant for both.
22 Hannah McBride, “Boston Massacre Event Gives Youths New View of History,” Boston Globe, March 7, 2010.
23 James C. McKinley Jr., “Texas Conservatives Seek Deeper Stamp on Texts,” New York Times, March 10, 2010.
24 James C. McKinley Jr., “Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change,” New York Times, March 12, 2010; Texas State Board of Education (TSBE), “Proposed Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies, Subchapter A, Elementary,” Texas Education Agency (TEA), April 2010, http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/ELEM_TEKS_1stRdg.pdf; TSBE, “Proposed Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies, Subchapter B, Middle School,” TEA, April 2010, http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/MS_TEKS_1stRdg.pdf; TSBE, “Proposed Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies (hereafter TEKS), Subchapter C, High School,” TEA, April 2010, http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/HS_TEKS_1stRdg.pdf.
25 TSBE, “113.13. Social Studies Kindergarten, Section B, Point 2,” in “Subchapter A, Elementary,” 2; TSBE, “113.13. Social Studies, Grade 2, Section B, Point 9b,” in “Subchapter A, Elementary,” 13; TSBE, “113.20 Social Studies, Grade 8, Section B, Point 12b,” in “Subchapter B, Middle School,” 25; TSBE, “113.41 Social Studies, United States History Studies Since 1877, Section C, Point 8.B, Point 9.E,” 5–7; TSBE, “113.41, 113.42 World History Studies, Section C, Point 20.C,” 23; TSBE, “113.41 Social Studies, United States History Studies Since 1877, Point 24,” in “Subchapter C, High School,” 10; TSBE, “113.44 United States Government, Section C, Point 1.B,” in “Subchapter C, High School,” 38; TSBE, “113.44 United States Government, Section C, Point 1.C,” in “Subchapter C, High School,” 39.
26 Milton Terris, “An Early System of Compulsory Health Insurance,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 10 (May 1944): 433–44; and see the discussion in Odin W. Anderson, The Uneasy Equilibrium: Private and Public Financing of Health Services in the United States, 1875–1965 (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1968), 21–22.
27 On anti-intellectualism, including its relationship to populism, see Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963). On history as conspiracy, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 70–81.
28 Many scholars have written about what Robert Bellah called a “civil religion” (“Civil Religion,” Daedalus 96 [1967]: 1–21), while others have examined the ways in which Americans have often taken the founding documents as matters of faith, including Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997); and Michael Kammen, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1986).
29 Warren G. Harding, “Inaugural Address: Friday, March 4, 1921,” in Fellow Citizens: The Penguin Book of U.S. Presidential Addresses, ed. Robert Vincent Remini (New York: Penguin Group, 2008), 298; Richard B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–4. Harding had earlier referred to “founding American fathers” (1912) and “American founding fathers” (1916). H. L. Mencken, “Gamalielese,” in On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe, ed. Malcolm Moos (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1956), 42.
30 The Spirit of Seventy-Six; Or, the Coming Woman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1
868), 51. What leads the founders to wake from the dead is always changing. In 1920, it was Woodrow Wilson (“fast leading the country to the eternal bowwows”): “Washington and the fathers are turning in their graves” (“Keynote and Platform,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 9, 1920).
31 Turning: Cobbett’s Weekly Register, August 20, 1825, 470; rolling over: Robert Harborough Sherard, A Bartered Honour (London, 1883), 138. With thanks to Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins.
32 Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864), 455.
33 For a reflection on this subject, see Charles Beard, “Written History as an Act of Faith,” American Historical Review 39 (1933): 219–31.
Chapter 1: Ye Olde Media
1 The Scallywag was sold by a hat company called elope, based in Colorado Springs.
2 Austin Hess, e-mail message to the author, March 23, 2010.
3 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas McKean, July 30, 1815, and Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 10, 1815, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:451–52.
4 Oliver’s history wasn’t published until 1961. Peter Oliver, Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View, ed. Douglas Adair and John A. Schulz (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1961). See also Linda Ayers, “Peter Oliver’s Portrait Gallery,” in Harvard Divided (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 17–40.
5 David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1789), 2:323.
6 Thomas Jefferson to Williams Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 12:356.
7 Garry Wills, A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 205.