Founding Myths

by Ray Raphael

  3.The iconic treatment of Lexington and Concord also conceals what was happening in Boston preceding the British march. Residents there were flocking from the city in droves, hoping to avoid the military rule that was sure to accompany outright conflict. Active patriots tried to remove valuable property before it was confiscated, while even people who had taken no special part in the conflict feared they might soon be subjected to the hazards of war should Boston itself become a battlefield. On April 11 Boston merchant John Andrews noted “the streets and neck lin’d with waggons carrying off the effects of the inhabitants . . . imagining to themselves that they shall be liable to every evil that can be enumerated, if they tarry in town.” Three days after that, the Provincial Congress recommended that donations intended for relief of the poor in Boston be used to help evacuate the city. (John Andrews, “Letters of John Andrews of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 8 [1864–1865], 402; William Lincoln, ed., The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix, containing the Proceedings of the County Conventions [Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838], 142–143. See also Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, April 10, 1775.)

  4.Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, Seventh Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014), 107. For the May 10 resolution of Congress, see JCC 4: 342.

  5.Brinkley, Unfinished Nation, 93, 135, 137. The author does admit that “many people contributed to the Constitution,” which makes his claim of individual agency all the more striking. Madison was the “most important,” he proclaims, although ascribing the supreme importance of a single individual is optional, not necessary, to the narrative of the Constitutional Convention. (Ibid., 135.)

  6.Shays himself recognized this when he said to General Rufus Putnam, one of his adversaries: “I am not . . . I never had any appointment but that at Springfield, nor did I ever take command of any men but those of the county of Hampshire; no, General Putnam, you are deceived, I never had half so much to do in the matter as you think.” (Robert A. Feer, Shays’s Rebellion [New York: Garland, 1988; reprint of PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1958], 212.)

  7.Brinkley, Unfinished Nation, 129, and Alan Brinkley, American History: Connecting With the Past, vol. 1, Fourteenth Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 157; Michael Schaller, Robert D. Schulzinger, John Bezis-Selfa, Janette Thomas Greenwood, Andrew Kirk, Sarah J. Purcell, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context, Concise Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 279.

  8.The term “Regulators” had been used by popular uprising in South Carolina in the late 1760s and North Carolina in the early 1770s. For a more accurate treatment of the Massachusetts Regulators’ movement on 1786–1787, see Gregory Nobles, “ ‘Satan, Smith, Shattuck, and Shays’: The People’s Leaders in the Massachusetts Regulation of 1786,” in Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 215–31.

  9.This model is espoused in Linda Grant DePauw, “Politicizing the Politically Inert,” in The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives, William M. Fowler Jr. and Wallace Coyle, eds. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1979), 3–25.

  10.Stuart Murray, American Revolution (New York: DK Eyewitness Books, 2005).

  11.California: Fifth Grade Standards, Performance Standard CA 5.5.4., National History Education Clearinghouse: http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/state-standards/california/5.

  Afterword: Which Myths Persist, and Why

  1.Nancy Hewitt and Steven F. Lawson, Exploring American History: A Brief Survey with Sources (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013), 185–191.

  2.One author, attempting to set the record straight, points out the differences between Longfellow’s poem and the historical record: “Longfellow omits any mention of the other rider, William Dawes.” (Emphasis added.) That’s all there were, just the two of them, the fate of the nation still on their shoulders alone. James Cross Giblin, The Many Rides of Paul Revere (New York: Scholastic Press, 2007), 73.

  3.James West Davidson and Michael B. Stoff, America: History of Our Nation (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014), 171. This is a middle-school text.

  4.Hewitt and Lawson, Exploring American History, 165.

  5.James Oakes, Michael McGerr, Jan Ellen Lewis, Nick Cullather, and Jeanne Boydston, Of the People: A History of the United States, vol. 1, Concise Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 188.

  6.See chapter 4. Although none yet include Worcester’s declaration, textbooks for high school and college are beginning to take some notice of the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774. Several now describe the Massachusetts Government Act in greater detail, noting that it “terminated the long history of self-rule by communities in the colony of Massachusetts” or calling it the “most detested” of the Coercive Acts. Some stop there, but others continue with brief renditions of the revolt that erupted throughout the colony, highlighting one or two of the incidents. A select few offer more extensive accounts.

  Massachusetts Government Act: John Mack Faragher, Mari Jo Buhle, Daniel Czitrom, and Susan H. Armitage, Out of Many: A History of the American People, Seventh Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012), 151; David Goldfield, Carl Abbott, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Jo Ann E. Argersinger, Peter H. Argersinger, William L. Barney, and Robert M. Weir, The American Journey: A History of the United States, Brief Sixth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011), 132; Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie, The American Journey (New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe, 2012), 129.

  Brief renditions highlighting one or two of the incidents: Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Third Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), 195; James Henretta, Rebecca Edwards, and Robert Self, America: A Concise History, Fifth Edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012), 154; James Oakes, Michael McGerr, Jan Ellen Lewis, Nick Cullather, and Jeanne Boydston, Of the People: A History of the United States, vol. 1, Concise Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 178; Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B. Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor, United States History, Survey Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013), 104, 108. Not all these texts convey the democratic character of the rebellion, however: “John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other colonial leaders then convened a Provincial Congress to govern Massachusetts without Gage.” (Lapsansky-Werner, 108.) Samuel Adams was in Philadelphia at the time, and the push for a Provincial Congress was initiated by a multicounty meeting of committees of correspondence in late August, convened at the request of Worcester County, not Hancock, Adams, or other leaders from Boston (Raphael, First American Revolution, 84–84).

  More extensive accounts: James Roark, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson, and Susan M. Hartmann, The American Promise: A History of the United States, Fourth Edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 168–69, 171; Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005), 178–182. Nash’s book is not a text in the standard sense, but it is used as a basic text in several college courses. A key primary source from the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 is included in Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History of the United States (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), 93–95, a readings book that accompanies Zinn’s widely used A People’s History of the United States.

  7.The text can be viewed digitally at: http://www.rayraphael.com/documents/decloration_independence.htm or http://www.common-place.org/vol-09/no-01/raphael/. The monographic t
reatment of this period, which provides the context for the Worcester Declaration, is Ray Raphael, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord (New York: The New Press, 2002). Contextual documentary evidence is collected in microfiche form in L. Kinvin Wroth, ed., Province in Rebellion: A Documentary History of the Founding of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1774–1775 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975) and in other sources referenced in First American Revolution. Pauline Maier readily embraced the Worcester Declaration. (Talk given to the Massachusetts Historical Society, September 24, 2012.)

  8.Jacqueline Jones, Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyler May, and Vicki L. Ruiz, Created Equal: A History of the United States, vol. 1, Third Edition (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009), 188.

  9.David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant, Fifteenth Edition (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014), 19, 125.

  10.http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Molly+Pitcher.

  11.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Pitcher.

  12.Type in a brief passage on a Google search—“by every member present except Mr. Dickinson”—and you will find several thousand matches, quotations from Thomas Jefferson dated 1819 or 1821. Each time, Jefferson stated that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4 by all delegates to the Continental Congress except Dickinson. Casual readers surfing the Net will likely assume that Jefferson remembered well and knew what he is talking about, since he wrote the document himself. In fact, we have no record dating from the time of the event that anybody other than President Hancock and Secretary Thomson signed on July 4; several members present on the Fourth, in addition to Dickinson, never did sign. We do have clear documentation that an engrossed copy of the Declaration was signed by many members on August 2, and fourteen signers were not even present on July 4—but none of this contemporaneous evidence is revealed on the Google search so it carries no weight. In this manner, historical distortions due to the bending of memory easily take hold. Forty-three years after the fact, even Thomas Jefferson found himself influenced by the myth of a Fourth of July signing, purposely contrived by Congress, that had established firm roots in American culture. (See chapter 15.)

  13.Recently, for example, I noticed something suspicious about an army recruiting poster alleged to date from 1776 and reproduced in many textbooks. The poster opened: “To all brave, healthy, able bodied, and well disposed young men, in this neighborhood, who have any inclination to join the troops now raising under General Washington, for the defence of the liberties and independence of the United States.” This appears to be an artifact of the Revolutionary War, but the very small print following the bold introduction raised doubts in my mind: “Against the hostile designs of foreign enemies.” Just who were those “foreign enemies” with “hostile designs” in 1776? Americans at that time considered the British as their “Brethren” and “common kindred,” as they proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. They looked upon belligerent Indians as “savages” rather than foreign powers. Although they certainly regarded the Hessian soldiers contracted by King George III as “foreign,” they characterized those auxiliary troops as mercenaries motivated by money, not by “hostile designs.” Did this poster really date from the Revolutionary War?

  Thanks to the Internet, the answer came quickly. The names of three officers were listed on the poster, along with the regiment for which they were recruiting. A series of simple Google searches revealed that these three men did in fact serve together in the designated regiment in 1798, when General Washington was the titular head of the so-called “Additional Army” raised in anticipation of a war with France. Further searches revealed that these men also served during the Revolutionary War, but at no time during that war did they all hold the offices listed on the poster, nor did they serve in the designated regiment. Twenty years ago, I would have had to travel far or request diverse documents from distant repositories to acquire the relevant information, but a colleague and I resolved the matter within two or three hours, working from our office computers. Further, this work can be easily replicated and checked by other investigators. Historical research has been revolutionized and democratized. (Ray Raphael and Benjamin H. Irvin, “Take Notice: The Not-So-1776 Recruiting Poster,” in Journal of the American Revolution: Collectors Edition, vol. 1, Todd Andrlik, Hugh T. Harrington, and Don N. Hagist, eds. (Yellow Springs, OH: Ertel Publishing, 2013).

  14.See, for example, the prodigious output of the online Journal of the American Revolution, http://allthingsliberty.com/.

  15.Common Core State Standards Initiative, English Language Arts Standards—Reading: Informational Text, Grade 5, RI 5.6; English Language Arts Standards—History/Social Studies, Grade 6–8, RH 6–8.6; English Language Arts Standards—History/Social Studies, Grade 11–12, RH 11–12.6 and RH 11–12.8: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy.

  16.According to Common Core’s “publishers’ criteria,” there should be as little context as possible: “Text-dependent questions do not require information or evidence from outside the text or texts; they establish what follows and what does not follow from the text itself. Eighty to ninety percent of the Reading Standards in each grade require text-dependent analysis; accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of text-dependent questions. When examining a complex text in depth, tasks should require careful scrutiny of the text and specific references to evidence from the text itself to support responses.” (Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3–12, page 6: http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Publishers_Criteria_for_3-12.pdf).

  The rationale for such an approach is clear: students should focus on the material at hand, independent of extraneous information or misinformation that might color their reading. Unfortunately, though, it is impossible to achieve Common Core goals without paying significant attention to context. How can middle-school students determine the “avoidance of particular facts” without knowing what those facts are and bringing them into play? How can juniors and seniors corroborate or challenge an author’s “claims, reasoning, or evidence” with “other information” if no other information is to be considered? Common Core standards suggest that juniors and seniors examine Madison’s use of the term “faction” in The Federalist No. 10, but how could they possibly glean what he meant by “a rage for paper money . . . or for any other improper or wicked project” without examining what was happening in state legislatures at the time and how that played into the creation of a new Constitution?

  17.“AP United States History 2005 Scoring Guidelines” PDF, accessed October 1, 2013. http://www.mpsaz.org/rmhs/staff/jxcollums/class1/ap2/files/ap_2005_dbq_revolution.pdf. Among the “outside information” students might wish to bring to bear on this document, the Scoring Guidelines says, is “Molly Pitcher.”

  18.Molly Gutridge, Broadside, 1779. Evans Early American Imprints document 43671, repository New-York Historical Society. National Humanities Center website, accessed October 1, 2013. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/makingrev/war/text7/touchonthetimes.pdf.

  19.Here is a set of questions we might ask of any document:

  •Who is/are the authors, and how do we know that? When and where was the document created? In professional terms, what is the provenance?

  •Why just then? What else was happening at that very moment? We need strict chronology to establish context, paying close attention to the date of proximate events.

  •Has there been a lapse of time between events described in the document and reporting about them? If so, what public discourse might have influenced the author’s memory and presentation?

  •What are the broad parameters of the issues/problems/
events being addressed?

  •What were the acceptable limits of discussion at that time, within which this is presented?

  •What are the specific issues/problems/events being addressed? Again, we need to pay attention to chronology—specifics might change day by day.

  •Why might the author(s) be addressing these issues right at this particular moment? Who is the audience—public or private? Friend, foe, or other? What is the venue of communication—letter, diary, newspaper, book, etc.? Why does/do the author(s) even bother? Is this an attempt to convince? Strategize? Report? Inform? Describe? Express emotion?

  •What other sources might help determine the overarching goal and how this fits within it? Do other sources corroborate or contradict the author(s)? Do other authors offer similar or different accounts, claims, or arguments?

  PHOTO CREDITS

  Introduction and chapters 2, 5, 10, and 12 are taken from John Grafton, The American Revolution, a Picture Sourcebook: 411 Copyright-Free Illustrations (New York: Dover, 1975).

  Chapter 1 is from Harper’s Weekly, June 29, 1867, reproduced in Alfred F. Young and Terry J. Fife, We the People: Voices and Images of the New Nation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).