Founding Myths (57 page)

  
9
.
  
For the names and ages of seventeen people enslaved to Washington who fled in 1781, see Raphael,
People's History of the American Revolution
, 262, 361. For additional information and sources concerning these and other enslaved people who left Washington's plantations, see Cassandra Pybus,
Epic Journeys: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 45–47, 230–231; and Charles Lincoln, ed.,
Naval Documents of the American Revolution
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906), 5: 1250–1251. For the number of slaves Washington owned, see Jackson T. Main, “The One Hundred,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, Third Series, 11 (1954). For in-depth investigations into Washington and slavery, see Fritz Hirschfield,
George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), and Henry Wiencek,
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

10
.
  
Benson Lossing,
Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution
(New York: Harper Brothers, 1851), 2: 779. See also Ramsay,
History of the Revolution in South Carolina,
2: 382.

11
.
  
William C. Nell,
Colored Patriots of the American Revolution
(Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855; Arno Press and
New York Times
reprint edition, 1968), 7–8. Phillips's remarks were written as an introduction to an earlier draft of Nell's work, published as a pamphlet in 1852.

12
.
  
Nell,
Colored Patriots
, 5–6.

13
.
  
Ibid., 236–237.

14
.
  
The views of committed abolitionists were echoed by George Bancroft, who always gave a Northern slant to his history of the Revolution. Bancroft reported that “more than seven hundred black Americans fought side by side with the white” at Monmouth, and he made a special point of including blacks in his treatment of Bunker Hill: “Nor should history forget to record that, as in the army at Cambridge, so also in this gallant band, the free negroes of the colony had their representatives; for the right of free negroes to bear arms in the public defence was, at that day, as little disputed in New England as their other rights. They took their place not in a separate corps, but in the ranks with the white men; and their names may be read on the pension roles of the country, side by side with those of other soldiers of the revolution.” (George Bancroft,
History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent
[Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1879; first published 1834–1874], 6: 142, and 4: 614.) Bancroft probably based
his Monmouth numbers on the returns of Alexander Scammell, adjutant general of the Continental Army, for August 24, 1778, which identified 755 black soldiers. (Neimeyer,
America Goes to War
, 83].) Bancroft's regional pride was unabashed: while slavery prevailed in the South, the rights of “free negroes” were never questioned in his native New England. But Bancroft failed to mention the next chapter in this saga: within a month of the heroic performance of African American soldiers at Bunker Hill, Horatio Gates, the adjutant general for the rebel forces, prohibited the recruitment of “any stroller, Negro, or vagabond.” (Benjamin Quarles,
The Negro in the American Revolution
[Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press], 15.)

15
.
  
John Fiske,
The American Revolution
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 1: 178.

16
.
  
Edward Eggleston,
The Ultimate Solution of the American Negro Problem
(Boston: Gorham Press, 1913), 127–128.

17
.
  
Edward Eggleston,
A History of the United States and Its People
(New York: D. Appleton, 1888) and
The New Century History of the United States
(New York: American Book Company, 1904).

18
.
  
These are the texts available at the University of California's Northern Regional Library Facility in Richmond: D.H. Montgomery,
The Leading Fact of American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1891); D.H. Montgomery,
The Student's American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1897); D H. Montgomery,
The Beginner's American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1899); Roscoe Lewis Ashley,
American History, for Use in Secondary Schools
(New York: Macmillan, 1907); David Saville Muzzey,
An American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1911); Willis Mason West,
American History and Government
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1913); Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton,
A History of the United States
(Boston: D C. Heath and Co., 1913); William Backus Guitteau,
Our United States: A History
(New York: Silver, Burdett and Co., 1919); Reuben Post Halleck,
History of Our Country for Higher Grades
(New York: American Book Company, 1923); Rolla Tryon and Charles R. Lingley,
The American People and Nation
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1927); William A. Hamm, Henry Eldridge Bourne, and Elbert Jay Benton,
A Unit History of the United States
(Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1932); David Saville Muzzey,
The United States of America
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1933); David Saville Muzzey,
An American History
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1933); David Saville Muzzey,
History of the American People
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1934); Harold Underwood Faulkner and Tyler Kepner,
America: Its History and People
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934); Ruth West and Willis Mason West,
The Story of Our Country
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1935); James Truslow Adams and Charles Garrett Vannest,
The Record of America
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935); Harold Rugg and Louise Krueger,
The Building of America
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1936); William A. Hamm,
The American People
(Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1942); George Earl Freeland and James Truslow Adams,
America's Progress in Civilization
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942); Gertrude Hartman,
America: Land of Freedom
(Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1946); Robert E. Riegel and Helen Haugh,
United States of America: A History
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953).

19
.
  
The lack of attention given to blacks during the early years of Jim Crow comes as no
surprise, but it is astonishing that the silence continued in the subsequent writings of the Progressives. Despite their interest in the social “revolution” fought on the home front, historians such as Carl Becker, Charles and Mary Beard, and John Franklin Jameson paid little attention to the most fundamental class conflict of all: that between enslaved people and their masters. The Beards chronicled the “desperate struggle” in Virginia “between planters on the seaboard and small farmers of the interior, a struggle which involved nothing less than a revolution in the social order of the Old Dominion”—but enslaved people must have sat that revolution out, for they are not included in the tale. The fact that the institution of slavery rigidified in the South ran counter to the Beardses' thesis that the American Revolution had brought about “the opening of a new humane epoch.” (Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard,
The Rise of American Civilization
[New York: Macmillan, 1927] 1: 267, 296.) In a similar vein, Jameson stated that “very substantial progress was made” during the Revolution toward “the removal or amelioration of slavery.” (J. Franklin Jameson,
The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940; first published in 1926], 26.) The flight of enslaved people to the British was not included as part of the “amelioration” of slavery or the “new human epoch.” Although the Northern version of the black Revolutionary tale made occasional cameo appearances, the Southern version was entirely left out.

20
.
  
George W. Williams,
History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1880
(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883; reprint edition, Arno Press, 1968), 326. Between the work of Nell and Williams, one other black historian gained some readership. In 1867 William Wells Brown recapitulated Nell's work in a book titled
The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity
(Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867). Like Nell, Brown ingratiated himself to a white audience by pointing to the patriotic service of blacks; his only major change was to use the term “Negro” instead of “colored.”

21
.
  
Williams,
History of Negro Race
, 1: 355–359. Although he did include David Ramsay's claim that 25,000 slaves had fled to the British in South Carolina and Thomas Jefferson's exaggerated estimate that 30,000 had escaped in Virginia, Williams accepted at face value Jefferson's version of the story: those who escaped were cruelly mistreated by the British.

22
.
  
Ibid., 1: 384.

23
.
  
Carter G. Woodson,
The Negro in Our History
(Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1922), 60–61.

24
.
  
Ibid., 71.

25
.
  
W.E.B. Du Bois,
The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America
(Boston: Stratford Co., 1924; reprint edition, 1975), 82.

26
.
  
John Hope Franklin,
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 132–134.

27
.
  
Benjamin Quarles,
The Negro in the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961).

28
.
  
Gary Nash, personal communication, November 2003. For the importance of Quarles's book, see Nash's introduction to the 1996 reprint, published by University of North Carolina Press.

29
.
  
For estimates of slaves fleeing to the British, see note 3 above.

30
.
  
In the words of historian John Shy, “By 1783, Southern slave owners, previously content to run a system more flexible and less harsh in practice than it appeared in the statute books, realized as never before how fragile and vulnerable the system actually was, and how little they could depend on the [alleged] cowardice, ignorance, and gratitude of their slaves. Troubled by the agitation, even within themselves, created against slavery by the rhetorical justification of the Revolution, slaveowners set about giving legal and institutional expression to a new level of anxiety about the system. New rules regarding slavery and a new articulation of racist attitudes may have been one of the most important, enduring and paradoxical legacies of the Revolutionary War.” (
A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence
[Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990], 257.)

31
.
  
The texts surveyed were displayed at the 2002 annual conference of the National Council for Social Studies in Phoenix, Arizona. They included six elementary and middle-school texts: Sterling Stuckey and Linda Kerrigan Salvucci,
Call to Freedom
(Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003); Joyce Appleby et al.,
The American Republic to 1877
(New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003); Michael J. Berson,
United States History: Beginnings
(Orlando: Harcourt, 2003); James West Davidson,
The American Nation: Beginnings through 1877
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003); Jesus Garcia,
Creating America: A History of the United States
(Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2003); and Hakim,
A History of US.
The seven secondary-school texts are: Joyce Appleby et al.,
The American Vision
(New York, Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003); Gerald A. Danzer et al.,
The Americans
(Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2003); Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley,
A History of the United States
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); David Goodfield et al.,
The American Journey: A History of the United States
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001); John Mack Faragher et al.,
Out of Many: A History of the American People
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003); Robert A. Divine et al.,
America: Past and Present
(New York: Longman, 2003); and Paul Boyer,
American Nation
(Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003).

32
.
  
For black patriots who were sent back into slavery at war's end, see Raphael,
People's History of the American Revolution
, 284–292.

33
.
  
Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B. Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor,
United States History
, Survey Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013), 111, 127.

34
.
  
Michael J. Berson, Tyrone C. Howard, and Cinthia Salinas,
Harcourt Social Studies—United States: Making a New Nation
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 342.

35
.
  
Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie,
The American Journey
(New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe, 2012), 157.