Founding Myths (62 page)

24
.
  
Lester H. Cohen,
The Revolutionary Histories: Contemporary Narratives of the American Revolution
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 166.

25
.
  
Fisher, “Myth-making Process,” 65. Fisher continued: “Reckless in statement, indifferent to facts and research, his books are full of popular heroism, religion and morality, which you at first call trash and cant and then, finding it extremely entertaining, you declare with a laugh, what a clever rogue.”

26
.
  
Weems,
Life of Washington
, 109–110.

27
.
  
David Ramsay,
The Life of George Washington
(Boston: D. Mallory and Co., 1811; first published in 1807).

28
.
  
Charleston: A.E. Miller, 1828.

29
.
  
Anonymous,
Stories of the Revolution; Comprising a Complete Anecdotal History of that Great National Event
(Philadelphia: Grigg and Elliot, 1847).

30
.
  
Fisher, “Myth-making Process,” 56; John Spencer Basset,
The Middle Group of American Historians
(New York: Macmillan, 1917), 103.

31
.
  
Noah Webster,
A Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings
(Boston: I. Thomas and E.T. Andrews, 1790; reprint edition, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977), 24–5.

32
.
  
Richard Snowden,
The American Revolution Written in the Style of Ancient History
(Philadelphia: Jones, Hoff & Derrick, 1793), 2 volumes.

33
.
  
Van Tassel,
Recording America's Past
, 90.

34
.
  
Salma Hale,
A History of the United States from their first Settlement as Colonies, to the Close of the War with Great Britain in 1815
(New York: Collins and Hannay, 1830; first published in 1822), preface.

35
.
  
Wills,
Inventing America
, 51–52. Wills quoted one of the entries of the 1741
Chambers Cyclopaedia
: “The REVOLUTION, used by way of eminence, denotes the great turn of affairs in England in 1688.”

36
.
  
Paul Allen,
A History of the American Revolution, Comprising all the Principal Events both in the Field and the Cabinet
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1819), I: iv–v.

37
.
  
Benson Lossing,
The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 1: iv–v.

38
.
  
Peter Force and M. St. Clair Clarke,
American Archives
(Washington, DC, 1833–1853).

39
.
  
George Bancroft,
History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1879; first published 1834–1875).

40
.
  
Richard Hildreth,
The History of the United States of America
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880; first published in 1849), 1: introductory “advertisement.”

41
.
  
John Fiske,
The American Revolution
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 1: vii.

42
.
  
Ann Arnold Hunter,
A Century of Service: The Story of the DAR
(Washington, DC: National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 1991), 15–16.

43
.
  
Cited in Arthur Johnston,
Myths and Facts of the American Revolution
(Toronto: William Briggs, 1908), 27–28.

Conclusion: Why We Tell Tall Tales

  
1
.
  
David Harlan, quoted in Peter Seixas, “Schweigen! Die Kinder! or Does Postmodern History Have a Place in the Schools,” in
Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives
, Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, and Sam Wineburg, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 27. Harlan also calls the past polysemous, or having multiple meanings.

  
2
.
  
Ray Raphael,
Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get It Right
(New York: The New Press, 2013), 77–102. Similarly, authors try to define Jefferson's view of
slavery, as if that were some fixed entity impervious to the influence of external events. In fact, Jefferson's public and private life intersected with the institution of slavery on many levels across the years. In 1769 he tried to make it easier for masters to free their slaves. In 1776 he proposed that “no person hereafter coming into this country [Virginia] shall be held in slavery under any pretext.” In 1783 he advocated the gradual emancipation of all slaves in Virginia after 1800. In 1784 he advocated the exclusion of slavery in the West. But he also argued that blacks were inherently inferior to whites (
Notes on the State of Virginia
, drafted in 1781 and published in 1785), tightened Virginia's slave codes, offered a slave as a bounty for any white man who joined the army, claimed ownership of over six hundred human beings during his lifetime (about two hundred at a given moment), bred slaves for profit (“I consider the labor of a breeding woman as no object, and that a child raised every 2 years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man,” he wrote to his plantation manager in 1819), sold more than a hundred men, women, and children to finance his architectural schemes at Monticello, and in 1820 vigorously opposed the Missouri Compromise because it invoked federal power to prohibit slavery in the Northwest. To establish consistency within all of this is simply not possible. Jefferson's “position” on slavery was certainly affected by external events and by changes in his personal circumstances over time. He did not exactly drive this engine of history, but was driven by it.

  
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).