Founding Myths (63 page)

                
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 treatment 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).

Chapter 4 is from Benson J. Lossing,
The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1851–1852).

Chapter 7, by Barry Faulkner, is from the National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Chapters 3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 15 are from the Granger Collection, New York.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in
boldface
represent images.

ABC-CLIO (Internet reference site),
336n25

abolitionists: on black patriots,
210–11
,
374n14
; Longfellow and,
331n20
; and Underground Railroad,
221

Adams, Abigail,
49
,
168
,
228
; as Founder,
161
,
164
,
221
,
340n2
; and the Massachusetts Revolution,
350n50
; textbooks and,
305

Adams, John,
167–70
,
366n16
,
391n12
; and Samuel Adams,
27
,
31
; and the Continental Congress,
168–70
; and Declaration of Independence,
133–34
,
313
,
358n31
,
359n32
; as Founding Father,
157
,
158
,
167–70
,
367n22
; and Fourth of July celebrations,
281
; and Jefferson,
133–34
,
142
,
365n8
; and Massachusetts “independency” movement,
37–38
,
85

Adams, Samuel,
4
,
27–48
,
157
,
300
; as architect of independence,
36–38
,
300
,
336n25
,
337n30
; attempts to implicate as traitor,
32–33
,
334n12
; and Boston Massacre,
31
,
34–35
; and Boston Tea Party,
29
,
31
,
35–36
,
335n22
; depiction as master revolutionary strategist,
30–33
,
38–40
,
314–15
; historians and,
27
,
33
,
41–44
; and Massachusetts Revolution,
85
,
89
,
91–92
,
350n42
; opposition to violence and rebellions,
38–40
; and Paul Revere's ride,
11
,
13
,
18
,
89
,
296
; portrait,
28
; and Stamp Act Riots,
31
,
33–34
,
45
,
334n16
; Tory adversaries,
30–33
,
42
,
44
,
47