The Whites of their Eyes (21 page)

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, t
he 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.

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, Ton
y 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 Revolution 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

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, “Propos
ed 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 Sc
hool,” 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).