A nice Hank Sims interview of local historian Ray Raphael regarding his new book Founding Myths: The Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past. 5 questions though? All the other interviewees get like 12 or 15 questions. Figures that SoHum would get the short end as usual!
The book is another shot in the trench war debate between the notion of “peoples history” and “great man theory history.” We learn for instance that Paul Revere’s famous ride is fiction, that Jefferson was not regarded as the demi-god of American liberty really until Lincoln built him up, and that Patrick Henry never said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” (well, I haven’t actually read the book yet, but these items are mentioned in Amazon reviews). And apparently, Independence Day should really be celebrated on July 2 instead.
llustration: Randall Enos
These are just aspects of the larger theme however, which was summarized by the author in an earlier article:
Although textbooks in recent years have certainly become more inclusive, giving the nod to multiculturalism is not synonymous with getting the story right. We’ve come a long way, baby—but we have a long way to go.
…..
Since our stories need protagonists, we marshal forth heroes and heroines to represent the people of the times. Although selected for their uncommon features, these few are made to signify the whole. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson—we speak of these illustrious individuals as the Revolutionaries, and we use them to stand for all the other Revolutionaries, even as we proclaim they are special, not like the others. These people are then called “leaders;” all others become mere followers. A handful of celebrated personalities make things happen, the rest only tag along; a few write the scripts, the rest just deliver their lines. This turns history on its head. In reality, so-called leaders emerge from the people—they gain influence by expressing views that others espouse. In the telling of history, however, the genesis of leadership is easily forgotten.
…..
The way we learn about the birth of our nation is a case in point. If we teach our students that a few special people forged American freedom, we misrepresent, and even contradict, the spirit of the American Revolution. Our country owes its existence to the political activities of groups of dedicated patriots who acted in concert. Throughout the rebellious colonies, citizens organized themselves into an array of local committees, congresses, and militia units that unseated British authority and assumed the reins of government.
Ray has his own website. And here’s an interesting review from the History News Network.
So far I have not found any reviews by conservative scholars. Still looking.
Photo lifted from the NCJ story.
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June 30, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Fred
Not to nitpick…oh what the heck, I’m nitpicking. I found the following from the interview rather odd:
“that he was so pumped up about Independence that he rode 100 miles through the night just to sign the document on the Fourth, and then rode home. All these old history books have this great patriotic story about Samuel Chase, riding through the night.”.
I really wonder how possible it would be for someone to ride 100 miles on a horse in one night. I don’t know much, if anything, about horses, but that would seem a bit of a stretch to me. Unless maybe you had a Pony Express relay thing set up.
I wonder how long it would take someone to ride a horse from Eureka to Garberville?
I was told that Custer’s horses had already traveled 30 miles by the time they came to the Little Bighorn fight and they were spent.
June 30, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Hank Sims
Fred —
Raphael was saying that the Samuel Chase story is obviously false. An exercise in wish-fulfillment. After the Revolution, people liked the image of the signers all lined up in a row on the Fourth, putting their names to the paper. It didn’t happen that way, but they liked the idea. So they sort of invented the story about Samuel Chase riding through the night, and it stuck.
June 30, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Fred
Ooops, another misread by yours truly.
Did he say why the Paul Revere story was bogus? I did read somewhere that when he did his ride, he never said ” The British are coming!”. It wouldn’t have made sense as most colonists at the time considered themselves British. He would have been more likely to say “The redcoats are coming.”, as that’s how British troops were referred to by colonists.
That’s assuming he rode at all.
June 30, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Hank Sims
Not that the story was bogus — just that it’s incomplete. As Raphael said in one of our outtakes: “There’s only two characters in that poem — Paul Revere and the horse.”
What he objects to is that inasmuch as the farmers are mentioned at all, they’re portrayed as sleepy-eyed hayseeds — dolts — who didn’t know what to do until the great Paul Revere came and told them. Whereas the real story, he says, is that that these hick farmers were way ahead of the game as far as the redcoats were concerned.
June 30, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Fred
Thanks.
Certainly the revolution couldn’t have taken place without reaching some sort of critical mass, as far as support.
As an aside, I read somewhere that only thirty percent, or so, of the colonists supported the independence movement with thirty percent or so opposed to it.
Don’t know how true that is but it’s not unlike the demographics of the country today. Seems like there’s usually a hard core group of about thirty percent that will support a right wing cause, no matter what- take the Iraq War for example- and a thirty percent hard core lefty bunch that would support a left wing cause, no matter what. The other thirty end up all over the place.
Except for the libertarians, of course.🙂
June 30, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Hank Sims
Which was the American Revolution, would you say? The 30 percent in favor (I don’t vouch for your numbers) — were they left-wing, right-wing or libertarian?
June 30, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Well, they didn’t have gallup polls back then, but I’ve always been told that historians figured it was about 1/3 for the revolution, 1/3 opposed, and 1/3 who didn’t care, until the war wore on. But I have no idea how those figures were arrived at.
July 1, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Fred
I was wondering the same thing. I’d be surprised that anyone took the time to figure out who was for or against it back then. After all, they didn’t have the Times- Standard’s online polls to fall back on in those days. It would have been a herculean job to try to poll the populace, especially with any degree of accuracy.
I’d say the 30% for the revolution would be in the libertarian camp, but I’m sure a lot of pro- revolution types had their own motives not involving philosophical reason.
July 1, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Eric V. Kirk
It could be roughly based on what we know about the participation of the various communities in various aspects of the resistance or support of the Colonial government as it stood before the declaration. Or it could be simply based on evaluations made by somebody at the time, trying to honestly assess the revolution’s chances. Hard to say. We know there was far from a consensus until well into the war and even then there were still many loyalists.
Part of my in-law family lives in NY outside Albany, in an area that was very much loyalist throughout the war. There is a legend about the partisans sneaking a cannon (do I have the right number of n’s?) through the area at night to be used in some battle a few valleys over. The story involves a number of heroics and clever evasions of watchful loyalist eyes, but when they actually got the cannon to the battle nobody knew how to use it accurately so it wasn’t really a factor.