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Books by Ray Raphael
Founding Myths /
A People’s History of the American Revolution /
Cash Crop: An American Dream /
Little White Father: Redick McKee on the California
Frontier /
An Everyday History of Somewhere /
Edges: Back Country Lives
The Men from the Boys: Rites of Passage in Male America
/
More Tree Talk
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Founding Myths
Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past
By Ray Raphael
Question. One of the
American Revolution’s most cherished myths is that of
the patriotic slave. I suppose we have the Mel Gibson
movie
The Patriot
to thank for perpetuating that myth, particularly the
scene when someone reads a fictional order from George
Washington that “All bound slaves who give minimum one
year service in the Continental Army will be granted
freedom and be paid a bounty of five shillings for each
month of service.” Your comment is, “The document . . .
which is seen on screen and appears visually authentic,
contains more historical errors in a single sentence
that at first seems possible.” Could you briefly
enumerate them for us?
Answer: First, George Washington regarded the
presence of slaves in the Continental Army as a total
embarrassment, and he did everything in his power to
keep them out. One week after assuming command, he
ordered that no “stroller, negro, or vagabond” be
allowed to enlist.
The British Army was much more welcoming. Four months
after Washington’s decree, the royal governor of
Virginia, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to all slaves
who left their masters and fought against the patriots.
Over the course of the war, tens of thousands of slaves
fled to the British in search of their freedom,
including at least 20 men and women enslaved to George
Washington.
Next, even if Washington had wanted to enlist slaves, he
never would have offered them freedom for only one year
of service. He insisted on longer enlistments, three
years or the duration of the war. Had he promised
freedom in return for such a short term, his recruiting
officers would have been instantly overwhelmed, and the
Continental Army would have become predominantly black.
Further, who would have compensated the masters? To
seize “property” from patriotic slave owners without
compensation was unthinkable—but how could Congress
afford to pay for slaves when it couldn’t even afford
enough food to sustain the soldiers it had?
Plus, Washington was simply not the one to do the
recruiting. That was left to the individual states.
Later in the war some states did permit slaves to serve
as substitutes for whites who had been drafted, but even
so, not all of these were granted freedom in the end. In
South Carolina, the setting for
The Patriot,
John Laurens, the son of the president of Congress,
proposed arming some slaves to fight alongside the
patriots, but Washington opposed the idea, and the South
Carolina government rejected it outright.
This is not to say South Carolina did not make use of
slaves to bolster the army. To induce whites to enlist,
Southern states offered special bounties—not
to slaves, but
of slaves. Near the end of
the war, when manpower was scarce, any white who signed
on would receive a special bonus of one slave.
The worst myth propagated in
The Patriot
is that slaves were so devoted to their masters that
they would risk their lives on the battlefield. The
truth is, slaves tried to use the Revolutionary War in
whatever way they could to gain their own freedom. A few
enslaved African-Americans in the North managed to
bargain for their freedom by fighting for the patriots;
a vastly greater number in the South thought their
prospects were better with the British. In either case,
slaves struggled to achieve freedom from a tyranny far
more acute than “taxation without representation.”
Question:
In your chapter “March of the American People,” you
write, “The Revolutionary War looks very different if we
stand on Indian lands and look back east.” This is a
particularly interesting point since most Americans seem
to feel that the Indian Wars really took place on the
Western plains. You remind us that “the American
Revolution was by far the largest Indian war in our
nation’s history.” Why do you feel this very important
point has been all but forgotten by writers of American
history textbooks?
Answer: While other conflicts between Native
Americans and Euro-Americans involved only one or two
Indian nations at a time, all Native peoples east of the
Mississippi became directly involved in the
Revolutionary War, most fighting with the British, a few
with the Americans. For a decade after the Revolution,
various pan-Indian confederations continued to pursue
their own wars of independence. Finally, after two
decades of fighting, Euro-Americans managed to expand
their effective domain from east of the Appalachian
Divide clear to the Mississippi. Previously, it had
taken a century and a half to conquer an equivalent
amount of territory along the Eastern seaboard.
The American Revolution, in short, was at least in part
a war of conquest, but we don’t like to view it that
way. In our texts we learn about white-Indian conflict
during the early settlements in the seventeenth century,
and we pick up the story again with the struggles for
the West in the nineteenth century, but we ignore the
critical moment at the time of our nation’s founding,
when the groundwork for westward expansion was
established. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for
instance, is always portrayed as the crowning
achievement of the Articles of Confederation, because it
paved the way to the West.
Rarely during our discussions of the founding era do we
treat the impact on Native populations, because it’s
simply too embarrassing. If we view the American
Revolution as a simple conflict between the United
States and its former rulers from across the seas, it’s
easy to see who stands on the moral high ground. If, on
the other hand, we acknowledge the persistence of
white-Indian struggles, that moral high ground is
quickly surrendered. We—the American nation that was
created in the late eighteenth century—lose our
definition, our purity. Our core national narrative can
admit that “we” were not always the good guys, but
please, not at the time of our birth. That remains
sacred, and so we continue to push the agonizing aspects
of the American saga forward or backward in time.
This is a shame. Americans, from the beginning, were
both democrats and bullies. Despite the hesitancy of
elites, most patriots at the time of our nation’s birth
believed people should govern themselves, and that is
why they threw off British rule. They also believed they
had the right, even the obligation, to impose their will
on people they deemed inferior. These two core beliefs
are key to understanding American history and the
American character, and we do an injustice to ourselves
and to our nation when we pretend otherwise.
—Allen
Barra.
American Mythbuster: A July 4 Interview with Ray Raphael
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Patrick Henry never said, "Give me liberty or give me
death!" In fact, no record exists of what he said in his
powerful call to arms of March 23, 1775. And Molly
Pitcher never took her husband’s place at a cannon after
he fell at the Battle of Monmouth. Historian Raphael
dissects these and 11 other myths of the American
Revolution to uncover the truth of these famous events
and the significance of their conversion into myth.
These tales, argues Raphael, represent 19th-century
ideals of "romantic individualism" more than the
communitarian ideals of the revolutionary era.
Raphael (A
People’s History of the American Revolution)
continues in his populist vein by arguing that these
myths, rather than encouraging patriotism and heroism,
actually "take away our power," leaving us "in awe of
superhuman stars" like Washington or Jefferson and
"discouraging ordinary citizens from acting on their own
behalf." This is arguable, but advocates of history as
seen from below will find the author’s point of view
appealing. And all students of American history will
find Raphael’s correction of the historical record
instructive and enjoyable. Illus.
—Publishers
Weekly
Adult/High School - If a high school history teacher
were to ask his class when the Declaration of
Independence was signed, he undoubtedly would hear a
chorus call out, "July 4, 1776." But what percentage of
students, or teachers for that matter, would know that
as of August 1, only John Hancock had actually signed
the document? And how many would know that at least 14
men who were not even in Philadelphia on July 4 are
recorded in the Congressional Journal as signing it on
that well-remembered date? But sign it they did, and
what does it matter what the actual date was? Raphael
thoroughly delineates the creation of the fictive July 4
signing, including intentional lies and omissions in the
"official" Congressional Journal.
The chief impetus behind this doctoring of history was
simply to have a neat, unmistakable date for national
celebration. The author goes on to expose numerous myths
before, during, and after the Revolution revolving
around Paul Revere's ride, Valley Forge, Patrick Henry's
"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech, the Battle of
Yorktown, and several others. In each case, Raphael
outlines the myth, reveals what really happened, and,
most importantly, argues why we must move past
historical nonsense so that a truer, more democratic
national record can emerge. Academic historians have
long known these truths. Raphael deserves praise for his
efforts to have that knowledge trickle down to the rest
of us. Toward that end, he offers a "Note to Teachers,"
including a Web site with grade-appropriate lesson
plans.
—School
Library Journal
posted 6 July 2007* *
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update 16 October 2007 |
