Founding Myths by Ray Raphael Read Free Book Online Page A

rides on. No textbook would dare omit him. 2
    Similarly, most school texts now acknowledge that Thomas Jefferson, when drafting the Declaration of Independence, worked with a five-man committee. Even so, Jefferson directs the drama: “In the heat of the Philadelphia summer, Jefferson struggled to find the words that would convince Americans and the world of the rightness of independence. The result was masterful. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who were also on the committee, suggested only minor changes.” 3 By this account, Americans still need convincing and Jefferson is a master at persuasion. If Revere now has two sidekicks, Jefferson has four.
    Many college texts, on the other hand, acknowledge the state and local declarations in favor of independence during the spring of 1776, responding to recent research. According to one, Jefferson “drew on language used in the dozens of local ‘declarations’ written earlier by town meetings, county officials, and colonial assemblies. The Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted by Mason in May 1776, for example, claimed that ‘all men are equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural Rights.’ ” 4 And another: “Many years later Jefferson insisted that there was nothing original about the Declaration of Independence, and he was not entirely wrong. The long list of accusations against King George, which formed the bulk of the Declaration, contained little that was new, and even some of the stirring words in the preamble had been used by the radicals time and again.” 5
    While new evidence has broadened the Jefferson story at the college level, not one of the textbooks I surveyed mentions that the town meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, pushed for independence a full twenty-one months before the congressional Declarationand eighteen months before the rash of declarations starting in April 1776. 6 Why not? Unlike the ninety declarations uncovered by Pauline Maier (see chapter 6 ), this one is an outlier. It precedes by far the iconic Declaration and does not fit neatly within the traditional storyline. Although the evidence is conclusive, contained within the Worcester Town Records housed in the basement of Worcester City Hall, evidence and the historical significance of events do not guarantee that those events will make their way into a textbook. 7 Even if a constituency emerges to push Worcester’s declaration into the story, obstacles will emerge. This document, along with the 1774 revolution that drove it forward, turn the story around, making any rewrite arduous.
    If evidence can be inconvenient, the absence of evidence can be very convenient. A case in point: the “Liberty or Death” speech, drafted by William Wirt but attributed to Patrick Henry. Those words have become an irresistible motto that will not be readily relinquished. To admit that William Wirt conjured his hero’s speech forty-two years later would be to concede too much. Henry himself has to have delivered that memorable pronouncement or it is not worth celebrating. A too-much-to-lose mythology, Henry’s authorship remains impervious to deconstruction or dismissal.
    Two other myths have proved surprisingly durable. One features Samuel Adams as the flaming rabble-rouser, and the other the final battle at Yorktown, in which David finally bests Goliath. For very distinct reasons, I expected that each of these would give some ground, but their grip on our national narrative remains as strong or stronger than ever.
    The increased attention to popular protest in the Revolutionary days, I conjectured, would lead people to question the top-down dynamic that underlies the Sam Adams mythology: Adams calls the shots and the people do his bidding. Instead, while devoting more attention to popular movements, authors feel an even greater need for decisive protagonists to drive such stories. Waving the banner of a popular movement, Adams