Founding Myths

by Ray Raphael

  In 1865 William Wells followed Bancroft in placing Adams at the forefront of affairs in Boston, even though he was in Philadelphia at the time. But with no credible evidence linking Adams to the revolution in the countryside, Wells simply ignored those events. For Wells and most subsequent writers, Samuel Adams had to be the prime mover of all crowd actions—and if Adams was not present, the tale was not told. Most historians since that time have unwittingly followed the lead of British officials like Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Dartmouth, who simply could not believe that authority had been overturned by “a tumultuous Rabble, without any Appearance of general Concert, or without any Head to advise, or Leader to Conduct.”48

  One might think that progressive historians of the early twentieth century—people like John Franklin Jameson, Charles Beard, and Carl Becker—would have taken notice of this popular uprising, but since it did not appear at first glance to be a class struggle, it eluded their attention. While “conflict” historians failed to pick up on this forgotten revolution, “consensus” historians saw no need to rock the boat. In their monumental, 1,300-page compilation of primary sources published in 1958, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris failed to document this vital episode. Instead, they included a complete section titled “All America Rallies to the Aid of Beleaguered Boston,” another on the debates within the First Continental Congress, and over thirty pages on Lexington and Concord.49

  WHY THE STORY IS RARELY TOLD

  There are several overlapping reasons why we have dropped the story of America’s first and most successful revolution, each deeply rooted in our national self-image and the nature of storytelling. Nationalistic and narrative demands have conspired against this saga. Ironically, on several counts, the very strengths of the Revolution of 1774 have ensured its anonymity.

  This revolution was democratic by design; the people not only preached popular sovereignty but also practiced it. Although the toppling of authority enjoyed unprecedented, widespread support, there were no charismatic, self-promoting leaders to anchor the story and serve as its “heroes.” There could never be too much democracy, these people believed. These rebels ran their revolution like a mobilized town meeting, each participant as important as any other; all decisions, even during their mass street actions, had to be approved by “the body of the people.”50 This made for a stronger revolution, but it simultaneously helps explain why we know so little about a popular movement that would not even tolerate individual leadership.

  This revolution involved no bloodshed, for resistance was unthinkable. The force of the people was so overwhelming that violence became unnecessary. The handful of Crown-appointed officials in Worcester, when confronted by 4,622 angry militiamen, had no choice but to submit. Had opposition been stronger, there might have been violence; that would have made for a bloodier tale but a weaker revolution—indeed, more like a civil war, with the population divided. If it bleeds it leads, they say, but because of its overwhelming popularity, this revolution didn’t bleed.

  The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 was ubiquitous, erupting everywhere at once. General Gage had no idea where or when he might oppose it. But a widespread uprising, not marked by a single iconic event, is difficult to chronicle; there is no clear storyline, staring with A and climaxing at Z. This revolution occurred throughout the countryside, while the media of the times were confined to Boston. Again, the broad participation led to a stronger revolution but a less compelling tale.

  Like all true revolutions, the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 was a bullying affair. Who is David, and who is Goliath, when crowds numbering in the thousands force a few unarmed officials to cower and submit? Contrast this exertion of brute strength to “helping beleaguered Boston,” a far gentler tale. Particularly now, when our powerful nation is undeniably Goliath, we prefer to balance our national self-image by treating the original patriots as David, overcoming great odds.

  Like conservatives of the early nineteenth century, we remain fearful of our own revolution. All narratives of early United States history include accounts of an uprising labeled by its opponents Shays’ Rebellion, which was modeled after the Revolution of 1774.51 In 1786, exactly twelve years after Massachusetts farmers had closed the courts and dismantled the established government, many of the very same people tried to repeat their earlier triumph. In Great Barrington, Springfield, Worcester—all the same places—disgruntled citizens of rural Massachusetts, calling themselves “Regulators,” once again gathered in crowds to topple existing authority. There were two important differences between the uprisings of 1774 and 1786: the latter was much smaller, involving crowds that numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands, and it failed. In our histories, we have chosen to feature the smaller, failed rebellion in preference to the larger, successful one. Although we like to commemorate the break from Britain, we hesitate to celebrate the raw and rampant power of the people who made this happen.

  Finally, we don’t tell this story because we prefer other stories that appear to contradict it. If Paul Revere woke the sleepy-eyed farmers, how could those farmers already have staged a revolution and prepared for war? If Sam Adams was commander in chief of revolutionary unrest, how could anonymous rebels throughout the countryside, on their own, have cast off British rule without him? If the “most drastic” move by Parliament in 1774 was to close the port of Boston, and if this was the “final insult” to the colonists, how could a different act of oppression, the Massachusetts Government Act, have been the truly intolerable act, the one that disenfranchised an entire colony and led its citizens to topple British rule? If the “shot heard ’round the world” was the true start of the American Revolution, how can there have been a successful revolution before that shot was fired?

  EMBATTLED FARMERS: “A GREAT SPONGY MASS”

  Depicting the start of the American Revolution as a single iconic moment, “the shot heard ’round the world,” confuses the revolution itself with the defense of that revolution. Worse yet, when Emerson’s “shot” migrates from Concord, where it is fired by a patriot, to Lexington, where it is allegedly fired by a British soldier, it becomes a passive event: patriots become victims, not true revolutionaries.

  Politically, patriots needed to portray themselves that way. According to a spy report sent to General Gage on April 9, ten days before Lexington, Massachusetts rebels were divided into two camps:

  The people without doors are clamorous for an immediate commencement of hostilities but the moderate thinking people within [the Provincial Congress] wish to ward off that period till hostilities shall commence on the part of the Government which would prevent their being censured for their rashness by the other Colonies & that made a pretence for deserting them.52

  The shots fired on April 19 placed radical and moderate patriots once again on the same page.

  Because blood had finally flowed, not just in dribbles but in torrents, the events of April 19, 1775, assumed great symbolic as well as political significance. The memory of that special moment in our nation’s history is indelibly inscribed and frequently celebrated in American lore. The “embattled farmers,” the story goes, responded to Paul Revere’s alarm, grabbed their hunting guns, rushed to the scene of the action, then ran through the hills, hiding behind trees and stone walls while firing away at the arrogant Redcoats, who marched foolishly on the road below.

  This simple memory does not do justice to what these men did, for it pays no heed to the collective effort that went into preparing for this momentous day, nor to the organized manner in which the patriots engaged their adversary. Those farmers did not just run off willy-nilly when aroused from their sleep by an intricate and very effective communications network; they mustered into their units, then marched together to the scene of the action. Once there, they continued to fight
in as methodical a manner as the situation permitted. Historian David Hackett Fischer, the meticulous chronicler of the day’s battles, concludes that, from the confrontation on North Bridge midmorning to the time British reinforcements arrived just east of Lexington at around 2:30 p.m., patriot militiamen “stood against the British force in large formations at least eight times. Six of these confrontations led to fighting, four at close quarters. Twice the British infantry was broken. . . . Altogether, it was an extraordinary display of courage, resolve, and discipline by citizen-soldiers against regular troops.” Even during the final stages of the fighting, which appeared more random, militiamen traveled from one skirmish to the next in a reasonably coordinated pattern, communicating with each other and with their officers to ensure their tactical engagements would achieve maximal results.53

  Although they functioned in organized units, the method of their organization, by military standards, was not at all conventional. Officers were elected, not appointed, and they engaged in open dialogue with common soldiers. On-the-spot strategic decisions—whether to proceed to the left or the right, to fight or withdraw—were made not from the top down, but by deliberations and debates of the body of men in arms.54 Vocal disagreements with commanding officers, far from being punishable offenses, were the norm. By contrast, the British privates who were ordered to march through the night were never even told their purpose or destination.

  This was a new kind of army, not very seasoned in fighting but well versed in the arts of collective decision making. The “embattled farmers” thought and acted as empowered citizens working in concert, not as isolated individuals taking potshots at Redcoats. The group processes of Massachusetts militiamen had been well rehearsed during the preceding decade of political protest, and beyond that, for more than a century, through their town meetings and community management of churches. Indeed, self-governance for these men had a deep religious foundation: the “covenant,” an agreement among men to worship God together while acting collectively within their communities. The minute men who fought so effectively on April 19 had actually signed such a covenant, agreeing to forsake the security of their homes to secure the common good: “We whose names are hereunto subscribed, do voluntarily inlist our selves, as Minute Men, to be ready for military operation, upon the shortest notice,” they had promised each other.55

  This was not a “real” army in the European mold, but an army it was, and militarily effective. Although George Washington and others would complain repeatedly about the untrained militia, they were better trained than we have been led to believe. Back in December 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had acknowledged the unique character of its army-in-the-making by changing its drill book from a standard British text to one drawn up by Timothy Pickering, a lawyer from Salem. Patriot soldiers should be “clearly informed of the reason of every action and movement,” Pickering’s manual stipulated. This differed markedly from the European model, Pickering claimed: “ ’Tis the boast of some that their men are mere machines . . . but God forbid that my countrymen should ever be thus regarded.” Guided by this philosophy, militiamen over the next four months went through their drills, suspecting they would soon be called into action.56

  These Massachusetts militiamen, and others who followed in their steps over the next few years, trained in their own way, but train they did, and in times of crisis, they showed up. In the words of military historian John Shy, “A reservoir, sand in the gears, the militia also looked like a great spongy mass that could be pushed aside or maimed temporarily but that had no vital center and could not be destroyed.”57 As British soldiers retreated from Concord back to Boston, they were besieged by just such a “spongy mass.” Early that morning, while marching toward Lexington and Concord, Redcoats had amused themselves by singing “Yankee Doodle,” a pejorative little ditty that depicted their opponents as ignorant, provincial farmers. They failed to grasp that to defend the revolution they staged many months before, these farmers had already turned themselves into soldiers. Every time we treat American patriots as no more than unsuspecting victims who needed to be aroused from their slumber, we repeat the mistake the Redcoats made. Although Emerson’s embattled farmers had not opened fire until the confrontation by Concord’s North Bridge on April 19, the shots, cartridges, and muskets they used had long stood at the ready, as had the men who fired them. Those months of preparation were part and parcel of the American Revolution, which was well in progress by the time the world heard the first shot.

  5

  THE WINTER AT VALLEY FORGE

  To understand the staying power of the Valley Forge story, we need to see it through the eyes of a ten-year-old, for that is the age at which Americans first learn it in school. Other Revolutionary tales inspire images of toylike soldiers and men in wigs; they are alternately inspiring or quaint, but always remote. Not so with the suffering soldiers at Valley Forge. This is a story of elemental forces.

  Nowhere is the story told better than in F. van Wyck Mason’s The Winter at Valley Forge, one of the “Landmark Books” written for a youthful audience in the mid–twentieth century: “What a miracle was wrought at Valley Forge! This winter encampment with its pain and suffering, its heartaches and despair, might well be called the turning point of the Revolution.” Mason’s classic work, which introduced the story to an entire generation, depicts dedicated soldiers enduring cold and snow for the good of their country. The winter of 1777–1778, Mason writes, was “one of the cruelest winters in our country’s history.” As “the blizzards howled” and “the ice thickened,” the rebels “found new courage, new resolve, new faith in their cause.”1 This stirring image anchors the traditional telling of the American Revolution: suffering soldiers, fueled by faith, withstood not only the wrath of the British Empire but also the worst that God Himself could deal out.

  “In the midst of frost and snows, disease and destitution, Liberty erected her altar.”

  Valley Forge: March, 1777. Drawing by

  Felix Octavius Carr Darley, mid-nineteenth century.

  There are two important components to the story. First, the cruel hand of nature. Without the blizzards and the bitter cold, there would be little to celebrate in this wintering of the Continental Army. Militarily, the encampment at Valley Forge was merely an interlude; in terms of battlefield casualties, those were the quietest months during the entire course of the Revolutionary War.2

  Second, patient suffering. Patriots were willing to endure extreme hardships, we are told, because they believed so strongly in their country. They were humble folk, not rich and arrogant like those British officers who lounged comfortably in nearby Philadelphia. Again, we like to see ourselves as David, doing battle with Goliath. The rebels, although outsized and outclassed, had character. They would do anything for the cause of freedom.

  Both subplots are mistaken. Soldiers did not suffer silently. Routinely, they complained and pillaged; sometimes, they deserted; they almost mutinied. And the weather itself was hardly to blame. The winter spent at Valley Forge was milder than normal. By contrast, two years later, Continental soldiers survived the coldest winter in four hundred years on the eastern seaboard of the United States—and yet, strangely, that story is rarely told.

  A LITTLE RESPECT

  The Valley Forge story, in its traditional form, is disrespectful to the soldiers who endured years of hardships, endangered their lives, and in many cases actually died so that the United States could gain and retain its independence. To give these patriots the respect that is their due, we need not create idealized fantasies about how well they behaved themselves.

  At Valley Forge and throughout the Revolutionary War, Continental soldiers demanded the food, clothing, and pay that had been promised them—and for good reason. Had they not tended to their own concer
ns and needs, they would not have been able to stay in the field and face the enemy. To appreciate this, we have to understand who these men really were and how they came to serve in the Continental Army.

  Although we might like to believe otherwise, the United States won its freedom with the help of hired gunmen. At the beginning of the war, in 1775, all sorts of people showed up to fight. Farmers and artisans, rich and poor, young and old—patriots came forth with uncommon zeal. But this could not last. By the close of 1775, farmers had returned to their farms and artisans to their shops. Since most people had businesses of their own to attend to, Congress found it difficult to induce recruits to fight for their country. “The few who act upon Principles of disinterestedness,” George Washington told Congress in September 1776, “are, comparatively speaking, no more than a drop in the Ocean.”3

  Reluctantly, the Continental Congress offered bounties to those who agreed to join the army. This helped, but it did not suffice. Starting in 1777, Congress fixed the number of companies that each state had to recruit for the Continental Army. States and towns, hoping to fill their quotas, added bounties of their own, but even that was not enough. Without sufficient volunteers, most communities resorted to a draft, but in those days, a draftee had only to produce a body, either his own or someone else’s. Those with sufficient means, if called, hired those looking for work to fill their place. In this manner, the ranks of the Continental Army became filled with boys eager for adventure and men without property or jobs. These were the folks who hobbled into Valley Forge on December 19, 1777.

  Civilians—those who had not joined up—showed no great love for either the Continental Army or the soldiers who comprised it. They feared standing armies in general (indeed, that was one of the major complaints they voiced against Great Britain), while they looked down upon the men who actually served in this one. As historian John Shy has observed, “The men who shouldered the heaviest military burden were something less than average colonial Americans. As a group, they were poorer, more marginal, less well anchored in society.”4 The army became representative not of the American population, but only of its lower orders: poor men and boys, laborers and apprentices, even Indians and former slaves.