Founding Myths

by Ray Raphael

  Further, if wielding power were really the criterion, Ellis would have to include Robert Morris, unquestionably the most powerful civilian in Revolutionary America. Morris ran the confederated government by himself during the winter of 1776–1777 when Congress fled Philadelphia; secured supplies and arranged finances for the Continental Army at several critical moments (Washington’s crossing of the Delaware and victory at Yorktown could not have been achieved without him); and assumed unprecedented executive powers, rivaling those of future presidents, during his three-year reign as superintendent of finance at the close of the Revolutionary War.9 Even more significantly, in 1781 Morris bailed out a bankrupt nation by underwriting government notes, essentially offering his own private credit, which was good, in lieu of public credit, which people would no longer accept. By any reasonable application of Ellis’s standards—“central” and “wielded power”—Morris would make the list, but he does not appear there, nor is he featured in most renditions of our nation’s birth. A man who made his fortune in large measure by privateering (legalized piracy), cornering markets, and war profiteering, and who ended his career in debtors’ prison, is not a top candidate for America’s “natural aristocracy,” no matter how much power he wielded.10

  While promoting the importance of his eight protagonists, Ellis demotes the other three million Americans—also members of the Revolutionary generation—to the secondary status of “marginal or peripheral.” But the central theme of the American Revolution was popular sovereignty: all power ultimately resides with the people. How, then, can “the people” be reduced to the periphery of the story? In fact, regular Americans were at the very center of the drama:

  •Common farmers in Massachusetts, without any help from Ellis’s featured players, were the first to overthrow British political authority.

  •Poor men and boys fought the British army. Without them, the so-called Founding Fathers might all have been hanged.

  •If it weren’t for a popular clamoring for independence, Congress would not have unanimously passed their final declaration.

  •If the people had not ratified the Constitution, it would have been one more failed proposal.

  •If it weren’t for the labor of hundreds of thousands of “Founding Sisters,” American society could never have survived the war. Whatever the “Founding Brothers” were able to accomplish in political chambers would have proven futile.

  •The political history of the American Revolution in the southern half of the fledgling nation cannot possibly be understood without reference to enslaved people and the fears they inspired among whites.

  •The military history of the war in the West cannot be understood without reference to Native Americans as “central players.”

  Without the participation of these people, the American Revolution would have been altogether different—or, more likely, there would have been no Revolution at all.

  Ellis’s approach, a common one, is to place himself within the seats of power and then describe what happens when important insiders come up against each other. By ignoring the various forces acting upon insiders from the outside, however, this inside game distorts the very nature of political processes. Throughout the Revolutionary Era, representatives who gathered in deliberative bodies were expected to abide by specific, written instructions from their constituents. Their actions were also affected by military victories and defeats and other extrinsic factors not of their own doing. Political leaders did not operate in a vacuum, determining the fate of their nation by simple fiat. Lines of influence went both toward and away from the seats of power. This is always true of historical events, but especially so during the American Revolution, when outsiders insisted upon having their say.

  By viewing history through this narrow prism, Ellis and other popular authors depict political leaders as causal agents who are personally responsible for the major happenings of the times. David McCullough takes this approach. It was a “miracle,” he marvels, “that so few could, in the end, accomplish so much for all humankind.” Speaking specifically of independence, he conjectures: “Had they [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] been poll-driven, ‘risk-averse’ politicians gathered in Philadelphia that fateful summer of 1776, they would have scrapped the whole idea of a ‘mighty revolution.’ ”11 McCullough’s founders were lonely heroes, opposing not only the British but also will of the people, the “polls.” The majority of Americans during the Revolution, by this telling, are transformed into antagonists. Instead of being treated as heroes themselves, they become the lethargic masses, too slow to share the founders’ forward-looking vision. The American Revolution, fought in the name of popular sovereignty, becomes strangely convoluted in stories that grant all honors to America’s special aristocracy of political talent, the Founding Fathers.

  But McCullough misreads the “polls” of those times. “As daunting as almost anything was the lack of popular support for independence,” he writes. “By early 1776 about a third of the people were for independence, while another third remained adamantly opposed. The rest, in the old human way, were waiting to see who came out on top.”12 In his biography John Adams, McCullough reveals his source, a letter from Adams to Benjamin Rush in 1812: “We were about one third Tories, and [one] third timid, and one third true blue.” From this single quotation, which he uses as a chapter invocation in the book, McCullough concludes, “So as yet the voices for independence were decidedly in the minority.”13 That left an uphill battle for Adams and a few radicals in Congress, who had to struggle on behalf of an unpopular cause.

  But John Adams never stated that only one-third of the people were for independence in 1776. Here are the exact words he wrote to Rush:

  I lament, my dear Friend, that you were not in Congress in 1774 and 1776. A thousand Things happened there in those years that no Man now living knows but myself. . . . 1774 was the most important and the most difficult year of all. We were about one third Tories, one third timid and one third true Blue. We had a Code of Fundamental Laws to prepare for a whole Continent of incongruous Colonies. It was done; and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was no more than a repetition of the Principles, the Rights and Wrongs asserted and adopted in 1774.14

  Adams never mentioned the views of “the people” at all—he was discussing only the attitudes of members of Congress, who were divided into thirds in 1774, not 1776. The difference in dates is not trivial. His central thrust was to emphasize the importance of 1774—and to distinguish it from 1776. Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1813, Adams repeated his assessment of “the Congress of 1774”: “To draw the characters of them all would require a volume, and would now be considered as a caricature-print; one third tories, another whigs, and the rest mongrels.”15 No statement about Congress in 1774 can demonstrate that only a minority of the American people favored independence two years later. The notion that there were as many Tories as patriots in 1776 is highly implausible; had this been so, the Tories, allied with the most powerful army on earth, would certainly have prevailed in a war that was well underway. Further, no estimate made by one man thirty-six years after the fact can be accepted as proof of the sentiments of an entire population.16

  McCullough’s contention that there was “no sweeping support for rebellion”17 does not jibe with Adams’s own writings at the time. On July 3, 1776, the day after Congress voted for independence, he wrote to his wife Abigail:

  Time has been given for the whole people maturely to consider the great question of independence, and to ripen their judgment, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in t
own and county meetings, as well as in private conversations, so that the whole people, in every colony of the thirteen, have now adopted it as their own.18

  According to Adams’s reporting at the moment, no matter what he might write later, independence resulted from a months-long national conversation—and the people themselves, in overwhelming numbers, decided to make a clean break from Britain.

  Adams’s assessment on July 3 is confirmed by other evidence. Pauline Maier’s list of state and local declarations of independence (see chapter 6) includes fifty-eight towns that issued instructions endorsing independence, while she uncovered only one that instructed its representative not to vote for independence. By June 1, when Congress took up Richard Henry Lee’s tabled motion to become a separate nation, nine of the thirteen states, under intense popular pressure, had told their congressional representatives to support independence, while only one state delegation (New York) was under instructions to refrain from voting for independence. In Maryland, after the provincial convention had forbidden its congressional delegates to support independence, four county conventions instructed their representatives to overturn that decision and tell delegates to push for independence. That’s precisely what happened, and on the morning of July 1, just as Congress was set to resume its deliberations on independence, John Adams received a letter from Maryland’s Samuel Chase: “I am at this moment from the house to procure an express to follow the post, with an unanimous vote of our convention for independence, &c. See the glorious effects of county instructions. Our people have fire if not smothered.”19

  Yet McCullough writes, “It was John Adams, more than anyone, who made it [independence] happen.”20 Here is a clear implication of causality: if Adams “made it happen,” without him there might never have been a Declaration of Independence. This seems highly implausible. There were several political figures within Congress working toward independence, in addition to all those promoting independence on the state and local levels. Adams played an important role, but he did not run the show, nor is it fruitful to compare his contributions to those of Samuel Adams, Samuel Chase, Thomas Paine, and any number of political activists who threw themselves into the project. Adams allied himself with these people, and together they accomplished the task. Neither he nor anybody else owned independence; the American people did. Without John Adams, chances are the Continental Congress would still have broken ties with Britain in the summer of 1776; without a preponderance of popular support for independence, chances are Congress would have chosen a different path.21

  John Ferling, like McCullough, places Adams not only above the people but also in opposition to them. In his comparative biography of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, he states, “Washington and Adams achieved historical greatness in the American Revolution. In some ways, Adams’s achievement was the more impressive. His was the more lonely struggle.” Adams was “more impressive,” he argues, precisely because he bucked the tide.22 But if this is to be our standard for “historical greatness,” a person is less likely to become great if he or she chooses to engage in common cause with others. Any form of collective action, by definition, is not worthy of the adulation we bestow on solitary heroes who oppose the will of the people—a strange notion for an avowedly democratic society.

  “Why is it,” Joseph Ellis asks rhetorically, “that there is a core of truth to the distinctive iconography of the American Revolution, which does not depict dramatic scenes of mass slaughter, but, instead, a gallery of well-dressed personalities in classical poses?”23 If there is a core of truth to this, it is a dangerously partial one. The Revolution did include scenes of slaughter; per capita, it was the bloodiest war in our nation’s history save for the Civil War, killing more than twice the percentage of the American population as World War II and thirty-five times the percentage as Vietnam. The iconography of the war should certainly incorporate this “truth,” and also the “truth” that everyday Americans were directly involved in the political activities that led to the war, more so than at any other time in our nation’s history with the possible exception of the Civil War. The “well-dressed personalities in classical poses” did engage in actions of momentous and lasting import, but so did tens of thousands of Massachusetts farmers who first broke from British rule, 25,000 soldiers who perished while fighting for the patriot cause, 300,000 soldiers who placed their bodies on the line, and 3,000,000 people—the entire population—whose lives were severely disrupted for eight years as the United States labored in birth. To say that the story of a very select group of “well-dressed personalities in classical pose,” an aristocracy of political talent, supersedes all the rest, that their deliberations were somehow on a higher order than the profound deeds of others, is a grievous error. It takes the American Revolution, and with it the nation it created, out of the hands of the people.

  DOING BATTLE

  “ ’Tis true he could talk—Gods how he could talk!”

  “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” Engraving, 1876.

  9

  “GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!”

  The time: March 23, 1775. The place: the “New Church” of the Henrico Parish in Richmond, Virginia—the largest building in town, but still too small to hold all those who wished to attend the second session of the extralegal Virginia Convention. Patriots were gathering in Richmond rather than Williamsburg, the capital, for fear the royal governor might try to disband them.

  The reason: Armed hostilities had not yet commenced, but Britain was beefing up its military presence in America with more troops and ships. While moderate patriots were still trying to avoid an armed confrontation, Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions that would raise a militia and place the colony in a state of preparedness. In defense of these resolutions, Patrick Henry delivered the most famous speech of his illustrious oratorical career. He addressed his remarks to the president of the Convention, as was the custom. Here are the final passages of his remarkable call to arms:

  Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done every thing that could have been done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned—we have remonstrated—we have supplicated—we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult, our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne.

  There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight!—I repeat it sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

  They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

  Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.

  Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it i
s now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!!

  It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!—I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!1

  These words are stirring indeed, but it is highly unlikely that Patrick Henry uttered them. The speech was invented many years later, based on distant recollections of those who were present at the time. Although we know people were moved by Patrick Henry’s oratory on March 23, 1775, we have no text of what he actually said.

  In 1805 an attorney named William Wirt resolved to write about the life of Patrick Henry. This would not be an easy task. Although Henry had figured prominently in the events leading up to the Revolution, and although he went on to become governor of the nation’s then-largest state, he left few records for historians or biographers to ponder. He was an orator, not a writer, and there are no transcriptions, recorded at the time, for any of his flamboyant prewar speeches, including this one, that led to his renown.

  In 1815 Wirt wrote to a friend of the difficulties he was having in finding reliable material about the subject of his book:

  It was all speaking, speaking, speaking. ’Tis true he could talk—Gods how he could talk! but there is no acting the while. . . . And then, to make the matter worse, from 1763 to 1789 . . . not one of his speeches lives in print, writing or memory. All that is told me is, that on such and such an occasion, he made a distinguished speech. . . . [T]here are some ugly traits in H’s character, and some pretty nearly as ugly blanks. He was a blank military commander, a blank governor, and a blank politician, in all those useful points which depend on composition and detail. In short, it is, verily, as hopeless a subject as man could well desire.2