Founding Myths

by Ray Raphael

  29.For estimates of slaves fleeing to the British, see note 3 above.

  30.In the words of historian John Shy, “By 1783, Southern slave owners, previously content to run a system more flexible and less harsh in practice than it appeared in the statute books, realized as never before how fragile and vulnerable the system actually was, and how little they could depend on the [alleged] cowardice, ignorance, and gratitude of their slaves. Troubled by the agitation, even within themselves, created against slavery by the rhetorical justification of the Revolution, slaveowners set about giving legal and institutional expression to a new level of anxiety about the system. New rules regarding slavery and a new articulation of racist attitudes may have been one of the most important, enduring and paradoxical legacies of the Revolutionary War.” (A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990], 257.)

  31.The texts surveyed were displayed at the 2002 annual conference of the National Council for Social Studies in Phoenix, Arizona. They included six elementary and middle-school texts: Sterling Stuckey and Linda Kerrigan Salvucci, Call to Freedom (Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003); Joyce Appleby et al., The American Republic to 1877 (New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003); Michael J. Berson, United States History: Beginnings (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003); James West Davidson, The American Nation: Beginnings through 1877 (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003); Jesus Garcia, Creating America: A History of the United States (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2003); and Hakim, A History of US. The seven secondary-school texts are: Joyce Appleby et al., The American Vision (New York, Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003); Gerald A. Danzer et al., The Americans (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2003); Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley, A History of the United States (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); David Goodfield et al., The American Journey: A History of the United States (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001); John Mack Faragher et al., Out of Many: A History of the American People (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003); Robert A. Divine et al., America: Past and Present (New York: Longman, 2003); and Paul Boyer, American Nation (Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003).

  32.For black patriots who were sent back into slavery at war’s end, see Raphael, People’s History of the American Revolution, 284–292.

  33.Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B. Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor, United States History, Survey Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013), 111, 127.

  34.Michael J. Berson, Tyrone C. Howard, and Cinthia Salinas, Harcourt Social Studies—United States: Making a New Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 342.

  35.Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie, The American Journey (New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe, 2012), 157.

  36.Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 15; The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War series, W.W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 2: 125, 354, 620, 623, 625.

  37.Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States, Fourteenth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2012), 132.

  38.Raphael, People’s History of the American Revolution, 293–295.

  39.Ibid., 284–288.

  40.The preceding four paragraphs are adapted from ibid., 267–268.

  41.Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.

  42.Boston King’s narrative, which originally appeared in 1798, is reprinted in Vincent Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), 351–366. Sections dealing specifically with the American Revolution are reprinted in Raphael, People’s History of the American Revolution, 272–276. David George’s narrative, which originally appeared in 1793, is also reprinted in Carretta, Unchained Voices, 333–346. Sections dealing specifically with the American Revolution are reprinted in Raphael, People’s History of the American Revolution, 276–280. For an in-depth treatment of Thomas Peters, see Gary B. Nash, “Thomas Peters: Millwright and Deliverer,” in Struggle and Survival in Colonial America, David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 69–85; reprinted in Gary B. Nash, Race, Class, and Politics: Essays on American Colonial and Revolutionary Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 269–282. Nash bases his story on two studies of blacks who sided with Britain: Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York: Capricorn, 1976), and James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (New York: Africana, 1976).

  43.Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution (New York: Viking, 1997), 1–2, 6.

  44.Harry Washington’s story is told in Cassandra Pybus, “Mary Perth, Harry Washington, and Moses Wilkinson: Black Methodists Who Escaped from Slavery and Founded a Nation,” in Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation, Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael, eds. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 155–168; and Pybus, Epic Journeys, 3, 5, 20, 26–27, 32, 40–42, 59–61, 69, 150, 199, 201, 218.

  45.A handful of college texts now feature Harry Washington, Thomas Peters, or Boston King. Of twenty-three recent (2011–2014) college texts surveyed, four feature Harry (aka Henry) Washington: James West Davidson, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff, Experience History: Interpreting America’s Past, vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 182; Carol Berkin, Christopher L. Miller, Robert W. Cherny, James L. Gormly, Douglas Egerton, and Kelly Woestman, Making America: A History of the United States, Brief Sixth Edition (Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2014), 146; Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Third Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), 242; James West Davidson, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark. H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff, U.S.: A Narrative History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 136. Two feature Thomas Peters: Nancy Hewitt and Steven F. Lawson, Exploring American History: A Brief Survey with Sources (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013), 183; Jacqueline Jones, Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyler May, Vicki L. Ruiz, Created Equal: A History of the United States, vol. 1, Third Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Longman, 2009), 202–203. One features Boston King: James Roark, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson, and Susan M. Hartmann, The American Promise: A History of the United States, Fourth Edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 221. This is a positive development. Texts for lower grades, however, have not yet wished to tell the Harry Washington/George Washington story, which is founded on a relationship they would rather not feature. This is regrettable. Even texts for elementary students do address the problematic issue of slavery, so there is no reason to shy from a balanced presentation of the history of enslaved people during the American Revolution.

  12: Brutal British

  1.John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 60, 81–84.

  2.Robert M. Weir, “ ‘The Violent Spirit’: The Reestablishment of Order, and the Continuity of Leadership in Post-Revolutionary South Carolina,” in An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, Ronald Hoffman, Thad W. Tate, and Peter J. Albert, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 74. Tarleton later explained the butchery at the Waxhaws by the fact that he had gone down when his horse was shot from under him, “which stimulated the soldiers to a vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” (Buchanan, Road to Guilford Courthouse, 85.)

  3.Kevin Phillips, The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1
999), 162, 638.

  4.A. Roger Ekirch, “Whig Authority and Public Order in Backcountry North Carolina,” in Hoffman, Tate, and Albert, Uncivil War, 107–108.

  5.William Pierce to St. George Tucker, July 20, 1781, in Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 133.

  6.John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War of Independence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 188–9. This punishment, called “spicketing,” was a brutal variation of the common practice of “picketing,” in which the prisoner, like a horse, was merely tied to a stake in the ground.

  7.Edward J. Cashin, The King’s Ranger: Thomas Brown and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 27–28.

  8.Dann, Revolution Remembered, 202–3.

  9.Buchanan, Road to Guilford Courthouse, 237.

  10.Shelby’s statement, taken from conversations in 1815 and 1819, appears in Lyman C. Draper, King’s Mountain and its Heroes (Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson, 1881), 545. Draper reprints Shelby’s complete narrative, as well as the diary of a Huguenot Tory from New York, Lieutenant Anthony Allaire, who recorded the hanging and the trampled prisoners. (Draper, King’s Mountain, 511–513.)

  11.William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969; first published in 1788), 3: 231, 456.

  12.Ibid., 2: 293, 324.

  13.David Ramsay, History of the Revolution in South Carolina (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1785).

  14.Cashin, The King’s Ranger, 120, 127, 219.

  15.David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, 1789; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1990), 2: 249.

  16.Ibid., 2: 293, 324.

  17.Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations (Boston: E. Larkin, 1805; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1988), 3: 428–429. For a discussion of Warren’s treatment of barbarities, with additional citations, see William Raymond Smith, History as Argument: Three Patriot Historians of the American Revolution (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1966), 87–88.

  18.Salma Hale, History of the United States, from their First Settlement as Colonies, to the Close of the War with Great Britain in 1815 (New York: Collins and Hannay, 1830; first published in 1822), 210.

  19.John Frost, History of the United States of North America (London: Charles Tilt, 1838), 261.

  20.George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1879; first published 1834–1874), 6: 458, 427, 295, 289, 293.

  21.Richard Hildreth, The History of the United States of America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880; first published in 1849), 3: 329.

  22.John Fiske, The American Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 2: 182.

  23.Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The American Revolution, 1776–1783 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1905), 255. This is volume 9 of a twenty-seven-volume series titled The American Nation, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart.

  24.Cited in Gary B. Nash, “The Concept of Inevitability in the History of European-Indian Relations,” in Inequality in Early America, Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger, eds. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), 280.

  25.David Hackett Fischer, “The Patriot Is to History as Godzilla Was to Biology,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 4, 2000. Originally published in the New York Times.

  26.Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution (New York: Viking, 1997), 311. As in The Patriot, Fleming focuses much of his attention on Banastre Tarleton, whom he refers to as Britain’s most potent “weapon.”

  27.For a deconstruction of this and other Thomas Brown mythologies, see Cashin, The King’s Ranger, 120–121, 127, 219–228.

  28.Robert Leckie, George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 587–588.

  29.Ibid., 583–584.

  30.James West Davidson and Michael B. Stoff, America: History of Our Nation (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014), 191–192.

  31.William Deverell and Deborah Gray White, Holt McDougal United States History: Beginnings to 1877 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 135.

  32.David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant, volume 1, Fifteenth Edition (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014), 142.

  33.Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), 118.

  34.James Oakes, Michael McGeer, Jan Ellen Lewis, Nick Cullather, and Jeanne Boydston, Of the People: A History of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 194.

  35.Nancy A. Hewitt and Steven Lawson, Exploring American Histories: A Brief Survey with Sources (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013), 179.

  13: The Final Battle: Yorktown

  1.Cornwallis offered to surrender two days earlier, on October 17, so that date is sometimes used.

  2.Joy Hakim, A History of US (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3: 146.

  3.A.J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 544. Emphasis added.

  4.Quoted in Robert Harvey, A Few Bloody Noses: The American War of Independence (London: John Murray, 2001), 412.

  5.Washington to president of Congress, October 27, 1781, in The Writings of George Washington, from the Original Manuscript Sources, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1931–1944), 23: 297.

  6.Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 23: 271, 297, 302, 347, 352, 359, 361, 365, 367, 390, 443, 447, 477.

  7.Washington to Nathanael Greene, November 16, 1781, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 23: 347.

  8.Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 5: 405, 415.

  9.Ibid., 415.

  10.Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 24: 315.

  11.On August 10, 1782, Washington wrote to Chevalier de Chastellux, “The enemy talk loudly, and very confidently of Peace; but whether they are in earnest, or whether it is to amuse and while away the time till they can prepare for a more vigorous prosecution of the War, time will evince.” (Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 24: 496.)

  12.Ibid., 25: 42.

  13.Washington to James McHenry, September 12, 1782, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 25: 151. Four days later he wrote again, “I have no doubt on my Mind of the Kings wishes to prosecute the War . . . as long as the Nation will vote Men or Money to carry it on.” (Washington to John Mitchell, September 16, 1782, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 25: 166.)

  14.Ibid., 25: 265.

  15.Freeman, George Washington, 438; Washington to Chevalier de la Luzerne, March 19, 1783, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 26: 236; Washington to president of Congress, March 19, 1783, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 26: 238.

  16.Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 524–25; Freeman, George Washington, 5: 513.

  17.Mackesy, War for America, 404; Washington to Marquis de Lafayette, November 15, 1781, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of George Washington, 23: 341.

  18.Mackesy, War for America, 461.

  19.Howard H. Peckham, The Toll of Independence: Engagements and Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 3–16, 91–92.

  20.Mackesy, War for America, 524–525.

  21.A full rendering of Britain’s global contes
t is in Mackesy, War for America.

  22.The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1782 (London: J. Dodsley, 1783), 25: 96.

  23.“The Speech of the Right Honourable William Pitt, in the House of Commons, on Friday, February 21, 1783” (London: J. Debrett, 1783), 13–35: http://www.archive.org/stream/speechrighthono00pittgoog#page/n43/mode/2up.

  24.Mackesy, War for America, 498–500.

  25.Winthrop D. Jordan, Miriam Greenblatt, and John S. Bowes, The Americans: A History (Boston: McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 115. Although this text is old, it is still in use in many financially strapped schools.

  26.William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969; first published in 1788), 4: 196–392.

  27.David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, 1789; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1990), 2: 290, 293.

  28.Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations (Boston: E. Larkin, 1805; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1988), 3: 42–436.

  29.John Marshall, The Life of George Washington (New York: AMS Press, 1969; first published 1804–1807), 4: 532–537.

  30.These four early historians understood well that what started as America’s War for Independence had extended to the West Indies and even to Gibraltar, that it had come to involve the major powers of Europe, and that the conclusion to that war could only be understood in this wider context. Strangely, only Gordon, who published in England, included a running account of events in East India; that was simply too far away, even though it seriously impacted British policies with respect to the United States.

  31.Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962; reprint of ninth edition, 1809), 113.