Easy but important reading: "Founding Myths" by Ray Raphael

Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past by Ray Raphael.

Who was Sam Adams? According to Ray Raphael, "Sam" Adams is only a myth, loosely based on a man named Samuel Adams who was one of many activists involved in organizing resistance to British rule in Boston. Raphael traces the development of this myth, including the origins of the name "Sam", and how Adams came to be credited with masterminding the resistance to British rule. Throughout, he evaluates the ideological basis of the myth, and how it contrasts with the reality of Massachusetts politics at the time.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, the American Revolution, or political revolutions in general. The book is interesting for a couple of reasons, yet still an easier read than most history books. Raphael revisits several familiar stories from the American Revolution, but uniquely emphasizes the role of "regular people", which is often overlooked in mainstream histories that focus on the men who held high offices in the government. Aside from providing a different perspective on the Revolution, Raphael uses these stories as case studies to illustrate how history is written -- or perhaps, how myths are made. For each of these stories, Raphael starts off by describing the oft-repeated myth, and then describing how it is wrong, why he believes that it is wrong, and how other historians got it wrong in the first place.

While the scholarship is impressive, this is not a dry academic work; as the subtitle makes clear, Raphael has an ideological agenda. He clearly states that he is interested in emphasizing the hyper-democracy of the revolutionary era, and tearing down the elitist stories concocted by later writers. While I happen to sympathize with his ideological aims, I often feel that his ideological assertions are heavy handed and that he is being unfair to the people that he disagrees with. While this could get irritating, I don't think that it detracts from the serious scholarship.

Despite being a serious book, it is still easy to read. In part this is due to Raphael's writing style, but moreso to the structure of the book. Each chapter discusses a different "myth", so it is easy to put it down for a week, and then resume with the next chapter. Also, most Americans are familiar with the basic stories, and should not have any trouble remembering the context for the issues being discussed.

My only qualification to recommending this book is that this is not an introduction to American history or the Revolutionary war. It assumes that the reader is familiar with the basic geography and politics of the Revolutionary era.

The Second American Revolution

Cross posted at Freedom Democrats

Every so often, I come across an activist claiming to be part of a "Second American Revolution". I generally find these assertions to reflect the ignorance of the person making the assertion -- after all, haven't we already had more than one revolution in this country?

Looking around the web, it seems that the term Second American Revolution is used to represent a few different historical conditions. First, there is the war of 1812, which might better identified as the "Second Revolutionary War": as John Adams wrote of the first revolutionary war, the revolution was not in the war itself (though others assert that the war was revolutionary), but was a change in the "principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people." With that perspective, I have to think that the revolution was not complete with our independence from Britain in 1783; instead, it only completed once our institutions had all been modified to recognize the fundamental equality of everyone in our society.

To some, this means that the American Revolution had two aspects, the first being anti-monarchism and independence, the second being a broader anti-elitism. This second aspect was never seen to conclusion, but was expressed in post-independence resistance to the new government such as Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

Another way to parse this interpretation of the American Revolution is to identify the first revolution as embodying the ideal of fundamental equality among members of a society--in this case, "society" was defined as white males. This "first" American Revolution only reached its conclusion in the period of Jacksonian democracy, around the mid-nineteenth century. This was immediately followed by a strong push for the "second" American Revolution, which sought to expand our definition of "society" to include every person involved--specifically blacks and women. This revolution was only completed with the social and political reforms of the 1960's, and its gains are still being consolidated.

This is my favorite interpretation, though I realize attempts to delimit social evolution are far from objective. Still, I think this paradigm provides some context for thinking about contemporary changes in American society. Has America stagnated, such that we will have no more revolutions? Is there a "top-down" revolution being forced upon us by the ruling elite? If there is to be another populist revolution, will it be a "reactionary revolution", such that we are just going to put the government back in it's proper place, as it supposedly was in some mythical past? Or have we entered into a new, progressive revolution that builds upon the accomplishments and experiences from the previous revolutions?

I suppose only time will tell, but your thoughts are appreciated.