Founding Myths (61 page)

32
.
  
These were the texts from the 2002 NCSS conference, as listed in note 23. One,
The American Journey
(Prentice Hall), did mention Alexander McGillivray, but only as an ally of Spain. The authors engaged in a lengthy discussion of the struggles between Spain and the United States over control of the Mississippi, but other than the brief mention of McGillivray, they make no mention of Indians or their attempts to keep their lands.

33
.
  
Michael J. Berson, Tyrone C. Howard, and Cinthia Salinas,
Harcourt Social Studies—United States: Making a New Nation
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 367–368.

34
.
  
Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B. Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor,
United States History
, Survey Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013), 138.

35
.
  
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), 174.

36
.
  
James West Davidson and Michael B. Stoff,
America: History of Our Nation
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014), 189. Other texts retreat in different ways. After being “badly defeated” by Native forces and local loyalists one text states, “Sullivan took revenge by burning forty Indians villages. It was an act of violence and cruelty that deeply shocked and shamed General Washington.” (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], 136.) In fact, Washington ordered and fully approved of the expedition. On May 31, 1779, General Washington issued specific instructions to Sullivan “to lay waste” to Indian towns “in the most effectual manner, that the country may be not merely overrun, but destroyed.” Washington minced no words, and his orders evidenced a hateful tone: “The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more . . . You will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror . . . [and] severity of the chastisement they receive.” (George Washington to John Sullivan, May 31, 1779, in
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799
, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. [Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931–1944], 15:189–193.

15: Storybook Nation

  
1
.
  
See Michael McDonnell, “National Identity and the American War for Independence: A Reappraisal,”
Australasian Journal of American Studies
20 (2001), 3–17.

  
2
.
  
John Shy,
A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 26.

  
3
.
  
John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Adams,
Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution
, Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1875), 193–194.

  
4
.
  
Charles Warren, “Fourth of July Myths,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, Third Series, 2 (1945): 246. Here are the original journal entries, not included in the first printed version: “July 19. 1776. Resolved That the Declaration passed on the fourth be fairly engrossed on parchment with the title and stile of ‘The Unanimous Declaration of the 13 United States of America' and that the same when engrossed be signed by every member of Congress.—Aug. 2. 1776. The declaration of Independence being engrossed & compared at the table was signed by the Members.” (John H. Hazelton,
The Declaration of Independence: Its History
[New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1906], 204.) The original manuscript of the minutes, in the journals of the Continental Congress, was first consulted by Mellen Chamberlain in 1884. (Warren, “Fourth of July Myths,” 245.) The printed version in the journals of the Continental Congress that appears on the Library of Congress website, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford in 1906 (
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html
), reflects the original manuscript for July 19 and August 2, but the July 4 entry is still doctored by inserting the engrossed, signed copy, the “official” one the nation has celebrated since 1777.

  
5
.
  
At least seven signers, and possibly several others, were not present on August 2: Matthew Thornton, Thomas McKean, Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Wolcott, Lewis Morris, Richard Henry Lee, and George Wythe. (Hazelton,
Declaration of Independence
, 210–219.) Thomas McKean, the last man to sign, offered convincing testimony that a single act of signing never took place. (McKean to John Adams, January 1814,
The Works of John Adams
, Charles Francis Adams, ed. [Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856], 10: 87–89.) There is some question about whether George Wythe ever signed his own name. “It is unlikely that he personally signed it on his return in the fall, as some delegates did; he had probably authorized a clerk to do so for him when the document was engrossed,” writes Robert Kirtland in
American National Biography
(24: 93).

  
6
.
  
John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds.,
American National Biography
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4: 468; 11: 146; 13: 772; 15: 903–904; 18: 911–912; 19: 73; 21: 609; 23: 514, 721; 24: 93; Dumas Malone, ed.,
Dictionary of American Biography
(New York: Scribner's, 1943), 4: 235; 17: 284; 18: 325. Even today, all these names appear as signers of the Declaration of Independence in the July 4, 1776, entry of the Library of Congress's
Journals of the Continental Congress
,
1774–1789
:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00525)
).

                
In the case of Samuel Chase of Maryland, the notion that these men signed the Declaration on July 4, 1776, created an interesting folktale. A few days earlier, Chase had
been in Maryland, attending the state convention. Because he supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, people thought he must have engaged in a heroic ride that is still immortalized today: “In the next two days he rode one hundred miles and arrived in Philadelphia just in time to sign the Declaration of Independence.” (Margaret Horsnell's entry for Samuel Chase, in Garraty and Carnes,
American National Biography
, 4: 743.) In fact, Chase had fallen ill and didn't arrive back in Philadelphia until July 17. (James Haw, Francis F. Beirne, Rosamond R. Beirne, R. Samuel Jett,
Stormy Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase
[Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1980], 68.)

  
7
.
  
Garry Wills,
Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
(New York: Doubleday, 1978), 341.

  
8
.
  
Independent Gazetteer
, July 11, 1789; cited in Len Travers,
Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 43.

  
9
.
  
Travers,
Celebrating the Fourth
, 49. These orations were generally placed in print, and some became bestsellers.

10
.
  
Independent Gazetteer
, July 8, 1786; cited in Travers,
Celebrating the Fourth
, 56–57.

11
.
  
Sarah J. Purcell,
Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 20.

12
.
  
William Gordon,
The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America
, reprint edition (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969; first published in 1788). Although he did not arrive in Boston until 1770, Gordon was an ardent advocate of republican principles. In 1772 he was elected minister for the Roxbury congregation, in 1774 he preached the Thanksgiving Day sermon for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and the following year he was chosen as its official chaplain. His rise to prominence within patriotic circles was meteoric—too much so for John Adams. “Parson Gordon, of Roxbury, spent the evening here,” Adams wrote in his diary on September 16, 1775. “I fear his indiscreet prate will do harm in this city. He is an eternal talker, and somewhat vain, and not accurate nor judicious; very zealous in the cause, and a well-meaning man, but incautious, and . . . fond of being thought a man of influence at headquarters, and with our Council and House, and with the general officers of the army, and also with gentlemen in this city and other Colonies.” (Adams,
Works of John Adams
, 2: 423–424.) Gordon took copious notes throughout the war, always with the intent of publication. Ambitious and talkative, he placed his networking energies at the service of history: he wrote and spoke incessantly with “those in the know,” then incorporated what they told him within his narrative. When Gordon finished his work in the mid-1780s, Boston printers vied for the rights to publish the first locally produced chronicle of the War for Independence. But the author chose to publish his magnum opus in England instead of America, and he drew the wrath of both jealous printers and unforgiving ideologues. “A mercenary scribbler,” one critic called him. (David D. Van Tassel,
Recording America's Past: An Interpretation of the Development of Historical Studies in America, 1607–1884
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960], 40.) Having alienated his American audience, Gordon failed to excite a British readership. His history was a flop—but it was not without influence. Later generations of writers and
historians would cite William Gordon as an authoritative source. Since Gordon had lived through the Revolution and talked to all the right people, his words would be accepted as faithful and accurate representations of actual events.

13
.
  
David Ramsay,
The History of the American Revolution
(Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, 1789; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1990). Ramsay was not only a writer but also a Revolutionary activist and politician. He served as a South Carolina state legislator, the president of the state senate, and a delegate to the Continental Congress in the 1780s.

14
.
  
David Ramsay,
History of the Revolution in South Carolina
(Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1785), 1: 231; cited in William Raymond Smith,
History as Argument: Three Patriot Historians of the American Revolution
(The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966), 56.

15
.
  
John Marshall,
The Life of George Washington
(New York: AMS Press, 1969; first published 1804–1807).

16
.
  
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).

17
.
  
Columbian
, IV (March 1789), 50, cited in Van Tassel,
Recording America's Past
, 36.

18
.
  
Van Tassel,
Recording America's Past
, 39; Harvey Wish,
The American Historian: A Social-Intellectual History of the Writing of the American Past
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 41; Michael Krause and Davis D. Joyce,
The Writing of American History
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 56–60; George H. Callcott,
History in the United States, 1800–1860: Its Practice and Purpose
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 134–138.

19
.
  
Marshall did better than the others, perhaps because his title led people to believe they would be reading about the much-idolized Washington. Critics, however, took him to task for wasting two full volumes before getting to the subject promised by the title.

20
.
  
Sydney Fisher, “Legendary and Myth-making Process in Histories of the American Revolution,”
American Philosophical Society Proceedings
, 51 (1912): 64.

21
.
  
Mason L. Weems,
The Life of Washington
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962; reprint of ninth edition, 1809), Introduction by Marcus Cunliffe, xiv.

22
.
  
Cunliffe introduction to Weems,
Life of Washington
, xiv; Van Tassel,
Recording America's Past
, 71.

23
.
  
There is some controversy as to whether the first edition of his pamphlet was
The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington
, printed by George Keating of Baltimore, or
A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington
, printed in Georgetown “for the Rev. M.L. Weems of Lodge No. 50, Dumfries.” (Lewis Leary,
The Book Peddling Parson
[Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1984], 84.)