Book beast
More Book beastThe Secret Founding Fathers
by T.H. Breen
T.H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History and Director of the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University and author of American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Enough about Washington, Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, says historian T.H. Breen, on July 4th we should celebrate the forgotten, ordinary men who took to the streets to fight British tyranny—and are the bedrock of our republican values.
Independence Day typically focuses attention on a cast of characters known as the Founding Fathers. Curiosity about these leaders—George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, to name only the most famous—seems insatiable. The details of their lives assures us that once at the dawn of our shared political culture America’s national leaders were men of special talent, reasonable and intellectual figures who brought forth a new republic.
What we might ask is missing from this familiar narrative of the American Revolution? The answer, of course, is the ordinary people who sacrificed so much to achieve independence. It detracts nothing from the brilliance of the fifty-six members of the Continental Congress to acknowledge that they would constitute little more than a distinguished debating society absent tens of thousands of colonists willing to risk everything for the Cause of America. Reducing these ordinary Americans to silent spectators in the history of the events that we commemorate on July 4th is unjust. Worse, it obscures what we are commemorating.
“It was enough if he could at his Death see his Country Free, and it was a Pleasure to Die for the Rights of this People rather than submit to the cruel Hand of Tyranny.”
During the two years before the delegates to the Continental Congress issued a formal Declaration of Independence, ordinary Americans launched an insurgency that energized resistance to British rule. They drove the revolution forward, often staking out positions more radical than those of their leaders. Before the Congress convened (September 5, 1774), they had driven Imperial officials from office, formed associations of resistance, policed neighborhoods for dissent, even fielded in New England an impromptu army estimated at 20,000 men in response to a rumored bombing of Boston. Because they engaged in violence, they may make modern Americans uneasy. But whatever one thinks about the messy business of waging revolution, we should not forget that without the insurgency of ordinary people, we would not today be celebrating our independence.
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People. By T.H. Breen 352 pages. Hill and Wang. $27.
Even those who favor a more expansive view of our revolutionary history sometimes question whether surviving records allow us to reconstruct the lives of the ordinary people. This is not a serious challenge. These men and women have always been hiding in plain sight. For more than two centuries they have waited for us to hear their story. They left diaries and letters; they voiced their political goals in newspaper articles. They recorded the actions of revolutionary committees of safety. These materials open a window onto the experiences of obscure Americans who decided around family dinner tables, in churches and town meetings, that they could no longer endure an oppressive imperial government.
Two examples immediately come to mind. Matthew Patten owned a hardscrabble farm in Bedford, New Hampshire. What distinguished him from his neighbors was his marvelous diary that chronicled how he and the members of his family were drawn—slowly, often reluctantly—into the resistance movement. His reflections remind us how revolutions transform local communities. On the day that the inhabitants of Bedford learned that British forces had shot farmers in Lexington, Massachusetts—people much like the Pattens—Matthew noted a flurry of activity. His son John and forty four men marched in support of the Americans. Matthew’s daughters also responded to the revolutionary moment. “Our Girls sit up all night baking bread and fitting things for him [John].” The boy received a serious wound at Bunker Hill, but no sooner had he recovered than he rejoined the Continental forces. He was killed early in 1776.
• Sean Wilentz: July 4th’s Forgotten Partisan HistoryMatthew’s diary recorded a parent’s pain. John, the father explained, died “defending the just Rights of America to whose end he came in the prime of life by means of that wicked Tyrannical Brute (nea worse than Brute) of Great Britain. He was Twenty four years and 31 days old.” The Pattens did not need the Declaration of Independence to tell them about the American Cause.
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kajuble
I agree. But other than barbecue, hanging a flag out and watching fireworks, the 4th of July seems like a pretty empty commemoration. I don't think most Americans reflect on history in any real way on the 4th of July.
Adam Starks
You're absolutely right about that!
PigFarmer
I also agree. I don't think most Americans reflect on history at all.
nightdragon09
kajuble... I could say the exact same thing about pretty much ANY major American holiday these days, like for example...
Memorial Day... where we celebrate the official kick off of BBQ season and pool openings across the country.
Labor Day... where we officially close the BBQ/pool season, and celebrate our wonderful unions in the process (pfffft, haha!)
Thanksgiving... where we stuff our faces even more than normal to celebrate our great victory over the Native Americans, and they promptly kick off the crazed holiday shopping season the very next day.
Christmas... where we enjoy the fruits of our crazed shopping season by buying tons of shit for each other that we don't really need.
And pretty much every other national holiday is simply an excuse to take off work/school (any day named after someone, i.e. Columbus, MLK, Washington/Lincoln, etc.), or just get plain old shitfaced (New Year's Eve/Day).
greenback
Agree SO much! America needs to get off the "white people" holidays and I think Obama will have so much to do with that. We NEED to get off the christian days and concentratre more on our Muslim brothers and sisters like Obama wants us to.
greenback
But I oppose the the inclusion of the MLK holiday, it should be a day on which we reflect on the guilt we have inherited by being white and we stolidly renounce our european heritage. THINK!
nightdragon09
greenback... we have the entire month of February for that!
BROKERIT
It is so important for us to remember that while these early "patriots" stood up for liberty and freedom from British oppression, they were definitely in the minority. Only maybe one third were patriots, another third were pro- British, and the last third were totally apathetic and uninformed about either side. If this sounds familiar today, thats why we always hear that "history repeats itself" and those who do not understand
history are doomed to repeat it. We must continue to stand up for our rights as specified in our "Bill of Rights"in the face of constant attack by a liberal media, a left leaning congress and an activist judiciary .Happy Fourth and remember all our men and women serving overseas .
TreyLeTrash
No, we have to protect the country from neo-conservatives using our great country for the success and profit of the corporations that line their pockets. Your corporate arm (FOX) ensures you people are stupid enough to go along.
briansays
A nation born of revolution has forgotten its roots
From Jesses Cafe:
"The financial crisis is being used to cover a subversion of justice, what history may some day regard as essentially a financial coup d'etat, wherein a small group of men, many of whom have their roots and connections with a handful of universities, institutions, and investment banks, essentially seized control of the banking system, and by extension the economy, co-opting the media and the political process, and have been bending it increasingly to their will ever since.
What will most likely trip them up is not so much the acts of fraud and insider dealing themselves, but the overreaching, the cover ups, the subornation of perjury to the Congress, and as always, obstruction of justice. But before we reach that point, I would not discount a more overt attempt to seize or direct the power of government through some staged event, some false flag.. But first and foremost they will use the softer means of deception, persuasion, intimidation, and of course the ridicule of anyone who questions their actions by their well paid demi-monde of analysts and commentators.
The oligarchs have almost ruined the US and the UK. They will now seek to subtly starve the middle and lower classes to pay for their piles of wealth which are largely pieces of paper, useless wagers, and will resist every effort to repeal the absolutely irresponsible tax cuts enacted during the administration of their chosen candidate G. W. Bush, and the setup to divert reform through their stalking horse, Barrack Obama.
They will speak out of both sides of their mouths. Unemployment insurance, Social Security benefits, healthcare, relief for the poor, and pensions are bad, and their unfortunate recipients lazy, stupid and an expendable drag on society. But the maintaining of ill gotten gains of the oligarchs, the enormous fortunes obtained through financial fraud, and paying little or no effective taxes on them through various loopholes, is a somehow a sacred requirement for economic recovery. And so we see how reform is floundering, and the smirks of the congressional chimps and pigmen are maintained even as the nations suffer the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.
There will be many useful idiots, well outside the real circle of power but who consider themselves the well-to-do, that will agree with this injustice, and vehemently attack the unfortunate in society because of a combination of character flaws, usually selfishness, emotional immaturity, and just plain meanness. It is how it always is. Most Gestapo informants were actually neighbors, co-workers, bearing petty grudges and spites, not realizing the damage they were doing to real people. The coldness of the unenlightened human heart and the obtuse vanity of people in wishing suffering on others, with a kind of perverse self-righteousness, is sometimes a wonder to be hold.
As for the politicians and financiers, the oligarchs and those that surround them, I have tried to figure them out for a long time, often first hand. Some are just sociopaths, obsessively driven, as lacking in human feeling as the fellow who would shoot you in the face for your wallet. These white collar jokers have merely had better educational opportunities.
But as for the others, the many, I think that are just ordinary hard working people that over become so intellectually inbred that their viewpoint becomes like a clique, or a cult. They tend to be in positions where they can make or enforce the rules to suit themselves, and spend most of their time talking with others like them, with similar attitudes and feelings towards the world extensively influenced by their profession. They develop a feeling of isolation from the great bulk of humanity.
Principles such as morality, right and wrong, cease to be relevant, without the common cultural context, for them. They become so preoccupied in the particularities of their own piece of game. They lose sight of the big picture. And sometimes this can lead to terrible abuses and excesses.
As an aside, I thought the recent essay from the fellow at the Fed who did not believe that anyone who does not have a PhD were imbeciles incapable of discussing or understanding economics was a good example. Did he understand how silly he sounded, writing from the very heart of a disgraced profession, and from an organization that under Greenspan and then Bernanke look like incompetent clowns lacking even common sense? I was actually embarrassed for him. Coming from the world of technology and big corporations I know the type.
A corporate culture can degenerate into a dangerously compelling institutional blindness, especially in organizations that like to bring their people in young and 'mold them.' Whenever I see clusters of resumes with the words 'Goldman' and 'Yale' or 'Harvard" in them cringe. The CIA used to favor Yale for recruiting, since it seemed to impart an outlook in its students that was amenable to spycraft. I do not know if that is still the case, whether universities tend to develop outlooks by their choice and development of students, but major corporations certainly do.
The US cannot obtain a sustained recovery without serious and significant financial reform and restructuring of its economy, and the legal repatriation of the wealth stolen by the financiers through fraud. What complicates this is that the politicians have allowed themselves to be tainted by the same brush of corruption, so in the short term everything is illusion, deception, and cover up. Slowly but surely, the truth will out. But the delay causes damage.
The bad debts will be liquidated. They cannot be repaid. Starving the common people alone will not work, and selling the sovereign assets will not be enough. Taxes would have to be raised to post WW II levels, along the lines of 70 % for the wealthy. How likely is this? The wealthy elite will promote the confiscation of pensions and Social Security first. These will be dangerous times, full of deception. Greed and fear will reach high emotional states.
Therefore default, albeit selective, is the rationale alternative, excepting the contrivance of yet another war to stimulate demand and encourage compiant behaviour. And that default will be accomplished through devaluation of the currency, the basis of all the debt, which is the Fed's note of zero duration. It will spread the pain throughout all holders of US debt, including those that do not vote. Bernanke and his economists know this.
They will not admit it, because they are playing a confidence endgame with the people and with the holders of US sovereign debt, many of whom are foreign. The last thing they wish to cause is a panic. But at some point, there will be one, and it will not be pretty. The Democrats will attempt to kick that can down the road, delivering it to the successor to Obama, who is like to be a one term wonder 'unless something happens.'
mcmchugh99
If you're saying we need another revolution against the oligarchs, aristocrats and their hired stooges ("placemen" as they were called in the American Revolution) I'm all for it. I just don't think the people have the guts or the brains to do it, no matter how much it should be done.
aurora1920
aurora1920
I mostly agree with everything Brian says, except that he left out the self-destructive series of so-called "free trade" agreements including NAFTA and the WTO. They were -- are -- the beginning of t he end for the American economy.
There is no way we'll ever see the kind of economy we had in the 50s, when ONE wageearner could support a family and send them to college as well. We have more and more R&D; going into making things more efficiently, hiring fewer and fewer people, at less and less wages (they prefer illegals), and somehow expect to maintain a middle class???? Middle class means decent to very good wages, benefits, etc. Republicans (and esp. the far right) want no unions, no controls on business, trust trust trust a bunch of avaricious, greedy, self-serving, multi-national non-patriots (loyalty to bottom line trumps all else) to actually work in America's interests. So what did they expect would happen if they made everything at slave wages off shore?
They are the biblical little foxes that eat the vines -- remember that great movie? and play?
There is a bill in Congress according to Reuters (March 2010--why haven't other media picked up on it??) sponsored by Rep. Gene Taylor of MS and 28 other democrats for a vote asking that Obama give required 6-month notice to withdraw from NAFTA.
Now THERE'S AN IDEA that the Tea Party ought to jump on the bandwagon for -- and Glenn Beck -- both so concerned by the founding fathers and the consitution! The biggest, most devastating trade bill ever, NAFTA, was never ever really passed as a trade treaty! Both parties colluded to make it law as a mere Executive Agreement. Which is how come what Rep. Taylor is askingObama to do CAN BE DONE.
Call/write and ask YOUR Congressman to sign on to the Taylor bill. It's at least a start back to sanity, restoration of our sovereignty, and restoring our manufacturing base.
TotalRecall9
Americans, in particular...the republican party, should reflect on the insurgents part of the Revolutionary War. One man's insurgent or "terrorist" is another man's patriot.
PigFarmer
You are quite correct. Today's "insurgents" are simply employing tactics that work for them. To fight the U.S. military in a conventional war would be sheer suicide for them. Our patriots did the same thing and were accused by the British military leaders of be ungentlemanly (As if such a thing exists in warfare).
nightdragon09
I love people that draw comparisons of the American colonists that fought back against the oppressive English monarchy of the day to modern day organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas/Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups. I mean they really are very similar when you think about it, like for example...
Remember when the colonists slaughtered dozens of school children in "The Boston Massacre?" No?
OK, how about when the colonists blew up the trade ships carrying British tea during the "Boston Tea Party", killing dozens of innocent merchants and fishermen in the process? Still nothing?
OK... how about when the colonists bombed public buildings and market places, killing hundreds of innocent men women and children, all of whom were fellow American colonists just like themselves, in an attempt to force the British empire to "end the occupation of America?" What, still nothing?!?
Thought so. Just because the colonists refused to partake in fighting the "Gentleman's War" style against England, where everyone stood in line and took turns firing at each other in what is perhaps the stupidest way to fight a war EVER, doesn't make them anywhere near the equivalent of modern day terrorists and insurgents.
TotalRecall9
You obviously know NOTHING about the insurgents. The insurgents in Iraq were IRAQIS, not terrorists. Nonetheless, the Bushite republicans called them terrorists. And those Iraqi insurgents were paid off $10 billion to stop attacking U.S. troops! The insurgents in Afghanistan are a mixture of drug warlords and Taliban. And you can basically call the Taliban, "the Orthodox Muslims". If they win the fighting, then guess who gets to tell the Afghan history of this....that's right, they do. And they will describe America as the evil, greedy imperialists. But with David Petraeus leading, you can bet that he's find a way to pay-off the Taliban and making deals with them and the warlords.
PigFarmer
I wasn't making a comparison between the causes. I was simply discussing tactics. You read way more into what I said than I actually said. HOWEVER, since you chose to attack me I'll expound on what you said. Put yourself in the place of the Iraqi "insurgents". Their country was INVADED by US. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a despot but for years and years he was our despot. And the people of Iraq in no way wronged us. What would you do if you were in their shoes? I know that I would be planting IEDs and doing whatever else I could do to attack the invaders of my country. I don't know how you cannot equate those Iraqi's who are fighting our troops with patriotism. Again, if the U.S. were invaded by a vastly superior force and conventional warfare was longer viable what would you do???
greenback
W3ell our "founding fathers'
greenback
Well our 'founding fathers" were also the white men who penned the constitution and that is why their views are invalid today. We must follow the thoughts of Obama and se His mision through. Woe unto they who oppose Him.
nortonclybourn
Thank you for sharing. Now report to the Nursing Station; It's time for your meds!
greenback
Obama will whip this country into shape and then WE the people will do the unracist form we need to be in. YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nortonclybourn
Nurse, get the Haldol injection ready!
Art Williams
To" follow the thoughts of Obama" one must accept the baggage he brings.; his Pastor Rev. Wright's "Goddam America" rantings, Bill Ayers, the hundreds of Marxist, Communist, Radical friends, bomb thrower's and advisors that infest our Government now.
Their agenda; to destroy the country and Socialize it's ruins.
Thank you.
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