Review of the Book

Founding Myths
by Ray Raphael

Edward J. Dodson

[This review appeared in the Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, Vol.7, No.4,
December, 2006, with the title "Separating Historical Fact from Fiction"]

It is hardly a secret that much of what has been written on the European migration to and conquest of the Americas suffers the absence of objective perspective. The problem continues even to this day - and will never be resolved - because so much of human activity is subject to interpretation. For this reason, the cautious student of history must look to numerous sources for a thorough understanding of the past and its meaning.

A few years ago there appeared a book written by Ray Raphael with the title, Founding Myths (2004, The New Press, New York). In this work, he reminds us that the truth of the past is often difficult to uncover, that contemporary and subsequent accounts of events suffer the natural inclinations to embellish, rationalize and recast based on one's roles and biases. "Stories of the American Revolution were first communicated by word of mouth, and these folkloric renditions, infinitely malleable, provided fertile grounds for the invention of history," observes Raphael.

Many of the myths he details are among those investigated and analyzed in books by prominent historians. Ray Raphael is standing on their shoulders, bringing this information to a broader audience than scholarly treatments generally reach. How many of our youth learn in school that:

"Paul Revere was known only in local circles until 1861, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made him immortal by distorting every detail of his now-famous ride. Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech first appeared in print, under mysterious circumstances, in 1817, forty-two years after he supposedly uttered those words. The "shot heard 'round the world" did not become known by that name until 1836, sixty-one years after it was fired. …Sam Adams, our most beloved rabble-rouser, languished in obscurity through the first half of the nineteenth century, only to be resurrected as the mastermind of the Revolution three-quarters of a century after the fact. Thomas Jefferson was not widely seen as the architect of American "equality" until Abraham Lincoln assigned him that role, four score and seven years later. The winter at Valley Forge remained uncelebrated for thirty years. Textbooks did not begin featuring "Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes" Until after the Civil War. Molly Pitcher, the Revolutionary heroine … is a complete fabrication."

Who among us would disagree with Raphael's underlying concern over the fictionalization of history, often for reasons of political correctness or to glorify what is less than glorious.

"Perhaps if we examine more closely who we were, who we are, and who we want to be, we can do better than this. We do not have to be confined to such a limiting self-portrait. Our nation was a collaborative creation, the work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated patriots-yet we exclude most of these people from history by repeating the traditional tales.5 Worse yet, we distort the very nature of their monumental project. The United States was founded not by isolated acts of individual heroism but by the concerted revolutionary activities of people who had learned the power of working together."

He spends just a few paragraphs on the role played by Thomas Paine in the colonial uprising and war for independence, stopping only long enough to dispute the number of copies of Common Sense reportedly printed and distributed and the extent to which this pamphlet ignited the flame of rebellion within the colonial population. "If they [the historians] mention any widespread revolutionary feeling, they credit yet one more autonomous perpetrator -- Thomas Paine," asserts Raphael.

"Tom Paine (as he is casually called) supposedly swayed the minds of a fickle public who could not have attained true revolutionary status without him. In the reckless rush to commemorate Paine's mastery, several texts have recently listed the contemporary sales of Common Sense at an astounding half-million, one for every free household in the thirteen colonies-even those with no literate individuals. …It was the fact of independence that shook the world, not the words, later misconstrued, that one man used to describe it."

Paine never claimed what others claimed for him, although he certainly believed he had given all he had to give to the cause of independence. Exactly how many printings of Common Sense were made will never be known. The pamphlet was printed in many different languages and distributed extensively throughout the Old World. What is far more important is that the writing of Common Sense ignited Paine's thinking, directing his energies for the remainder of his life. I, for one, do not consider my admiration for Paine's contributions to political and social thought as hero worship. His life was remarkable, indeed, characterized as it was with instances of human frailty.

With each new biography of Paine, we are offered more evidence countering the many myths spread by Paine's detractors and political enemies. These are the myths that truly deserve to be swept from the historical record.