People's History, Founding Myths, and the American Revolution
Ray Raphael - People's Historian

 

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Call to Freedom
Sterling Stuckey and Linda Kerrigan Salvucci
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003
Middle school

Myths Perpetuated:

140, 152: “Samuel Adams declared, ‘I look upon [British soldiers] as foreign enemies’” (bogus quotation) and “Samuel Adams was the rebel who organized the Boston Tea Party.” See Founding Myths, chapter 3.

153: Paul Revere and William Dawes warned minutemen “that the British were coming.” (Revere and Dawes were of course British.) See Founding Myths, chapter 1.

155: “Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” See Founding Myths, chapter 9.

156: Boston was “the birthplace of the rebellion”; what happened in the countryside was of no account. See Founding Myths, chapter 4.

160: Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech. See Founding Myths, chapter 8.

162: The July 4 “Unanimous” Declaration of Independence. (This is a doctored version.) See Founding Myths, Conclusion.

168: “Molly Pitcher” was a real person. See Founding Myths, chapter 2.

177: George Rogers Clark was a model Boy Scout. See Founding Myths, chapter 13.

179: In the South, the British “destroyed Patriot property” — no mention of patriots doing the same. See Founding Myths, chapter 11.

181: “At Yorktown the Patriots captured the largest British army in America” — very misleading. See Founding Myths, chapter 12.

Critical items neglected, which change our understanding of the Revolution:

The first seizure of political and military authority from the British — Massachusetts, 1774. See Founding Myths, chapter 4.

Over ninety state and local declarations of independence, which set the stage for the congressional declaration. See Founding Myths, chapter 6.

General Sullivan’s genocidal expedition against the Iroquois, the only significant American campaign of 1779. See Founding Myths, chapter 13.

The winter the Continental Army spent at Morristown — far colder than that spent at Valley Forge, and the harshest in 400 years. See Founding Myths, chapter 5.

The global context for the American Revolution — why the war continued after Yorktown. See Founding Myths, chapter 12.

 
 
 
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