Citizenship and the Memory of the American Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Political Culture (original) (raw)

Considering the Revolution: The Identities Created by the American Revolutionary War

The Public Historian, 2023

The closing public plenary at the May 2022 virtual conference of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) and the second in a series of five annual scholarly roundtables considering the origins and legacies of the American Revolution, dialogues which will contribute to larger discussions during NPS's commemorations of the American Revolution's 250th anniversary about its changing interpretation and its continuing relevance to the American people. These discussions will be used by NPS staff in their interpretive work with the public regardless of their geographic location or primary interpretive focus, by NCPH members as they prepare themselves and their students for the 250th commemorations, and by members of the public as they consider the relevance of the Revolution to their own lives. The American Revolutionary War was a seminal event that created new identities, new borders, and new realities for the British, French, African, and Indigenous inhabitants of North America. While the war was foundational in the formation of what became modern American identity, its repercussions go well beyond the citizens of the new republic. The events of 1776 to 1783 not only divided the continent between American and British interests, they also divided families and communities between "Patriots" who supported the Congressional Army and "Loyalists" who supported the British Crown. The establishment of the US-British (later Canadian) border not only defined the territories of the new United States -- without any consideration of Indigenous rights or interests -- it also divided the peoples of North America into American citizens or British subjects, while imposing a new settler-colonial construct upon Indigenous nations.

A people's history of the American Revolution

's critical history of the American Revolution against British rule and its impact on ordinary people. Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.

Cultural Politics and Political Thought: The American Revolution Made and Remembered

American Studies, 1979

Historians have recently written prolifically about the sources and interpretations of the American Revolution. The various interpretations of the Revolution and its political ideas convey a variety of political teachings; they can also serve as indices, at any given time, of the political commitments and cultural visions of the interpreters. This study explores these differing interpretations by showing how the materials used in writing histories of the American Revolution reflect long-standing patterns of cultural-political conflict. The books and broadsides used by historians today are themselves interpretations of history, containing canons of selection, causality and political value. Moreover, because these source materials imply systematic ways of interpreting history, the histories in turn serve as forms of knowledge used in subsequent cultural-political conflicts. Little wonder, then, that American political thought so often takes the form of history and that the conflict of...

Extinguishing the ‘Lamp of Experience’: History and Modernity in the American Revolution

Patrick Henry’s declaration that he knew of no other guide than the “lamp of experience” has long supported the perspective that the American Revolution derived much of its moral and intellectual force from history. Inspired less by a desire to inaugurate a new era than by a desire to reclaim a lost birthright, it becomes on this view a revolution in the original sense, a return to an original point of departure, and consequently, a conservative one. In this paper I argue that far from being confident of their place in history, the American revolutionaries were dubious of the illumination it offered. Instead of taking their bearings from it, they were convinced that their experiment’s future could be secured not by embracing the past, but only by rejecting it. Jefferson’s pronouncement that the Revolution opened a “new chapter” in human history is an emblematic but by no means exclusive expression of this attitude. Similar sentiments abound in revolutionary writings. None captures this spirit more than The Federalist, a work suffused by a profound skepticism about the guidance offered by any but the Americans’ own experience. Publius denies the examples of history in order to vindicate the new Constitution from claims that the ruptures it has effected from past experience are likely to doom it, and by extension, the nation. The Americans have not ignored history, Publius replies; they have surpassed it. They should be proud to have been unafraid to heed no example but their own. Indeed, therein lies the greatness of the American achievement. No “flight from modernity,” as one scholar labeled it, the Revolution was forged in its embrace. It exemplifies the historical philosopher Reinhart Koselleck’s theory that modernity (Neuezeit) emerged in the eighteenth century precisely when expectations of the future were distanced from all previous experience. The American Revolution, far from being beholden to the past, was fully modern. Modern because its makers “like[d] the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

Historical Memories and New York Loyalists' Interpretations of the American Revolution

Historical Memories are entangled with political arguments and tend to be the product of the victorious side. This chapter examines the historical narratives from the Patriots and Loyalists. By digging the Loyalist historical memories out of the dust, this chapter demonstrates an alternative memory of the American Revolution. By examining Loyalist memories, this chapter also illustrates the taken-for-granted cultural assumptions that supported Loyalism during the American Revolution.