T.H. Breen: The Secret Founding Fathers
[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.]
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....
Read entire article at The Daily Beast
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....