Ray Raphael: American Mythbuster ...a July 4 Interview

Paul Revere didn't make that ride-except in Longfellow's poem. Patrick Henry probably didn't say 'Give me liberty or give me death!' The words were likely put into his mouth by a biographer several decades after his death. Washington's winter at Valley Forge really wasn't that bad compared with other winters during the Revolution. Molly Pitcher probably never existed, and the colonies most definitely did not offer slaves their freedom to fight against the British.

These are just a few examples of the misinformation corrected by Ray Raphael in his cult favorite book Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New Press, 368 pages, $15.95). Founding Myths doesn't merely debunk popular stories in American History, it shows how they were created and why they persist, and why their persistence is blocking the path toward a true understanding of American history.

Just in time for the Fourth of July, Mr. Raphael shot off some fireworks for us in this interview.

One of the most enjoyable things about your book, Founding Myths, is that you skewer treasured legends of America history, or perhaps folklore would be a more appropriate term, while providing the context in which their stories grew. Paul Revere, for instance. Is the story of Paul Revere's ride one that was popular after the revolution or was it a creation of a later era?

The legend of Paul Revere's ride was a long time in the making. Revere himself, in his official deposition shortly afterwards, devoted only one sentence to the ride that would someday make him famous. When he died, 43 years later, his obituary made no mention of it. Still, locals remembered this and other rides made by Paul Revere, and they played up his heroic deeds by word of mouth. This was not unusual. For generations after the Revolution, Americans told tales of their local heroes during the War for Independence. In the mid-nineteenth century, the historians George Bancroft and Benson Lossing collected over a thousand such stories, each featuring some local star. Paul Revere was among these, but only one of many.....