The stories about the American Revolution that we learned in grade school may not be as accurate as we would like to believe. It makes sense that what we teach children is somewhat simplified and sanitized; war is a very ugly thing, after all. But some of the better “stories” continue to crop in professional histories, as well as high school and colleges texts. Raphael understands why we feel the need to mythologize our founding, but he also wants to make sure that accurate information is available, too.
One of the “myths” that Raphael discusses is the “Shot heard ‘round the world”. We all know the story about the minute men and the battles at Lexington and Concord, and those did happen. But Raphael makes the point that what happened in Worcester a year earlier was at least as important. That was just after Britain had passed the “Intolerable Acts”, which basically took away all voting rights from the Massachusetts colony. When the local courts tried to convene, large, but peaceful, groups of people prevented that from happening. Losing the franchise, limited as it was at that time, was truly intolerable for the people of Massachusetts. And other colonies realized that the same thing could happen to them, too.
Another “myth” is that the battle of Yorktown ended the war. Oh, it was a victory on the part of the Continental soldiers, that part is true. But there was no guarantee that would be all we needed to do to win the war at that point. Britain was essentially a superpower, and had enough troops to send to avenge this loss The problem was, all of these troops were already deployed elsewhere in the world, protecting England and her other colonies. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783. There might not have been any other major battles, but there were still skirmishes, and soldiers still died in that interim.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Leaning the history of our individual ancestors helps to dispel some of these myths. If you find that what you learn about your ancestor’s life conflicts with “common knowledge” about the Revolutionary era, don’t assume your research is wrong. Raphael writes that we simplify history, to make it easier to teach and to remember. Not all of our history is glorious, but we paint it that way.