Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

–Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776

You know that saying about the pen being mightier than the sword? As the American Revolution haltingly began, an anonymous writer helped prove it true.

The battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the easy victory at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, and the devastating casualties inflicted on the British army by the rebels at Bunker (Breed’s) Hill in June 1775 had all given hope to the patriot cause a full year before independence was declared.

But the final break—Independence—still seemed too extreme to some. It’s important to remember that the vast majority of Americans at the time were first and second generation. Their family ties and their sense of culture and national identity were essentially English. Many Americans had friends and family in England. And the commercial ties between the two were obviously also powerful.

The forces pushing toward independence needed momentum, and they got it in several ways. The first factor was another round of heavy-handed British miscalculations. First the king issued a proclamation cutting off the colonies from trade. Then, unable to conscript sufficient troops, the British command decided to supplement its regulars with mercenaries, soldiers from the German principalities sold into King George’s service by their princes. Most came from Hesse-Cassel, so the name Hessian became generic for all of these hired soldiers.

The Hessians accounted for as much as a third of the English forces fighting in the colonies. Their reputation as fierce fighters was linked to a frightening image—reinforced, no doubt, by the British command—as plundering rapists. (Ironically, many of them stayed on in America. Benjamin Franklin gave George Washington printed promises of free land to lure mercenaries away from English ranks.) When word of the coming of 12,000 Hessian troops reached America, it was a shock, and further narrowed chances for reconciliation. In response, a convention in Virginia instructed its delegates to Congress to declare the United Colonies free and independent.

The second factor was a literary one. On January 10, 1776, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Common Sense came off the presses of a patriot printer. Its author, Thomas Paine, had simply, eloquently, and admittedly with some melodramatic prose, stated the reasons for independence. He reduced the hereditary succession of kings to an absurdity, slashed down all arguments for reconciliation with England, argued the economic benefits of independence, and even presented a cost analysis for creating an American navy.

With the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine had  come to America from London and found work with a Philadelphia bookseller. In the colonies for only a few months, Paine wrote, at Franklin’s suggestion, a brief history of the upheaval against England.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the impact and importance of Common Sense. Paine’s polemic was read by everyone in Congress, including General Washington, who commented on its effects on his men. Equally important, it was read by people everywhere. The pamphlet quickly sold 150,000 copies, going through numerous printings until it had reached half a million. (Approximating the American population at the time, including slaves, at 3 million, a current equivalent pamphlet would have to sell more than 35 million copies!) Paine donated the proceeds to Washington’s army.

For the first time, mass public opinion had swung toward the cause of independence.

The Library of Congress offers these pages on Common Sense.

This post is adapted from Don’t Know Much About History which discusses the Revolution and Thomas Paine’s unhappy fate. In Paris during the French Revolution, Paine was imprisoned by revolutionary authorities. Upon his eventual release, he wrote an angry open letter to his old comrade George Washington, in which he skewered Washington for not having done enough to secure his release from the French prison. Paine later returned to America but when he died in 1809, no church in American would accept his body for burial as he was an atheist. The man who influenced history Paine was buried wit a handful of people in attendance at his farm in New Rochelle, New York. His remains were later removed to his native England for reburial but were later lost.

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

To recap these events:

Working from May 25, when a quorum was established, until September 17, 1787, when the convention voted to endorse the final form of the Constitution, the delegates gathered in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House were actually obligated only to revise or amend the Articles of Confederation. Under those Articles, however, the government was plagued by weaknesses, such as its inability to raise revenues to pay its foreign debts or maintain an army. From the outset, most the convention’s organizers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton chief among them, knew that splints and bandages wouldn’t do the trick for the broken Articles.

The government was broke –literally and figuratively– and they were going to fix it by inventing an entirely new one. James Madison had been studying more than 200 books on constitutions and republican history sent to him by Thomas Jefferson in preparation for the convention. The moving force behind the convention, Madison came prepared with the outline of a new Constitution.

A reluctant George Washington, whose name was placed at the head of list of Virginia’s delegates without his knowledge, was unquestionably spurred by the events in Massachusetts (Shay’s Rebellion, a violent protest by Massachusetts farmers). Elected president of the convention, he wrote from Philadelphia in June to his close wartime confidant and ally, the Marquis de Lafayette:

I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a government of respectability under which life, liberty, and property will be secured to us, or are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarchy and Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue.

On September 17, Washington signed the parchment copy first, as President of the convention. He was followed by the remaining delegates from the twelve states that sent delegates in geographical order, from north to south, beginning with New Hampshire. (Rhode Island was the only state that did not send a delegation.) When the last of the signatures was added –that of Abraham Baldwin of Georgia– Benjamin Franklin gazed at Washington’s chair, on which was painted a bright yellow sun. He then spoke, as James Madison recorded it:

I have, said he, often in the course of a session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell if it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

In another perhaps more apocryphal tale, Franklin left the building and was confronted by a lady who asked, “Well Doctor, do we have a monarchy or a republic?” The witty sage of Philadelphia replied,

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

This post is excerpted from America’s Hidden History, which offers fuller account of the Convention and the events that led to it.  You can also read more about the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution in Don’t Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

For more about the Constitution, visit these sites:
The National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia:

James Madison’s Montpelier:

Charters of Freedom at the National Archives

www.twitter.com/kennethcdavis

Thomas Jefferson
•Known as a talented writer, Jefferson hated having his work edited. He sat and fumed while the Continental Congress debated his draft version of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was especially peeved when the delegates deleted his reference to slavery, “the execrable commerce.”
•Jefferson instructed his slaves to hide the silver at Monticello, during the American Revolution, when the British came after him, led by turncoat Benedict Arnold.
•Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, July 4, 1826.

There is a wealth of information about Jefferson at Monticello.

John Adams
•Adams knew that Thomas Jefferson was a good writer and wanted him to be added to the group that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Adams, a wily politician, knew he needed a Virginian on the Committee drafting the Declaration. Adams  later said Jefferson was ten times a better writer than he was himself.  Eventually Adams became Jefferson’s political enemy, although they would reconcile in their old age.
•Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams, to “Remember the ladies,” meaning consider giving women rights in the new country being considered. Abigail wrote this to her husband while he was in Philadelphia working towards Independence, and Adams jokingly dismissed that idea, saying “he knew better.”
•Adams believed America would celebrate July 2d as its great independence day –that was the day on which the Congress passed a resolution in favor of independence.
•Like Jefferson, John Adams died on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration.

Read more about John, Abigail and their  son John Quincy Adams at Adams National Historic Park.

John Hancock

•Hancock was one of America’s richest men in 1776. Although the son of a poor minister, he had inherited a fortune from his uncle, a shipper and merchant.
•Known for his outsized signature on the Declaration, Hancock was one of two men who signed the finished draft version of the Declaration on July 4th 1776. Most of the others signed the parchment version later.
•Hancock was the first to sign—on an empty page—and forced the others to sign around the edges. He supposedly said it was so that king wouldn’t need his spectacles, but Hancock was a man who thought highly of himself. That is one reason he was disappointed when George Washington was nominated to command the Continental Army. Hancock hoped to get the post, despite little military experience.
•Hancock was one of the few American Patriots who had a bounty placed on his head by King George III. Hancock was the man the British troops were looking for in Lexington in April 1775.

Read more about Lexington and Concord.

Benjamin Franklin
•Franklin had little formal education but went from printer’s apprentice to wealthy and world-renowned writer and publisher –and inventor.
•Franklin was the most famous American in the world at the time of the signing of the Declaration due to his success publishing Poor Richard’s Almanac and his later scientific and practical inventions, including the stove that bears his name, bifocals and the lightning rod.
•Some American clergymen thought that Franklin’s lightning rod was “sinful” because it controlled something that they considered divine. But the lightning rod prevented many homes and buildings from being destroyed by fires set by lightning strikes.
•Though he later founded an anti-slavery society, Franklin kept slaves as household servants and took advertising for slave sales in his newspapers
•After Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence and said “Gentlemen we must all hang together,” meaning they should be unanimous and all sign, Franklin supposedly said, “Yes, or we shall assuredly all hang separately.”
•Franklin was so stricken with gout in his old age that he had to be carried to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 on a divan chair by inmates of a nearby jail.
•When Franklin died in April 1790, an estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral. Big crowd. But was about two-thirds of Philadelphia’s entire population back then.

The Benjamin Franklin Memorial at the Franklin Institute has more on this fascinating characters.

Charles Carroll
•One of the lesser known Founders, Carroll was unique as the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence; he came from Maryland. Many Americans of this era distrusted and disliked Catholics and there were even laws that kept them from holding property and voting in some states.
•Carroll was also the last surviving signer, dying in 1832 at the ripe old age of 95.
•From a wealthy plantation family, Carroll had studied abroad and was a French-speaker. With his cousin, John Carroll, a Catholic priest, and Benjamin Franklin, he went to Canada on a mission to convince Catholic French Canadians to join the American union. Their mission failed.
•Carroll later helped found the B&O railroad (of “ MONOPOLY” board game fame).

Homewood, a Carroll family home, is maintained as a museum by the Johns Hopkins University.

James Wilson
•Another “forgotten Founder,” Wilson is probably the most important signer of the Declaration many of us have never heard of. An attorney from Scotland, he not only signed the Declaration but was instrumental in drafting the Constitution.
•Wilson was attacked by a working class mob during the Revolution because he and fellow signer Robert Morris were suspected of hoarding supplies, such as wheat, to drive up prices. The incident, known as the “Fort Wilson Riot,” shows there were powerful class differences in Revolutionary America.
•Wilson was one of the first Justices appointed to the Supreme Court, but is the only justice ever to be jailed. He lost money in land speculation, and was held briefly in debtor’s prison and later fled from an arrest warrant. He died in shame.

A marker shows the location of the “Fort Wilson Riots”

John Witherspoon
•Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration and an influential clergyman and educator, was a renowned scholar who came to America from Scotland to run the College of New Jersey –later Princeton.  His prize students included James Madison and Aaron Burr.

•In addition to teaching a future President and Vice-President, Witherspoon’s Princeton students include many Senators and Congressmen, cabinet officers, Supreme Court justices and state governors.

Francis Hopkinson
•Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration from New Jersey, wrote some of the first songs published in America.
•Hopkinson took credit for the design of the United States flag. The evidence is his request for payment of a case of wine.

George Washington
•Of course, Washington didn’t sign the Declaration because he was busy commanding the Continental Army, a post he had been given in June 1775.
•Washington was a rugged, plainspoken frontiersman who is quoted as telling General Henry Knox to “Shift that fat ass, Harry, but slowly or you will swamp the damn boat,” before crossing the Delaware. (Knox’s account) Forget those hokey prayer vigils at Valley Forge!!
•Washington had the Declaration of Independence read to the troops then occupying New York City on July 9, 1776.
•Washington probably had mixed feelings about July 4th because on that date in 1754, as a young man in command of the Virginia colonial militia, he had been forced to surrender to a French army and sign a document that essentially was a confession of murdering a French diplomat. It was the first and only time he surrendered in his military career.
•False teeth? Yes, Washington only had a single tooth of his own left at his death. Wooden teeth? No. His dentures were made from ivory, bone and even human teeth.
•And the cherry tree tale? Also a legend created after his death. Washington’s father died when the boy was eleven and George Washington rarely mentioned his father.

Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation

We seem to be no better off now than we were back in 1987 when the first major survey was called “What Our 17 Year Olds Know.” (It would have been more appropriately entitled “What they don’t know.”)

So the first simple question is:

Why Are we so Bad at History?

There has been an assumption that we all hate history, probably because all the surveys keep telling us that. But the simple fact is that people really don’t hate history. They just hate the dull, watered-down version they were forced to learn in school.  And that is Reason #1 that we don’t know much about History.

Reason #2 is an old problem that has gotten worse. We don’t spend enough time teaching history. That problem has worsened over the past few years, according to history teachers I speak with, because of No Child Left Behind. History teachers often tell me that they are pulled away from their regular curriculum to assist in standardized test preparation in math and reading because judging school performance and funding for schools has been reduced to how well children do on these tests. And yes, far too many teachers have come into the system without sufficient understanding of history and its importance.

Reason #3 is the media –both news and entertainment. There is still tremendous distortion of history in the daily news –some of it deliberate by people with agendas. Then there is the problem of Hollywood History. There are millions of children who think that Pocahontas was a buxom Disney character in a tight, deerskin skirt.

What Can We Do?

The solution to this epidemic of historical ignorance is fairly simple.

•If we think history is so important, spend more time actually teaching it.

•Throw out the textbooks. Okay, maybe not actually. But I don’t know any teachers or students who enjoy textbooks. History is first and foremost STORY. Tell great stories of real people doing real things. We are in a golden age of great historical writers who know how to tell stories. Use them in the classroom. I have seen kids in elementary school who show total curiosity and enthusiasm about history. By high school, that excitement is sucked out of them by rote learning and dishwater dull textbooks.

•Field trips. I know. You shudder at the thought of brown bags and bus rides. But going to the places where history happens makes all the difference in the world. My love of history came from camping trips to places like Gettysburg, Valley Forge and Fort Ticonderoga. And you don’t have to be near Boston, Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia to see history. It is everywhere.

•Stop lying. Museums and historic sites have to tell the truth, not a sanitized, cosmetically perfect version. In Florida, a recreated Spanish village tells visitors that the French were “banished” from Florida by the Spanish in 1565. That’s just not true. They were massacred in a religious bloodbath. Now that is an interesting story. Places like Monticello and Mount Vernon, on the other hand, have come light years from the stodgy museums they once were. They are exciting but more important honest. Both openly deal with the question of slavery in realistic and vivid terms. They don’t try and hide the truth that Jefferson and Washington were slaveholders.

•Use the media. There are some great movies about history, like Glory. Use them to teach. There are many more awful movies about history. We can use them too, by watching and saying “This is not the way it happened.” The real story of Pocahontas is a lot more interesting than the Disney cartoon version. Use that –don’t run away from it.

•Cross-pollinate. By this I mean what the academics like to call “interdisciplinary approach.” Teaching American colonial history? Make sure the English teacher is having the class read The Crucible. Then you can talk about the real Salem Witch Trials –who isn’t interested in witches?– as well as the McCarthy Era which inspired Arthur Miller to write the play.

These are just a few of the lessons I’ve learned about  getting people interested in History. So the secret to this success was simple: “If you build it, they will come.” Just tell people about history in a way that is lively, meaningful, fun, relevant and most important, human, and they will listen. Work with curiosity  instead of destroying it with myths, lies and tedium. Make it fun. But mostly make it real.

Even Jefferson’s birthday is confusing. History books say he was born on April 13,1743. But the grave marker at Monticello says he was born on April 2. That one is easier to answer than some of the larger contradictions in Jefferson’s life. Jefferson was born while the old Julian calendar was still in use in Protestant England and its American colonies. So the April 2 date is called “Old Style” (O.S.). When Great Britain and America finally came around and adopted the Gregorian (named for Pope Gregory) Calendar in 1758, Jefferson’s birth date was changed to April 13.

Thomas Jefferson's Grave Marker at Monticello (Photo: Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

Birth date aside, Thomas Jefferson is such a fascinating and confounding personality because he more than anyone embodies the “Great Contradiction” in American history. How could a nation dedicated to ideals of  freedom and liberty continue a system that enslaved human beings in the cruelest of ways?

That contradiction is nowhere more evident than in Jefferson’s original draft of Declaration of Independence.

A few years ago, at the New York Public Library, I had the thrilling experience of seeing Jefferson’s handwritten copy of his original draft of the Declaration of Independence.  We may take the words for granted now. But Jefferson gave full voice to the idea that we all possess “inalienable rights.” That we are “created equal.”  That we have basic rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That governments exist to advance those human rights, and only with the “consent of the governed.”

This document was written on both sides of two pieces of paper. In his careful, flowing script, Jefferson included all of his original wording to show what the Congress in Philadelphia had changed, underscoring words and phrases that had been deleted. Those alterations, Jefferson, thought were “mutilations.” Distressed by the editing, he made these “fair copies” of his original some time after July 4th. (The document held by the New York Public Library is one of only two known surviving copies.)

The most startling of these changes is a paragraph about what Jefferson calls “this execrable commerce” — slavery.  Jefferson charged –rather ridiculously, of course– that King George III was responsible for the slave trade and was preventing American efforts to restrain that trade. The section was deleted completely. But it is striking to see Jefferson’s bold, block lettering when he describes:

an open market where MEN should be bought & sold

He clearly wanted to underscore his belief that slaves were MEN. The contradiction is stunning, troubling, and difficult to resolve. Jefferson knew slavery was wrong. He believed, like fellow slaveholder George Washington, that it would end. But both men were inextricably tied to the slave society and economy, even though they believed that the “peculiar institution” would gradually die out.  On that point, both men were grievously wrong and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s opening on April 12 is a grim reminder of that.

Of course, part of the cynicism in Jefferson’s case is due to the rumored relationship between Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings. Even Monticello now acknowledges that relationship probably existed, a contention first raised publicly in 1802 by muckraking newspaperman James Callender, a former Jefferson ally who was disgruntled when Jefferson did not offer him a post in the government. In recent years, Monticello has also gone a long way in addressing the question of slave life at the plantation.

Jefferson, who died on July 4, 1826 –the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration– and his deep contradictions are the perfect reminder that politicians are people –even the marble gods like Washington and Jefferson. Their all-too human flaws are proof of that as well as the fact that history books once tried to hide these flaws by pointing to the past with pride and patriotism.

Those flaws are explored in several of my books, including Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War and most recently A Nation Rising, in which I write about Jefferson’s bitter relationship with his first Vice President, Aaron Burr, a man Thomas Jefferson tried to destroy using every political tool at his disposal as President.

I have always felt that seeing a man like Jefferson as human and not a demigod does not diminish his accomplishments as a leader, philosopher, champion of religious freedom and rationality and builder of a great university. If anything, those accomplishments become all the more remarkable.

While small in stature, and sometimes overshadowed by his more famous Virginian predecessors, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Madison must be considered one of the greatest of the Founding Fathers for the breadth and influence of his contributions.

Montpelier, home of James Madison (Photo: Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 in Port Conway, Virginia. The son of a tobacco planter, he was somewhat sickly as a child and was mostly tutored at home. But he proved to be a true scholar and at age 16, chose the unusual course –at that time– of going north to study at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), rather than the College of William and Mary in nearby Williamsburg. There he came under the influence of the college President, John Witherspoon, a future signer of the Declaration of Independence, and made a friend of fellow student, young Aaron Burr, son of the College’s founder.

Returning to Virginia, Madison became involved in patriot politics and became a close colleague of his neighbor Thomas Jefferson, serving as Jefferson’s adviser and confidant during the war years while Jefferson was Governor of Virginia.

In 1794, he married the widow Dolley Payne Todd, having been formally introduced by his college friend Aaron Burr.

A few Madison Highlights–

•Secured passage of the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), an act that is a cornerstone of religious freedom in America. As part of that effort, he wrote the influential Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. (I discuss the “Remonstrance” in my article “America’s True History of Religious Tolerance” in the October 2010 Smithsonian.)

•Was the moving force behind the Constitutional Convention and was one of the principal authors of the Constitution

•With Alexander Hamilton and John Jay was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers, arguments in favor of the ratification of the Constitution

•Was principal author of the Bill of Rights, which he originally thought unnecessary

Following ratification of the Constitution, Madison was a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia and a powerful Congressional ally of George Washington.

•Drafted the first version of Washington’s Farewell Address

•Supervised the Louisiana Purchase as Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of State

•Presided over the ill-prepared nation during the War of 1812, the “second war of independence”

 

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. –June 16, 1788

Madison died on June 28, 1836 at Montpelier, at age 85. He is buried at Montpelier.

LINKS:

The White House brief biography of James Madison

The Library of Congress Resource Collection on James Madison.

Madison’s Major Papers and Inaugural Addresses can be found at the Avalon Project of the Yale Law School.

When I was a kid, we got two holidays: one for Lincoln’s Birthday and another for Washington’s. Now, we have to make do with a three day weekend in February for Presidents Day.
Think you know about the Father of Our Country?
This video contains a few things that might surprise you.

Want to learn a little more?
Here is the website for the National Park Service’s Birthplace of Washington site:
http://www.nps.gov/gewa/index.htm

And here is the National Park Service website for Fort Necessity, scene of Washington’s surrender and “confession.”
http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm

Following up on my earlier lessons about the Bill of Rights, today’s focus is on two more of the fundamental rights of the accused found in the Seventh and Eighth Amendments. And that’s where “cruel and unusual” comes in. You don’t need to be a law student or a lawyer to know that phrase: it was invoked by the Supreme Court to regulate capital punishment. And it is clearly a subjective standard that is often revised and otherwise fine-tuned.

But first, this wouldn’t be a proper Civics Lesson without a Pop Quiz: Here are five more of the questions regarding things you need to know to become an American citizen.

1. What did the Declaration of Independence do? (in nine words or less)

2. What is the economic system of the United States? (Two officially acceptable answers, subject to debate.)

3. Name four states that border Mexico. (Citizen applicants only have to provide one. But I’m the mean teacher.)

4. Name three of the five U.S. territories. (Applicants need only know one.)

5. Who did the United States fight in World War II? (All three main opponents, please)

Now, for more of your basic rights…

Amendment Seven

Guarantees the right of trial by jury in federal civil cases.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

This amendment gives a right to a trial by jury for monetary damages in federal court. The Constitution does not require a jury in civil cases in state courts.

Amendment Eight

Protects from excessive bail or fines; cruel and unusual punishment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Another of the amendments that protect the rights of the accused, it allows the accused to post bail, a guarantee that he will return for trial, in order to be free from detention to prepare his defense. A judge can determine that factors such as the gravity of the offense and previous record weigh against bail.

More controversial is the “cruel and unusual punishment” line, which has been used to argue against the death penalty. In 1972, the Furman v Georgia decision essentially ended all capital punishment. In 1976, the decision Gregg v Georgia opened the way for executions. Under current Court rulings, the death penalty is not considered cruel and unusual, although the United States is one of the few industrialized nations that permits the death penalty.

One widely accepted argument has been that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, preventing further murders. Statistically speaking, there is no evidence to support that idea. In fact, some statistics suggest that the opposite is true. Over the last twenty years, the homicide rates in states with the death penalty has been 50 to 100 percent higher than the rate in states without it, a 2000 New York Times study found.  FBI crime statistics in 2009, according the the Death Penalty Information Center, show southern states with the highest rates of execution also have the highest homicide rates, while northern states with no death penalty have substantially  lower murder rates.  (Link below)

The fact is that homicide rates are often determined by many other factors, including demographics, unemployment, and poverty.

The execution of convicted terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001 came at a time when the country was reexamining its attitudes about the death penalty. The governor of Illinois, a conservative Republican who previously supported capital punishment, and the governor of Maryland, a Democrat, both announced a moratorium on executions when a significant number of death row convictions were overturned in their states. In some of these cases, new DNA evidence proved a convicted person’s innocence; other convictions had been found to be based on tainted evidence or misconduct by police investigators, technicians, or prosecutors.

In 2002, the Supreme Court issued two rulings that also reflected changing attitudes toward the death penalty. In the first case, the Court ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded qualified as cruel and unusual punishment. In another case, the Court held that juries rather than judges must determine if the death penalty is to be used.

The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, offers a history of the death penalty and other valuable information and resources on the issues relating to the death penalty.

Pop Quiz Answers:

1. Acceptable answer are: Announced our independence (from Great Britain); or declared our independence (from Great Britain); or said that the United is free (from Great Britain).

2. Capitalist economy or free market economy.

3. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas.

4. Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northen Mariana Islands, Guam.

5. Germany, Japan and Italy.

But first, the pop quiz portion of the class continues. These five questions are  drawn from the Naturalization Test given to applicants for U.S. Citizenship. Surely any native American citizen can get all of them right. Surely.

1. How many Amendments does the Constitution have?

2. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?

3.  Name three of the original thirteen states.

4. What territory did the United States buy in 1803? (And who sold it?)

5. Who was President during World War I?

In the previous post, I highlighted the Fourth Amendment. That is the first of four of the articles in the Bill of Rights that deal with the rights of the accused. The Framers were men who had lived under a monarch with nearly unlimited powers. It is no accident that four of the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights were clearly designed to protect the innocent and curb the power of the government in accusing and trying the people.

Amendment Five

Guarantees provisions for prosecution and due process of law. Double jeopardy restriction. Protects against self-incrimination. Safeguards due process. Private property not to be taken without compensation.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

“Pleading the Fifth” has acquired the connotation of “He must be hiding something” for many people. If you have nothing to hide, they reason, you would tell the truth. But the idea behind protection from self-incrimination is part of a tradition of reasoning that begins with the presumption of innocence and was designed to check the power of the government. Written by men who knew the unlimited power of a monarch or church to compel evidence, the Bill of Rights placed the interest of the individual above that of the state. Under this amendment, the Constitution requires the state to establish guilt by independent evidence, protecting everyone from a potentially abusive government.

Amendment Six

Guarantees the right to a speedy trial, witnesses, counsel.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This amendment also protects the individual’s rights in criminal proceedings. Having seen people taken to jail under a monarchy, never to be seen again, the authors of the Bill of Rights wrote specific protections against that possibility. Speedy trials, public trials instead of secret inquisitions, jury trials in the district where the crime is committed, the right to confront accusers, and the guarantee of legal representation are all bedrock rights in the American system of justice.

Answers

1. 27

2. Life. Liberty. The Pursuit of happiness.

3. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia.

4. Louisiana Territory (from France)

5. Woodrow Wilson

It’s called the Naturalization Test, given by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and applicants for citizenship must pass it.

Could most American-born citizens pass it? In my experience testing audiences with some of these questions, many people are on shaky  ground. That’s one reason I am offering this Civics Primer as Election Day approaches.

So here are a couple of  questions from the test, Can you keep your passport?  (Answers below. Don’t peek!) –

1. The Vice-President takes over if the President can’t serve. What official is next in line? (And what is that person’s name currently?)

2. What do we call the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution?

3. What are the three branches of government?

4. Name one of the three writers of the Federalist Papers (essays which supported ratifying the Constitution)?

5. Name one of the two longest rivers in America. (Gotcha. You didn’t think there was any Geography on this test, did you?)

My previous posts focused on the first two of the initial Ten Amendments to the Constitution. Here’s a quick refresher on Numbers Three and Four.

Amendment Three is the Rodney Dangerfield of Amendments– it gets no respect.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.

A reaction to the enforced housing of British troops in colonial America before independence was achieved, this amendment has never been the basis for a Supreme Court decision since its adoption. It does mean, however, that the Army can’t just move into your house if it decides it needs a barracks for some troops.  It also serves as an important reminder of what the major concerns were for the men who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights: they were concerned about protection of individual rights and property and feared, perhaps more than anything, the unlimited power of government.

Amendment Four has gotten much more attention.

Protects from unreasonable search and seizure. Calls for probable cause.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

At the heart of the debate over “criminals’ rights,” this amendment was intended to protect privacy and personal security as essential to liberty. This means that no one can be arrested without a warrant naming a specific individual with a specified crime. Arrests without warrants may be made in the case of a felony when the police arrest someone suspected of a crime. After such an arrest, a judge must determine if there is probable cause to hold that person. A police officer can also arrest someone who commits a minor infraction, or misdemeanor, in the presence of the arresting officer.

The amendment also permits only “reasonable” searches and covers evidence that is uncovered during a search that relates to a separate crime. All of these issues depend on the court hearing them. No warrant is necessary for police to look for something outside a building or private yard or property.

Answers:

1. The Speaker of the House of Representatives (currently Nancy Pelosi)

2. The Bill of Rights

3. Legislative (Article I of the Constitution); the Executive (Article II of the Constitution); Judicial (Article III of the Constitution)

4. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay

5. The Missouri or the Mississippi

The answer: 435.

Here’s  another question  that wasn’t included in that survey: How many Electors are there? Add 100 Senators to the number of Representatives and then three more votes for the District of Columbia (which has no Senators and a non-voting member of the House) and you get the answer: 538. Each state gets electors equal to their representation in Congress. To become President, you must win enough states and their Electors to reach the Magic Number of 270 (half of 538 plus one). By the way, the “Electoral College” is not mentioned in the Constitution –only “Electors.” And no, the Electoral College is definitely not a party school.

In the first post of this series, I summarized the First Amendment and its five essential guarantees –always a source of controversy. If anything, the Second Amendment has often proven just as contentious. But most of us don’t know what it actually says or means.

Americans have always liked their guns. And some Americans REALLY like their guns. Whether to hunt, protect their homes or defend themselves from a tyrannical government, many Americans believe that the government has no right to restrict their access to firearms. But those who want to minimize gun violence, Congress, and the Courts have thought otherwise. Which brings us to the Second Amendment. There is little doubt that the Founders and Framers, in a time when there was no standing army, expected men to  have a gun at the ready to defend the country. But does that 18th century logic still hold in a country with a standing army, state militias and local police forces? And does the high level of American gun violence (more than 31,000 firearms fatalities in 2006, according to the CDC) mean it is time to reassess an idea that made sense more than 200 years ago?

Amendment Two: Guarantees the limited right to keep and bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Among today’s most passionately argued of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was intended to provide for the effectiveness of the militia, which would presumably protect the citizen against Indians, foreign powers, or the power of the federal government, at a time when there was little or no standing army.  Militias also served another unique role in the slave holding states: one of their primary duties was to suppress slave revolts, of which there were hundreds throughout American History.

In a long string of decisions, the Supreme Court had consistently ruled that the Second Amendment does not bind the states, so that state and local governments are free to enact gun control laws if they desire. In the case of federal laws, since a 1939 case involving sawed-off shotguns, United States v. Miller, the courts have held that the Second Amendment only confers a collective right to keep and bear arms, which must have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Since then, Congress has placed many restrictions on the manufacture, sale, transfer, and possession of weapons, and these statutes have all been upheld as constitutional.

Not everyone agrees with that interpretation, even though it stood for more than sixty years. As constitutional scholar Leonard W. Levy writes,

The Second Amendment is as vague as it is ambiguous. Some think it upholds the collective right of state militias to bear arms, while others, probably more accurate in so far as original intent is concerned, argue that it protects the right of individuals to keep arms. (Original Intent and the Framers’ Constitution)

Until 2002, no administration had challenged the so-called “collective right” established by Miller in 1939. But in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the Justice Department would seek to challenge the collective view in favor of the individual rights view, a stance vigorously supported by the National Rifle Association. In footnotes in two filings with the Supreme Court in 2002, the government said that the Second Amendment protected the rights of individuals “to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse.”

More recently, in June 2008, the Supreme Court, led by George W. Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed in 2005 following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist), went beyond the Bush Administration’s arguments. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court struck down a 32-year-old Washington, D.C. ban on handguns as incompatible with the Second Amendment.

The majority opinion in the 5-4 decision ruled that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.  The Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

In a vigorous dissent expressing what had been the predominant view since the 1939 Miller ruling, Justice Stevens wrote that the Second Amendment:

was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

And that is where the Second Amendment stands today.

Here is a link to the District of Columbia v. Heller case, including the majority and dissenting opinions.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

Once again the New York Public Library is displaying a handwritten version of the Declaration, written by Jefferson. Here is a post I wrote last year after visiting the Library:

Last evening, I had a thrilling experience. In a small, darkened room with the feel of a chapel inside the magnificent New York Public Library, I saw Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. For me this was a “Grail Moment.” Setting aside all of Jefferson’s contradictions and human flaws, I found the experience of seeing these words in his own hand exhilarating.

We take them for granted, of course. But Jefferson gave full voice to the idea that we all possess “inalienable rights” –That we are “created equal.” That we have basic rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That governments exist to advance those human rights, and only with the “consent of the governed.”

The document is written on both sides of two pieces of paper. In his careful, flowing script, Jefferson included all of his original wording to show what the Congress in Philadelphia had changed, underscoring words and phrases that had been deleted. Those alterations, Jefferson, thought were “mutilations.” Distressed by the editing, he made these “fair copies” of his original some time after July 4th. (The document on display at the New York Public Library is one of only two known surviving copies.)

The most startling of these changes is a paragraph about what Jefferson calls “this execrable commerce” — slavery. Jefferson charged –rather ridiculously, of course– that King George III was responsible for the slave trade and was preventing American efforts to restrain that trade. The section was deleted completely. But it is striking to see Jefferson’s bold, block lettering when he describes:

an open market where MEN should be bought & sold

Yes, he was going home to a plantation completely dependent upon slave labor. But he clearly wanted to underscore his belief that slaves were MEN. The contradiction is stunning, troubling, and difficult to resolve.

As the nation approaches its celebration of Independence and the ideals of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” it is always crucial –and challenging– to remember that with those rights comes responsibility. We have traveled a remarkable road in 233 years. There is no more powerful symbol of that distance than the fact that an African American is President.

But we still have far to go until we all have secured all of those rights –equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness– for all of the people. Jefferson and his 55 fellow signers pledged their lives, fortunes and “sacred honor” in support of those fundamental human rights. Would we all be willing to say the same?

Here is a link to the New York Public Library Exhibit:
http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/declaration-independence-7

Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, a few names are familiar. Most Americans, if pressed, can probably name a true handful –Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John and Sam Adams, and John Hancock, he of the famous signature.

But among the other men who set their names on the Declaration –in essence, signing a death warrant for committing treason against the most powerful man on earth, King George III– are a collection of some extraordinary characters, who for the most part are forgotten. One of these “Forgotten Founders” is James Wilson, whose contributions to the creation of the United States of America were obscured by his  later disgrace.

Scottish by birth (in 1742), Wilson came to America in 1766. He soon found a place in the offices of John Dickinson, then one of the richest men in America. He also began to speculate in real estate, as many of the other Founding Fathers did. That would be his downfall.

In 1774, Wilson wrote a pamphlet called “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament.” In it, he argued that the British Parliament had no authority over the colonies. This pamphlet was one of the first convincing legal arguments for American independence. Although it lacks Jefferson’s poetry, Wilson’s essay contained some ideas that have since become familiar:

All men are by nature, equal and free. No one has a right to authority over another without his consent…. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is the first law of every society.

As a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Congress, Wilson was an outspoken advocate of independence. But his constituents were more cautious. Then, Wilson met with some of the people who elected him, and it was agreed that he could vote for independence. He brought Pennsylvania into the “Yes” column. For that alone, he probably deserves more credit on July 4th.

Wilson next appears in history when a riot broke out in Philadelphia in the middle of the Revolution. Working class residents of the city were angry because of skyrocketing prices, due in part to hoarding of supplies by Philadelphia’s wealthy merchants. While about 30 of these merchants, including fellow Signer Robert Morris, were barricaded in Wilson’s Philadelphia home, an angry mob wheeled out a cannon and attacked the house in what was known as the “Fort Wilson Riot.” Wilson and the others were rescued by a detachment of Pennsylvania militiamen, but five people died in the fighting. They left that out of your textbook, I bet.

In the summer of 1787, Wilson became one of the central figures in the debates over the Constitution. With the Constitution ratified, Wilson then lobbied George Washington –a bit too aggressively for Washington’s taste–  for the post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Washington instead appointed Wilson an associate justice of the first Supreme Court.

But Wilson, who had continued his land speculation and even had a Utopian vision of bringing in boatloads of immigrants to work new lands he was acquiring, got caught in one of America’s first economic meltdowns. While a sitting justice, he fell deeply into debt and was eventually sent to debtor’s prison –the first, and so far only member of the Supreme Court to go to jail.

Faced with more debt, he essentially went on the lam, ahead of creditors and the sheriff. He went to North Carolina where he was jailed a second time. After his release, Wilson contracted malaria, and died, penniless, of a stroke in August, 1798, an embarrassment to his friends and fellow Federalists. Buried in North Carolina, Wilson’s remains were later moved to Philadelphia’s Christ Churchyard.

Wilson had a hand in the creation of the Declaration and the Constitution  — he was a “Founder,” a “Signer” and a “Framer.” But in the end, he was disgraced and forgotten.

A portrait of Wilson from the University of Pennsylvania Law School: http://www.law.upenn.edu/about/history/photogallery/Insidegallery/wilson.html

And read more about the Revolutionary era in America’s Hidden History and Don’t Know Much About History.

-It’s not a “piece of paper.” The original version of the Declaration  was “engrossed” (a word for preparing an official document in a large, clear hand) on parchment (which is an animal skin, stretched and treated to preserve it). The Declaration was probably “engrossed” by Timothy Matlack, an assistant to Charles Thompson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress.

–”Inalienable” or “unalienable“?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Jefferson’s drafts shows he wrote “inalienable.” The parchment and printed versions use “unalienable.”

According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style from Houghton Mifflin:

The unalienable rights that are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence could just as well have been inalienable, which means the same thing. Inalienable or unalienable refers to that which cannot be given away or taken away.

–Why didn’t George Washington sign? Washington was otherwise engaged. At the moment that the Congress voted on the Declaration, Washington was commanding his ragtag Continental Army in New York City, about 90 miles from Philadelphia. Washington had been appointed Commander of the Army in June 1775 and taken command in Boston.  On July 9, 1776, he had the Declaration of Independence read aloud to his men. After hearing the Declaration read, a mob of enthusiastic New Yorkers tore down a statue of King George III in the Bowling Green and melted the lead for musket balls.

For Washington, the date of July 4 was bittersweet. In 1754, as the young and untested commander of a Virginia militia unit, he had been surrounded and forced to surrender by a French army in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Washington’s surrender came after his men and some Native American allies attacked and massacred a group of French soldiers on a diplomatic mission.  Washington’s surrender included what was a “confession” of murdering a French diplomat and the incident helped sparked the Seven Years War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). This was the first and only time he surrendered in his military career. But the sting of that defeat must have made July 4th an unhappy anniversary for Washington for years to come.

–How many Declarations are there?

The document, which was later lost, went to printer John Dunlap who prepared 26 (known) copies of the Declaration of Independence on the night of July 4th. Their present location –including two in England– and more information on the history of the Declaration and its travels over the centuries can be found at the National Archives: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html#appendixa

–First of all, we celebrate the wrong day –as far as John Adams was concerned. The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, actually voted on a resolution of independence on July 2d. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that this day would be a day of history that would be marked with bonfires, church bells ringing and “illuminations” –or fireworks. He was right about all the other details but missed on the date. The date of the adoption of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence became fixed on the national calendar.

–Although Jefferson was the chief author of the Declaration, he was a member of a committee of five men charged with drafting a declaration that would explain why the colonies were separating from England. The others were  John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York, who was not an advocate of independence.

–“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ?“  Jefferson borrowed from a phrase used by other writers, including fellow Virginian George Mason, who had written about “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.”

Here is a link to Jefferson’s draft as it was presented to Franklin and Adams with some of his changes shown: http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/rough.htm

–Congress also made some changes. The most significant was the deletion of a paragraph in which Jefferson charged that King George III was responsible for the slave trade. That was dropped, Jefferson later noted, in deference to the men who owned slaves as well as those who made a great deal of money transporting them. Remember, some of the largest slave ports were in the northern colonies.

–The July 4th vote was not unanimous. The vote tally was by each state delegation. New York abstained on July 4 and voted to approve the Declaration on July 9th, making it unanimous. All thirteen colonies were now aboard.

–The signers didn’t sign –at least not on July 4th. Only two men actually signed the July 4th version: John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, serving as secretary. The actual signing ceremony took place on August 2, 1776. And even then, only 50 of the 56 signers were present to sign.

–The first celebration took place in Philadelphia on July 8th when the Declaration was read publicly for the first time. The “Liberty Bell,” a name that was not given to the famous symbol of freedom until the early 19th century, was rung. But it didn’t crack then. That came later. The words inscribed at the top of the Liberty Bell read, “Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” And no, Taco Bell did not buy the rights to the Liberty Bell — that was a very successful April Fools Day joke. (Yes, they got me.)

–Words on back? Sorry no secret, invisible treasure map as in the movie National Treasure. But the words “Original Declaration of Independence, dated 4th July 1776″ are written on the back of the parchment version now displayed in the National Archives.

FLAG DAY is celebrated on June 14 in honor of the adoption of the American flag by the Second Continental Congress in 1777.

In 1877, Congress ordered the flag to be flown from every government building on June 14 to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the official birth of the American flag. With its thirteen red and white stripes in honor of the original states, the U.S. flag has has changed a lot since 1777, with 50 stars now representing the states. But the familiar symbol of America has a surprisingly obscure history. How much do you know about the “stars and stripes”?

True or False? (Answers below)
1. The original design, with 13 stars in a circle, was the handiwork of seamstress Betsy Ross.
2. The American flag is never lowered to honor visiting heads of state.
3. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, composed in 1776, always included the words “one nation under God.”
4. It is legal to burn the flag as a form of protest.

You can find a good source of flag history and tradition at this website, US Flag.org:
http://www.usflag.org/history/flagevolution.html

You can also find more information about the National Anthem and the flag that inspired it in this videoblog:

http://www.dontknowmuch.com/2010/03/today-in-history-birth-of-an-anthem/

Answers
1. False, probably. The Betsy Ross legend has largely been discredited. The likely father of the flag design was Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration from Pennsylvania and a member of the Continental Navy Board.
2. True. In a long-standing tradition, the flag is never dipped to any other nation’s, including during the Olympics.
3. Double False. The Pledge was composed in 1892 and the words “under God” were added in 1953.
4. True. The Supreme Court has ruled that burning the flag in protest is speech protected under the Fifth Amendment.

“Listen my children, and you shall hear/of the midnight ride of . . .  Joseph Warren?”
Okay. Okay. It doesn’t scan like Longfellow’s original. But that’s the problem. In making sure we “hear” about “Revere,” Longfellow’s famous poem ignored the man whose name should be as familiar as those of John Adams or John Hancock. A man who deserves to be honored this Patriots’ Day, the civic celebration of America’s Revolutionary beginnings that is more widely known as Beantown’s “Marathon Day.”
A successful physician and progressive thinker, Joseph Warren was a farmer’s son born in 1741 in Roxbury, outside Boston. Warren chose his profession when he saw his father die after a fall from a tree. Later, he became an outspoken advocate of inoculations to battle the plague of smallpox sweeping colonial America and vaccinated his most famous patient, John Adams.
But medicine was not his only passion. As the colonies began to clash with Mother England, Warren was drawn to the red-hot center of Boston’s patriot inner circle. He became a propagandist, spymaster and orator who modeled himself on Cicero, martyr of the Roman Republic, occasionally appearing in a toga to deliver incendiary speeches.
Most likely, it was Warren who led those men disguised as Indians to the “party” where they tossed a shipload of British tea into Boston Harbor. And he was the crucial go-between, linking Boston’s upper crust patriots –who got most of the glory– and the workingmen and artisans – like Paul Revere – who did most of the dirty work.
But Warren was left out of our poems. And our schoolbooks. And that’s too bad, because his story is compelling.

It was Warren who issued Revere’s “riding orders” on that night in 1775, setting the stage for the fateful April 19th morning at Lexington and Concord –the reason behind Patriots’ Day and, with it, the running of the Boston Marathon. A few weeks after those citizen-soldiers, known as Minute Men, became the first to fight and die in the American Revolution, Warren took to the front lines at the battle called “Bunker Hill.”  An enemy ball caught him in the head and he fell.

For the British, Warren’s death was a coup, celebrated by tossing the rebel doctor’s body into a mass grave with other fallen Americans. But for the patriot cause, the loss of Warren cut deep. Abigail Adams mournfully wrote to husband John: “Not all the havoc and devastation they have made has wounded me like the death of Warren. We want him in the Senate; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician, and the warrior. When he fell, liberty wept.”
Paul Revere later returned to the battleground to locate the rebel leader’s body. He was able to identify his compatriot’s remains because Revere had fitted the false teeth that Warren wore, one of the first known cases of forensic dentistry.

Yet, Joseph Warren’s story remained buried, overshadowed by the more illustrious Founders with better biographers –and admiring poets. He became the most important Founding Father most of us never heard of.

This Patriots’ Day, when the runners “hit the wall” at Boston’s “Heartbreak Hill,” let’s remember, it’s not about the Marathon. Nor was it just a bunch of cranky tea drinkers complaining about taxes. As the life and untimely death of Joseph Warren attest, Patriots Day –and the original Tea Party– were about idealism, selflessness, the communal good, courage and sacrifice –civic virtues that are all too often in short supply.

After four years of Civil War, with his Army of Northern Virginia practically starving and reeling under the onslaught of Union pressure from Grant’s superior forces, Robert E. Lee had to contemplate the inevitable –surrender. On the evening of April 8, after a last-ditch attempt at breaking through Union lines failed, Lee was told that his army could not move forward.

“There is nothing left for me to do but to go see General Grant, and I had rather die a thousand deaths. “

By coincidence, Lee’s meeting with Grant took place in a farmhouse owned by Wilmer McLean, the same man who in 1861 had given his house to Confederate General Beauregard during the Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war. McLean moved from Manassas, Virginia with the hope of finding a quieter place. His home at Appomattox Court House would again witness history.
The New York Times headlines read:
Hang Out Your Banners; Union Victory! Peace!

This noteworthy anniversary would be most likely overlooked by all but Civil War buffs if it were not for the current dust-up over Virginia Governor Bob McMullen’s pronouncement that April is “Confederate History Month” in the state. Unfortunately the Governor neglected to mention the word “slavery” is his press release marking this part of Virginia’s past. While the Governor quickly corrected his omission, it attracted even more attention. President Obama termed the oversight “unacceptable” a few days later in response to a reporter’s question about the controversy.

For a moment, we shall set aside the question of the wisdom of choosing April as the appropriate month in which to celebrate the tradition of violent rebellion against the government in 1861. It is after all, the month in which the Civil War began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865 and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14 by John Wilkes Booth. These are not exactly the high water marks of the Confederacy.

The controversy generated by the celebration of Confederate History Month and the hastily-corrected omission of any mention of slavery served as a pointed reminder that the Civil War still haunts the nation.

Discussing Civil War History still raises two problems –Many people know nothing about the central event in our history. It has fallen into that “black hole” of dates, battles and speeches that is usually flushed down the memory hole when the final exams are done.

Then there are those who profess who cling to a history that says that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. That it was a glorious second “revolution,” fought to protect “states rights” from a tyrannical federal government. That is nonsense. Slavery was at the heart of the political, economic and social struggle that led to the Civil War. That does not mean that the Civil War was a “moral crusade” fought by Abolitionists. But the right to own slaves and take them further west into the territories being opened up was the only “right” that the Confederate states were fighting for.

I hope that the Governor’s proclamation of Confederate History Month becomes a “teachable moment” in which we really discuss what this devastating war, which cost the lives of some TWO PERCENT of the American population at the time, meant to America, then and now.

Read more in Don’t Know Much About the Civil War

And what was the “Boston Massacre,” class?

A mob of unemployed, angry (and probably three-sheets to the wind) dockworkers got into a shouting match with some of the much-hated British soldiers then quartered in Boston –and competing for jobs at the port in their off-duty hours. Curses were exchanged, snowballs thrown, then rocks. In an instant, shots rang out and several of the Boston men fell dead. A Paul Revere engraving of the event quickly became a patriot icon and a propaganda coup – a graphic image of the brutality and tyranny of British rule.

Then came a trial of the men accused of murdering these “townies.” Undoubtedly, these eight British soldiers and the officer in command were as reviled as “jihadists” and “Guantanamo detainees” are in America today. Which brings us to the question at hand.

What sort of man would possibly defend such heinous “killers?” It is a question that has taken on new poignancy with the recent controversy over the attacks by Elizabeth Cheney and other “conservatives” from “Keep America Safe” on the attorneys who have defended some of the Guantanamo detainees.

The attorney who defended those British soldiers was also assailed in his time. He knew his business would suffer from taking on such unpopular clients. But he did it –and for very little compensation, the colonial equivalent of a Legal Aid attorney. His name was John Adams.

In spite of the public grief he took –including some from his more radical and outspoken cousin, Samuel— 34-year-old attorney John Adams took the case of defending the soldiers on principle. And he stated that principle himself at the time:

“The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished.”

Adams was successful in the two trials. In the first, the officer in command was found not guilty. In the second, six soldiers were completely acquitted and two were found guilty of manslaughter for which they were branded on their thumbs.

Adams would be publicly assailed over his decision and later said he lost half of his business. For his part, Samuel Adams mostly kept quiet about the case realizing that this very public display of fairness looked good for the then-blossoming patriot cause. A lynch mob might well have been a disaster for the Americans.

In his old age, Adams looked back at the case and wrote that his part in the defense of the British soldiers was

“one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”

True Conservatives have traditionally professed to respect the rule of law, honor the ideals of the “Founders” and hold high the notion that individual rights are to be protected against the possible tyranny of a despotic government. The so-called “conservatives” attacking the Guantanamo attorneys might want to brush up on their middle school American History. As John Adams himself told the jury back then,

“Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

By now, I hope we all know that the cherry tree story is a legend, made up by a pseudobiographer but chiseled into American folklore.
But there is a true story about a young George Washington that most of us never hear. It is the story of his first actual military experience and his signing of a “murder confession.” It is not only more interesting than the cherry tree story but a lot more revealing.

The incident began in late May 1754, with England and France in a brief respite from bouts of relentless war. Relying upon knowledge garnered from reading military manuals, the wet-behind-the-ears Washington was in command of a crew of militiamen dispatched to build an outpost in western Pennsylvania’s contested wilderness.

Encountering a detachment of French soldiers, Washington followed the advice of an ally he barely trusted –an Indian chief known to the English as the Half King. Tossing caution to the wind, the untested Washington defied orders and ambushed the French. When the smoke cleared, one Virginian and several Frenchmen lay dead or wounded; the rest were taken prisoner. “I heard bullets whistle,” Washington later told his brother, famously adding that the sound was “charming.”

What happened next was anything but charming. A wounded French officer frantically waved some papers at Washington. He was, in fact, a diplomat, carrying letters to the British. But before Washington could make sense of this, the Half King buried his tomahawk in the Frenchman’s brain. The Indians fell on the other captives, leaving few alive.

Following this massacre, a French army set off in hot pursuit of Washington. Outnumbered, Washington’s men cobbled together a small wooden shed, surrounded by sharpened stakes, in a meadow about 60 miles south of what is now Pittsburgh. It was called “Fort Necessity” —but “Desperation” would have been more fitting. The Half King’s warriors took one look and beat a hasty retreat.

On a rainy July 3d, the French surrounded Fort Necessity and poured gunfire down on Washington’s hapless troops. Their powder wet, their trenches filling with mud and gore, some of the Virginians ransacked the rum stores. By the morning of the 4th, Washington had no choice. Fortunate he wasn’t shot on the spot, he accepted terms. Among them was signing what amounted to a murder confession. His admission sparked the Seven Years’ War—history’s first true “world war.” (The North American phase was the French and Indian War.)

Insubordinate, incompetent, an admitted murderer who had surrendered in abject defeat –Washington should have been done in by any of these blows to his reputation. But instead, he flourished. The first “Teflon” hero in American history –nothing stuck to the young George Washington.

Clearly, he possessed uncanny survival skills. He had proven that in 1753, during a dangerous trek through the Ohio River Valley wilderness when he was shot at by an Indian and later plunged into an icy river. By all rights, Washington should have died of exposure. But he lived to tell the tale and made a name for himself.

Just as intriguing as this public reversal of Washington’s failures is how they escaped inclusion in your schoolbooks. Maybe it is this simple: his “youthful indiscretions” never fit the tidy “I-cannot-tell-a-lie” image of young Washington that many Americans still cherish. Many Americans still cling to the mythic version of history with heroes as perfectly polished as the marble monuments in the nation’s capitol.

Yet the tale of “Washington’s Confession” is not simply revisionism meant to tarnish an icon. Washington emerged as the “indispensable man” who saw combat at its worst, learned well the politics of war, and was surely shaped by these disastrous misadventures.

“Washington’s Confession” is just one piece of America’s “hidden history,” a reminder that winners tell the tales. And Washington was a winner. Even though –as he surely knew– it is often the defeats and disasters that can teach us the most.

Here is a link to the National Historic site at Washington’s “Fort Necessity”
http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm
You can read more of the story of “Washington’s Confession” in America’s Hidden History

[The news story about the Tea Party Convention: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26teaparty.html?src=tptw]

It began as a populist uprising against –surprise, surprise—the bankers and lawyers who were making the rules back in Boston, men derided as “thieves, knaves and robbers” by the average people of Massachusetts. During the first economic crisis in a nation then ruled by the Articles of Confederation, sweeping foreclosures threatened farms and businesses, unfair tax systems were crushing American families, and there was no credit to be had. Sound familiar? Plus ça change…

Fighting back, hundreds of these average men came together under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and came to be called Shays’s Army. The politicians called them “insurgents.”

Many of the men, like Shays, were veterans of the Revolution and had fought in every battle from Bunker Hill to Yorktown. Some had suffered through the winter at Valley Forge. Now some of them had been told they couldn’t vote. So they began their second American Revolution in the winter of 1786 and the early winter of 1778. On January 25th, after a raging storm left four feet foot of fresh snow in the Berkshire hills, more than a thousand of these men – farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers – marched on the federal arsenal in Springfield, hoping to take the artillery and muskets stored inside, and continue on to Boston to overthrow the state government.

Apparently, they believed these words from the Declaration of Independence:

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it . . .”

Lightly armed and poorly organized, the “Shaysites” were repulsed by a small militia army, bought and paid for by the power brokers of Massachusetts. Among those in power was patriot icon Samuel Adams, who said of the rebellious farmers,

“In monarchies, the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death..”

Indeed a few of the rebels did die that day in Springfield. Several volleys of grapeshot killed a handful of men; the others scattered in panic. More federal troops eventually rounded them up. Daniel Shays, an outlaw, made his way to the “Republic of Vermont,” not yet a state. (Eventually pardoned, he lived out the rest of his life as a struggling farmer in upstate New York.)

The “horrid and unnatural Rebellion and War,” as the Massachusetts legislature called the uprising, ended with a few small bangs and a whimper. And Americans killing each other.
Thomas Jefferson, hearing the news in Paris, wrote back to America,

“What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

George Washington was not so philosophical. “Are your people mad?” an incredulous Washington wrote to one of his former aides in New England. The prospect of more Shays Rebellions provided the urgency for Washington, James Madison, and other “Framers” to collect in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution. The angry “teabaggers” of western Massachusetts had pressed America to become “a more perfect Union.”

“Shays’s Rebellion” was far from the first time populist anger boiled over violently in America. There had been numerous uprisings throughout colonial America in which the poor and powerless struck out at the earliest generation of American “Elites.” And populist anger has remained a constant throughout our history. It is anger born of economic dislocation, but is often fueled by darker streaks — race and religion have frequently stoked the coals of populist rage. And these tales are usually untold in our schoolbooks. They don’t fit the tidy picture of American History.

In the past, populist movements like the “Tea baggers” have usually flamed hot before burning out –co-opted or absorbed by the major parties. Whether the fractious and increasingly fractured “Tea Party” is one more of these flameouts remains to be seen. But the history of populist anger is a real one. And as the Senate race results in Massachusetts –scene of Shays’s Rebellion– recently proved, people are mad. The bloodletting may be symbolic this time. But Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” may be refreshed with more political bloodshed before too long.

You can read more about Shays’s Rebellion and its impact in America’s Hidden History

With little formal education, he became a writer, printer, philanthropist, philosopher, political leader and scientist. Franklin, alongside Thomas Jefferson, was probably the best example of the American Enlightenment Man. And, like Jefferson and other men of his times, Benjamin Franklin was skeptical of organized religion.

But proponents of America as a “Christian nation” and those who favor public prayer often cite Benjamin Franklin’s entreaty that the Constitutional Convention –then seemingly at an unbreakable impasse– open its daily debates with a prayer. What they conveniently leave out is what actually happened following that suggestion.

Alexander Hamilton first argued that if the people knew that the Convention was resorting to prayer at such a late date, it might be viewed as an act of desperation. Nonetheless, Franklin’s motion was seconded. But then Hugh Williamson of North Carolina pointed out that the convention lacked funds to pay a chaplain, and there the proposition died. Franklin later noted,

The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.

Late in his life, Franklin wrote what could almost pass for a modern New Age statement of faith:

“Here is my creed. I believe in one God, creator of the universe.
That he governs it by his Providence. . . . That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. . . . As to Jesus of Nazareth. I think the system of morals and his religion . . . the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have . . . some doubts as to his divinity.”

He added, “I have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments. . . . I hope to go out of the world in peace with all of them.”

Franklin died on April 17, 1790.
Here’s a link to a Library of Congress website celebrating Franklin on his 300th birthday in 2006.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/franklin/introduction.html

You can read more about Franklin and his accomplishments and impact in Don’t Know Much About History and America’s Hidden History

Why is there a statue of Benedict Arnold’s boot?

Years ago, I was asked that question on a radio call-in show and honestly did not know the answer. Nor was I even aware at the time there was such a statue. But there it is — part of the Saratoga National Park in Saratoga, New York. The “boot” is actually anonymous, citing the “most brilliant soldier in the Continental Army.” But there is no question it honors American history’s greatest villain, born this day in 1741.

The “Boot Monument” is part of the park tour:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/sara/tour-7.htm
http://www.nps.gov/sara/index.htm

History books like to make people into heroes or villains. Benedict Arnold was easily characterized as a villain, the most notorious traitor in American History for his attempt to betray the patriot cause when he was in command of the strategic post at West Point, overlooking the Hudson River. But he might have been one of the nation’s greatest heroes. And that is what makes history so compelling. Not the black and white of dates and “facts,” but the more subtle gray complexities of ego, ambition and human frailty.

Born on January 14, 1741 in colonial Norwich, Connecticut, Arnold had a biography that reads like that of a character out of Dickens. The son of a wealthy, successful ship’s captain and merchant, young Benedict Arnold was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He was sent off to the best boarding school by his father, owner of the finest home in town. Then it fell apart. Yellow fever took his sisters while he was at school. Alcoholism then took his father. The fall was stunning as the elder Arnold became the town drunk and lost his fortune. At 14, young Benedict Arnold became an indentured servant. As a teenager, he ran away on several occasions to try and join the British-American forces then fighting France in the French and Indian War. Through pluck and generous relatives, Arnold eventually became a wealthy young merchant himself and was soon immersed in patriot politics, even traveling to Philadelphia to observe the First Continental Congress.

When the fighting began in 1775, he led Connecticut’s militia to Boston to join the rebel army gathering there. Arnold soon won honors for his role in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. With George Washington’s approval, he led a daring but disastrous march through Maine to unsuccessfully attack Quebec. Later, he built a small navy to battle the British on Lake Champlain, helping save the patriot cause. But it was at Saratoga in October 1777 that he made his greatest contribution, leading a charge that turned the tide in what would become the most important American victory of the Revolution to that point.

Admired by Washington, Arnold also made a great many enemies. Seeing others promoted and advanced before him made him bitter and ultimately led to his fateful decision to join the British side.

After his plot was uncovered, Arnold did join the British side, fighting against his onetime countrymen. He later moved to Canada and eventually to London where he died and was buried in June 1801 at the age of 60. His remains were accidentally –and fittingly?– moved to an unmarked grave.

You can read more about Arnold and his exploits in the chapter called “Arnold’s Boot” in America’s Hidden History

“It’s the — the cross is the — is the most common symbol of — of — of the resting place of the dead.”

Those were the words of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia during a Supreme Court questioning session. The case involves a cross honoring veterans that has been placed on federal lands. The fuller context of Scalia’s exchange with an attorney arguing the case can be found in Professor Geoffrey Stone’s recent blog on the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/justice-scalias-cross_b_314752.html
I’ll leave the legal aspects of this comment to others, like Professor Stone. But I am not sure if Scalia’s assertion is even correct. In many cemeteries –certainly many of those around old New England—a headstone, often devoid of any religious marking, is quite a common symbol of a resting place.

To be precise, we should say that a crucifix and not simply a cross is in question. The empty crucifix is, of course, the central symbol of Christianity as it represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I was pondering crosses before I read Scalia’s rather extraordinary remarks about the cross being such a common symbol.

Crosses –or crucifixes—come to mind whenever Columbus Day rolls around. One of the things they never told me back in grade school when we drew pictures of those three iconic sailing ships, was that Columbus used to crucify the natives –the people he misnamed “Indians”—in rows of thirteen; one for Jesus and each of the disciples. This technique was part of Columbus’s work incentive program. If the natives didn’t produce enough gold, he would cut off a hand. Crucifixion was the next step.

In the Caribbean, under Columbus, Justice Scalia may have been right. The cross was the symbol of the resting place of the dead. But I’m not sure that’s what Justice Scalia had in mind.

The catalog of the cruelty of Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors who followed in his wake has been well documented, even in Columbus’ own time. Far less familiar is the story of the French Protestants executed by the Spanish near St. Augustine, Florida on October 12, 1565. The spot where this atrocity took place is now marked by Fort Matanzas, a national monument whose name comes from the Spanish word for “slaughters.”

The point is not that the Spanish had any monopoly on religious cruelty or sectarian violence. The Protestant majority in America has a lengthy victims list as well –Quakers, Catholics, Mormons and other minority Christians and other groups of believers and nonbelievers have all felt the sting of secular violence. The litany of sectarian killings and religious intolerance that has been such a grotesque but significant piece of America’s “hidden history” is exactly the reason that some of the Framers thought the First Amendment was so necessary. George Washington said so himself to a group of people who did not recognize the cross – the members of America’s first synagogue:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

You can read more about Columbus and his impact in Don’t Know Much About History and the story of the Fort Matanzas massacre in America’s Hidden History.

Headed to the usual tourist spots like Boston and St. Augustine? Don’t miss these often overlooked landmarks just down the road.

With the summer travel season upon us, many families are gearing up for trips to historic hot spots. Gettysburg, Philadelphia and Mount Vernon are all crowd-pleasers, but there are many other interesting sites that don’t always attract throngs. Some are in national parks, some off the beaten path and some in the shadow of more familiar landmarks — literally, just a few miles away. Here are a handful of places from America’s hidden history, involving tales that your textbooks might have left out:

Headed to Boston?
Beantown tops New England’s list of historic stops, yet don’t forget Haverhill, Mass. The town features one of the first permanent statues erected to honor a woman in America: a murderous Massachusetts mother who was one of America’s most famous women. Hannah Duston was captured by Abenaki Indians in 1697 and, after a long march, she and two other captives managed to kill and scalp the Indian family holding them — six of them children. Duston made her way home and became a legend in her time. The statue in her honor — scalps in one hand, hatchet in the other — was erected in Haverhill in 1874. (The scalps are gone now, but the dispute over the spelling of her last name rages on. Some historians argue that it should be Dustin.)

Headed to St. Augustine?
While tourists flock to this Florida town to visit the first permanent European settlement in America, fewer visitors find their way to Fort Matanzas, about 14 miles south. Its name comes from the Spanish word for “slaughters.” The fort is near the site of a mass execution of shipwrecked Frenchmen in the fall of 1565, killed because they were Protestants. Victims of a religious war, they were America’s true first pilgrims, having come here in search of a place to worship 56 years before the Mayflower sailed.

Headed to Independence Hall?
A few blocks from this famous place in Philadelphia, a plaque at Walnut and Third streets marks the site of Fort Wilson, named for a little-known founding father. Scottish-born James Wilson came to America in 1765 and became a successful attorney. He was a leader in the independence movement and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. But during the American Revolution, militiamen angry about food shortages and price gouging attacked Wilson and other city leaders in Wilson’s Philadelphia home. During the “Fort Wilson Riot,” five men died before Wilson and his colleagues were rescued by Continental Army troops. As a framer of the Constitution, Wilson is credited with creating the system of “electors” to choose a president but also was the first and only Supreme Court justice to be jailed.

Headed to Saratoga Battlefield?
Saratoga National Historical Park in New York hosts a statue of the boot of Benedict Arnold, where he led a charge in one of American history’s most important victories and was wounded in the leg not long before he became America’s most notorious traitor. Nearby is Fort Ticonderoga, set above Lake Champlain. It was here in May 1775 that Arnold helped capture the British fort, securing the cannons that later chased the British army from Boston. Arnold’s role in this crucial attack, however, was deliberately “airbrushed” out of most history books.

You can read and learn more about the background of these places in my bestseller America’s Hidden History
This blog is excerpted from my article that originally appeared in USA Weekend.

Grateful appreciation to webmaster Ron Tuell for permission to use the
illustration of Hannah Dustin, taken from the website http://www.ci.haverhill.ma.us/

In what is known as the “Divinity School Address” a commencement speech made to the Harvard Divinity School’s class of six, Emerson questioned Jesus’ divinity, discounted biblical accounts of miracles, and argued that moral intuition was more important than religious belief. The leaders of the  Harvard Divinity School –and most Protestant clergymen in America– were not amused.

Born on May 25, 1803,  Ralph Waldo Emerson was a uniquely American essayist, critic, poet, and popular philosopher. One of the most significant writers in American history, his ideas influenced writers who knew him and generations who followed him. Born in Boston, Emerson was the son of a Unitarian minister. His grandfather had been the minister of the church in Concord, Mass. on the morning of Apil 19th, 1775 when the American Revolution began.

In 1829, he was ordained a Unitarian pastor, but resigned his pulpit in 1832 to begin the career as a writer and lecturer that made him famous. What do you know about this unique American voice? Test yourself with a quick quiz from Don’t Know Much About Anything

1. “And fired the shot heard round the world” may be Emerson’s most famous line of poetry. What event did it commemorate?
2. What famous writer famed for civil disobedience once worked as Emerson’s handyman?
3. Fill in the blank:  In one famous essay, Emerson wrote, “A  _________ _________  is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
4. In Self-Reliance, he wrote “Whoso would be a man, must be a _____________.”
5. A former minister, Emerson originated a religious philosophy. What was it?

Answers
1. The Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument was written in 1836, 60 years after the Battles of Concord and Lexington that started the American Revolution.
2. Henry David Thoreau, who graduated from Harvard and met Emerson, who  encouraged him to write, gave him useful criticism, and employed him as a gardener.
3. The missing words are “foolish consistency” from the essay “Self-Reliance.”
4. nonconformist
5.  Transcendentalism. He favored a new religion founded in nature and fulfilled by direct, mystical intuition of God. Transcendentalists believed that organized Christian churches interfered with the relationship between a person and God.

If you like the world of books, literature, poetry and ideas, watch for Don’t Know Much About Literature, available on July 28.

But with Independence Day just around the corner, here is a list of ten of my favorite books about the Revolutionary War era. It is by no means compete or comprehensive — just some interesting books that deserve more attention. I’ve avoided the  obvious, such as the huge bestsellers by David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, in favor of some more obscure but worthy reads, including a few older books that merit rereading.

Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth

A former New York Times correspondent, Langguth combines a reporter’s eye with a historian’s breadth in this large overview of the people on both sides of the Revolution. Though written 20 years ago, still an excellent introduction.

Liberty!: The American Revolution and Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History by Thomas Fleming

The first of these is one of the best overviews of the Revolution, originally published as companion to a PBS series. The second title is a more recent work by one of America’s master historian-storytellers whose lively writing brings the complex story of Washington’s political genius to life.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye

Surprise! A writer thinking a writer and a book deserve more attention. This is a biography of the “greatest radical of a radical age,”  whose 46 -page pamphlet Common Sense changed history, and whose legacy has been coopted.

Almost A Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence by John Ferling

A comprehensive account of the military victory that almost wasn’t.

Rebels and Redcoats; The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It by George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Ranking

A volume filled with firsthand accounts of the war.

Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet That Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution by James Nelson

With a novelist’s flair, Nelson tells the story of how the man who became America’s most reviled villain staved off an early defeat of the American cause.

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth A. Fenn

A wonderful exploration of the deadly disease that killed far more people than the war did and its impact on the history of the times.

A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence by Ray Raphael.

From the Howard Zinn school of history, a great distillation of the Revolution from the perspective of the working men and women who helped start the Revolution and then did most of the fighting. A good corrective to the simplistic “great man” view of history.

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby

Not really about the Revolution, but a wonderful study of the tension between the role of religion in building the nation and the concept of separation of church and state –always a worthy subject as we contemplate those familiar words: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”