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

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.

Okay. We all do it. It’s printed on calendars and in bank windows. We mistakenly call the third Monday in February Presidents Day, in part because of all those commercials in which George Washington uses his legendary ax and “Rail-splitter” Abe Lincoln swings his ax to chop down prices on everything from linens to SUVs.

But, really it is George Washington’s Birthday –federally speaking that is.
The official designation of the federal holiday observed on the third Monday of February was, and still is, Washington’s Birthday.

But Washington’s Birthday has become widely known as Presidents Day (or President’s Day, or even Presidents’  Day). The popular usage and confusion resulted from the merging of what had been two widely celebrated Presidential birthdays in February –Lincoln’s on February 12th, which was never a federal holiday– and Washington’s on February 22.

Created under the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968, which gave us three-day weekend Monday holidays, the federal holiday on the third Monday in February is technically still Washington’s Birthday. But here’s the rub: the holiday can never land on Washington’s true birthday because the latest date it can fall is February 21, as it does in 2011.

Washington's Tomb -- Mt. Vernon (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis 2010)

Just because it is officially Washington’s Birthday doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the other Presidents too. So here’s a quick Presidential Pop Quiz:

•Who was the first President born an American citizen?

Martin van Buren, the eighth, also known as “Old Kinderhook,” or “OK”. All of his predecessors were born British subjects during the colonial era.

•Who was the first President to commit troops to a foreign country?

From 1801 to 1805, Thomas Jefferson sent the navy and marines to “Barbary” in what is modern day Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to attack the pirates who were preying on American and European shipping.

•Washington was the first general to become President. But how many other generals became President?

Eleven. Besides Washington, five were career officers: Andrew Jackson (Creek War, War of 1812); William Henry Harrison (Battle of Tippecanoe); Zachary Taylor (Mexican War); Grant (Civil War); and Eisenhower (WW II).  Six others were not career soldiers but attained the rank by appointment: Franklin Pierce, (Mexican War); Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison (all of whom served in the Civil War).

Ironically, the two greatest war Presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, had little or no military experience. Lincoln was briefly in the Illinois militia, or national guard, during the Black Hawk War and later said he led a charge against an onion field and lost a lot of blood to mosquitoes.

During World War I, Roosevelt was Undersecretary of the Navy and had tried to enlist, but was asked to remain in his navy office. And many other Presidents had military experience but never attained the rank of general.

•Which President dodged the draft, legally?

During the Civil War, Grover Cleveland paid for a substitute when he was drafted. That was legal at the time under the 1863 Conscription Act.

•Which two Presidents died on the Fourth of July, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed?

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1826. James Monroe also died on July 4, 1831, and Calvin Coolidge was born in Vermont on Independence Day.

•Did President Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope?

That’s the myth. But no, Lincoln drafted what may be the most memorable speech in American history several times. At Gettysburg for the dedication of a cemetery to the thousands who had died in the 1863 battle, Lincoln was not the featured speaker. That honor went to a man who spoke for two hours. Lincoln’s address took about two and half minutes. But which one do we remember?

•Which President returned to the House of Representatives after his term?

John Quincy Adams

Many of these questions are drawn from Don’t Know Much About History or my children’s book Don’t Know Much About the Presidents

You can also  read more quick Presidential biographies at the White House official site.

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

We’ve been hearing a lot about America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance lately. But for centuries, religion has been used as a weapon to discriminate and cudgel “non- believers” and “heathens,” many of whom came to America in search of religious freedom they never found. The battle over faith in the public square started long before the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

In the October, 2010 issue of Smithsonian magazine, I delve into the real history of America’s attitudes about religion and it is a far different picture from the tidy tableau and storybook version of tolerance that we tell our children. The Smithsonian magazine article, “God and Country,” traces the long and often murderous history of religious battles fought on American soil, going back to 1565, before the Pilgrims even arrived, when Spanish Catholics massacred French Protestants in Florida–a story not told in most of our textbooks.

Here is a link to the Smithsonian article.

The latest fracas over faith in the public square involves the plans for Cordoba House, an Islamic Center, including a “mosque,” to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Proposed to bridge the differences between Islam and the West, the $100-million project, which includes a prayer room rather than an actual mosque,  has won the backing of Mayor Bloomberg, among others. But with the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, the race for Governor of New York heating up, and a Presidential election in the wings, Cordoba House was plunged into America’s boiling pot of religious politics. And like New York’s recent weather, the political firestorm that has been ignited shows no sign of cooling.

The pot was first stirred when Sarah Palin implored the group behind Cordoba House not to build the center, asking Muslims via Twitter, to “refudiate” the plan.

Raising the temperature was Newt Gingrich on his website, Newt.org, where he warned that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_re_us/us_ground_zero_mosque_politics

This whole argument might be construed as a momentary blip in a slow summer news cycle. But the fear and loathing of faiths that supposedly threaten America’s existence is nothing new. The grade school notion of America as a “Melting Pot” nation in which all are welcomed to worship is a myth. Since Spanish Catholics slaughtered French Protestants in Florida in 1565, ingrained religious animosity has been an unhappy and uncelebrated American tradition.  For centuries, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and other “foreign” religions have encountered disdain, discrimination and worse.

In fact, the political attacks on the Islamic Center recall an earlier assault on a religious compound built near an American memorial.

It was August 1834 and the place was Charlestown, Massachusetts, outside Boston. The “threat” then came from a Roman Catholic convent where Ursuline nuns ran a private school for girls called Mount Benedict.

But the Ursuline Convent stood near sacred ground – the site on which the Bunker Hill Monument was being built. To many Americans, the Ursuline compound nearby was an affront, a symbol of a foreign faith that was evil, hateful and a threat to the nation.

On the night of August 11, 1834, a few hundred locals descended on the convent.  As the nuns and their young charges cowered, both the convent and school were ransacked and torched by the mob. A mausoleum was then opened, coffins overturned and the remains scattered. When the three nights of arson and mayhem was over, the Ursuline convent and the school it housed were in ruins.

The desolation of the Ursuline Convent in August 1834 is not one of the proud events that historic Boston touts to patriotic visitors. And it is hardly unique. America’s past is littered with similar examples of intolerance, sectarian hatred and ultimately, religious violence. A decade after the attack on the Ursuline Convent, Philadelphia was torn apart by the anti-Catholic Bible Riots, in which dozens died and the homes of mostly Irish Catholic immigrants were destroyed along with two Catholic churches in an argument begun over which Bible to use in public school.

For much of America’s history, the religious fear and loathing were directed mostly towards Catholics—especially Irish Catholics—who were thought to be plotting to turn America over to the Pope. Now, of course, the perceived threat comes from Islam and a symbol like Cordoba House has replaced the nefarious Ursuline Convent.

In 1790, after taking the oath of office just a few blocks from what is now Ground Zero, President Washington wrote a letter to another much maligned and distrusted group –the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.

“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.”

His words should be required reading for public officials –past, present and future.  They might even make a good plaque at Ground Zero.

You can read more about the burning of the Ursuline Convent, the Philadelphia Bible Riots and the history of anti-Catholicism in A NATION RISING.

-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.

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

With Presidents Day around the corner, it seems like a good time to think about some other great books about the Presidents and Presidency. Here is a short list of some of my favorite Presidential biographies –all what I call “must reads.” Obviously, this not an exhaustive list, and some may already be familiar. Not all of them focus on the presidential years of the subjects. But this is a good place to start with a collection of accessible and fascinating views of the lives and careers of some of the most significant Commanders in Chief –all told by great storytellers, great writers and great historians.
Since Presidents Day exists to honor Washington and Lincoln, I’ll start with them–

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser. Fairly brief, mostly admiring but honest, and to the point, Brookhiser of the National Review, cuts through the mythology but keeps Washington firmly in place as “Father of Our Country.”
Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek. Rather than an exhaustive biography, this is a study of Washington’s complicated relationship to slavery and his views on emancipation.

Speaking of Emancipation, The Lincoln Library is enormous. But if I had to pick one single-volume biography of “The Great Emancipator,” I choose With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates. I like it for its readability and utterly human portrait of one most mythologized of Presidents. A close second to Oates is Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt. Jr., Philip Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt is a beautiful volume, a “coffee table” book that won’t just sit on the coffee table. It might be especially valuable for households with children, as is Lincoln: A Photobiography, an award-winning book for children by the appropriately named Russell Freedman.

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough is one of my favorite biographies, although it focuses not on TR’s astonishing Presidency but on his youth. A magnificent book.
For Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency, read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

For the “other Roosevelt, another of my all time favorite books is Doris Kearn Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. It focuses life in the White House during the war years and is the perfect combination of scholarship and great storytelling
Because FDR’s historic “First Hundred Days” got so much attention recently, I would also recommend this fairly slim but excellent overview of the Depression and Roosevelt’s controversial, much-debated response to it: The First Hundred Days by Anthony Badger

For FDR’s successor, the gold standard is Truman by David McCullough

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. Until Caro finishes the fourth installment of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson, this book, covering Johnson’s years as the Senator from Texas will have to do.

President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime by Lou Cannon. A California journalist, Cannon covered Reagan for years and this is an even-handed assessment.

A comprehensive reading list of these and Presidential biographies can also be found in Don’t Know Much About 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

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

His column, entitled “In Search of Dignity,” topped the Times list of most emailed articles and drew hundreds on online comments, many of them laudatory. Brooks used the column to celebrate the good manners, civility and dignity possessed by George Washington. These attributes, Brooks believed, could be traced back to Washington’s boyhood, when he scrupulously copied out maxims from the “Miss Manners” of his day, a book called Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. Among its 110 rules:

When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body not usually Discovered.

Brooks then contrasted Washington’s demeanor in public with that of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford –he of the secret rendezvous in Argentina that didn’t stay secret– and Governor Sarah Palin, who chose Friday afternoon on the July 4th Weekend to inform the world that she was resigning as Governor of Alaska for reasons that many found mystifying.  Brooks bemoaned the fact that these modern Republicans just couldn’t hold a candle to Washington when it came to dignified behavior.

Brooks finally made the leap to Barack Obama, surprising many readers with an admiring nod that placed the current President on equal footing alongside the First President in terms of his public demeanor.

Set against the backdrop of the day’s Michael Jackson memorial frenzy, the piece clearly tapped into a great American yearning for civility and a gentler time when wise men with Washington’s virtues held court.

But his argument has a fatal flaw. As I read Brooks’ words, the obvious jumped off the page. In his catalog of Washington’s public virtues and civility, David Brooks neglected to mention that George Washington owned, bought and sold his fellow human beings. When they ran away, he took out advertisements offering a reward for their return. He ran such an advertisement in 1761 when three of his “Negroes” took flight.

Whoever apprehends the said Negroes, so that the Subscriber may readily get them, shall have, if taken  up in this County, forty shillings reward. . .

Brooks neglected this uncomfortable fact of Washington’s life. It is a truth all the more evident in light of the recent celebration of  the Declaration of Independence. With its clarion call that “All Men are created equal,” the Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian who also relied completely upon slave labor to put food on his table. Both men would have been completely at home owning Barack Obama, his wife and their children and perhaps selling some or all of them if necessary.

It was for this fact that Samuel Johnson once railed in Parliament:

How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?

The great contradiction between Washington’s dignity and idealism and the fact he was a slave owner is at the heart of so much of what was rotten in this country for centuries. It strikes me as outlandish to attempt to laud Washington’s courtly demeanor without reflecting on this great stain on his character. And the “everybody did it back then” defense doesn’t cut it either. Washington knew slavery was wrong and completely at odds with what he was fighting for. It is shameful to give him –and the rest of the “Revolutionary Generation”– a pass when it comes to America’s “original sin.”

As the events of the day have shown, we live in a world that is quick to lavish praise on the departed –to cover up a multitude of sins in an orgy of adulation that allows the country to feel some pride in a sanitized past. But when we overlook the “evil that men do” in singing those praises, the music starts to sound very tinny.

True dignity demands far more than decent manners.