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

-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.

“They’re quite clear — that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments.”

But a review of the path blazed by Christians in both the colonial era and the nation’s early life is not so tidy. Christianity, as we know, arrived in the New World with Christopher Columbus, who crucified natives who failed to produce enough gold in rows of thirteen –one for Jesus and each of the disciples. The Spanish conquistadors also introduced the “Requerimiento” which demanded conversion to Christianity and threatened slavery and death to those who did not. (The Indian converts were enslaved and killed anyway.)

Here are a few more of the highlights of the path blazed by Christians that take a bit of the luster off the myth of America as a “Christian nation.” Most of them probably weren’t in your textbook.

-Fort Caroline Massacre (1565): The first real contact between Europeans in what would become America took place in Florida, near modern Jacksonville, where hundreds of French Huguenots, the real first “Pilgrims,” were massacred by the Spanish who founded St. Augustine for this purpose. The Spanish Admiral who led this search and destroy mission hung some of the survivors with a sign above them reading, “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans,” by which he meant “Protestants” or actually “heretics.” (This story is told in America’s Hidden History.)

-Mayflower Compact (November 1620): Usually cited as the kickoff point for the “Christian Nation,” the Mayflower Compact did indeed recognize the religious underpinnings of the new colony. It also recognized the sovereignty of the King.
And by the way: Sorry, “Goodie” Palin. You don’t get a vote.

-The Mystic Massacre: During the Pequot War of 1637, hundreds of women, children and mostly old men were killed or burned to death in a Puritan attack on a Pequot Indian village. Governor William Bradford would later write that “horrible was the stincke and [scent] thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them….”

-The Boston Martyrs: On October 27, 1659, two Quakers, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, were executed in Boston, the Puritans’ “shining city upon a hill,” under a 1658 law banning the Society of Friends as a “cursed sect.” In June 1660, Mary Dyer was executed and a fourth “Friend” was hung in 1661.
Religious dissenters Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson had also been banished from the Bay Colony for their opposition to the Puritan “theocracy.”
And Catholic priests were banned in Boston, where for many years November 5 (Guy Fawke’s Day in England) was celebrated as “Pope Day” on which rowdy, brawling and usually drunken mobs wheeled an effigy of the Pope around Boston and ended the day by setting the carts and effigies on fire.

-Baptists arrested in Virginia: Between 1768 and 1778, Baptists were persecuted and arrested in Virginia, where the Anglican Church was the official church supported by public funds. (In New England, the Congregational Church enjoyed that support.)
The sight of Baptist preachers being arrested troubled a young James Madison who would later spearhead passage in 1786 of the landmark Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1779. (The law is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed to be put in his epitaph.)

-Ben Franklin’s Prayer Request: At a deadlocked Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin –as many religious conservatives and advocates of public prayer like to note—suggested beginning the day’s deliberations with a prayer. Alexander Hamilton worried that if people heard that they would think the delegates were desperate. Another delegate pointed out that there were no funds to pay a chaplain. There the discussion ended as Franklin notes, most thought prayers “unnecessary.”
(By the way, Jesus, though no Constitutional scholar, took a dim view of public prayer. Saying that only “hypocrites” pray in public, Jesus advised, “pray to the Father in secret.” [Matthew 6: 5-7])
Contrary to Sarah Palin’s statement –“Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant” – the U.S. Constitution does not mention God, the Bible or the Ten Commandments.

-Burning of the Ursuline Convent (1833): A combination of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment led a mob of self-described “Sons of the Tea Party” to torch a convent school in Charlestown, Massachusetts, not far from the recently dedicated Bunker Hill Monument.

- Philadelphia’s Bible Riots: Over the course of a few weeks in May and July of 1844, dozens of people were killed, hundreds of houses burned and churches destroyed in the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic “Bible Riots.” I recount this event and the Ursuline Convent burning in my new book A NATION RISING.

-“Church and Slave State”: Abolitionism had its roots in Christianity. But so did American slavery, which cited biblical justifications for the “peculiar institution.” In the 19th century, this divide led to splits within three Protestant denominations that divided North and South: the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. (In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for its racist past and support of slavery, 140 years after the split.)

Of course, this is a mere handful of the landmarks in this so-called “Christian Nation.” We haven’t even gotten to the Mormons and the violence that confronted them in the early 19th century.
And of course, it would be quite easy to list a great many nobler moments in American Christianity. But the point is that calling America a “Christian Nation” is simply another myth – history as “bedtime story” or wishful thinking. History and Christianity deserve the truth –which after all, the Bible tells us, “will set you free.”

“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.”

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

[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

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.

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.

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.”