Fourth of July Like You’ve Never Seen It
Before!
July 3, 2017
Mike Ferner
Thursday, June 29,
2017
Portside
A historically critical article about the
American Revolution would typically discuss how the democratic promises of the
Declaration were left hanging at war’s end, followed by a decidedly
undemocratic constitution six years later.
Examples of that would include abandoning
ideals stated in the Declaration like: “all men (sic) are created equal” and
have unassailable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It could cite that:
- Slaves weren’t included in “We the People,” they were only the property of their owners. Because this human property, unlike a bale of cotton, could plan to run away, particular attention was paid to securing it. “A person (the indelicate word “slave” never appeared) held to service or labor in one state…escaping to another…shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” (Art. IV, sec. 2 [1])
- To appease Southerners
interested in gaining the maximum number of seats in the new House of
Representatives, the Fathers of Our Country declared, in writing, that
these “other persons” would each count as three-fifths of a human. (Art. I, sec. 2 [1])
- Women did not have the right to
vote, nor did Catholics and Jews in some states. White, Protestant,
men had to own qualifying amounts of property. Thus, only about 6% [2] of the
new nation’s population was eligible to vote in the first presidential
election and only 1.3%, or 38,818 [3] people
actually did.
- Even those so privileged didn’t
actually vote for a presidential candidate. They voted for
“electors” pledged to vote for certain candidates and even then,
four of the state legislatures picked [3] those
electors, not voting citizens.
- State legislatures, not
citizens, chose U.S. Senators until the Constitution was amended in 1913 [4].
Clearly, there are reasons to ask what the
Founders of Our Country were up to and what our fireworks every Fourth of July
about.
But this year, let’s investigate further: was
war the only or even the best way to achieve what we now see was more limited
than what we were taught?
Who better to proffer that question than the
people’s historian, Howard Zinn?
In articles and speeches, including this one [5] in Wellfleet, Massachusetts in September, 2009, Zinn
provided his final, giant contribution just four months before he died, by
examining what he called America’s “Three Holy Wars,” specifically the
Revolution, the Civil War and World War Two, “Three wars in American history
that are untouchable, uncriticizable…” as he characterized them.
If something’s unquestioned, it means we’re not
thinking about it, Zinn said. But the historian was quick to add that his
reason for doing so is not to learn what ‘really happened’ in the past.
“The past is past,” he exclaimed. “The important thing is what does it
tell us about today…and about what we might do in the world? There’s a
present and a future reason for going into the past.”
He advised doing something never done in
history textbooks: put each of these wars on its own balance sheet – costs on
one side, benefits on the other – and then make a judgment.
Without that examination, he said, we and our
grandchildren will be prone to accept wars as possibly good. “Because
once you have a history of ‘good wars’ fought for good causes to point to, you
have a model…it’s possible to have good wars. And maybe this is one of
them”
Questioning the good wars undermines the
possibility of having a good war.
The acknowledged “bad wars” like Vietnam and
Iraq are justified by pointing to the “good war.” Words like “We mustn’t
appease Saddam Hussein. Munich. Chamberlain. Ho Chi Minh is
another Hitler,” are repeated each new generation, suggesting maybe we need
another “good war.”
Typically we only look at one side of the
balance sheet: what was gained – in this case independence from Britain – and
ignore the cost. Rarely do we hear how many people were killed in the
Revolution. “We won independence. It’s insignificant.”
So how many were killed? Perhaps 25,000
or even 50,000 according to Zinn. “You probably know by now that casualty
figures in war are very crude. There’ll be disagreements up to a million.
How many people died in Vietnam? I think two million. Or maybe three
million. We’re not sure.”
25,000 is not many soldiers killed, he
added. It’s less than half the number of U.S. troops killed in Viet
Nam. But what would 25,000 mean relative to today’s population?
“2,500,000 dead.” Today, would we think it’s worth sacrificing two and a
half million people? “Might you not say, ‘Well, we want independence, but
is there another way?’”
If we do that for each of these “good wars” at
least then you have an honest balance sheet and you can make a decision.
“Especially if none of those 2.5 million people are related to you,” Zinn said.
Beyond casualties, are there other
factors that should go on the balance sheet? Like who gains from victory
in war?
With a smile the historian said, “Governments
would like us to believe we all gain from a war. That’s not necessarily
true. Did black slaves gain from the Revolutionary War? Slavery
before the war. Slavery after the war. You would think blacks would
rush to the colors if they were fighting for their freedom, but Washington
didn’t want blacks in the army. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, all slave
owners, aren’t going to promise freedom. The British did. Only
after the British began to enlist blacks did the Continental Army slowly enlist
blacks.”
Indeed, some historians argue that slave-owning
colonial leaders might well have seen the first spark of revolution in 1772 in
England, when Lord Mansfield ruled in Somerset v Stewart that a slave, James Somerset [6], who had escaped after being taken
to England by his master, could not be forced back into slavery.
And then Zinn asked, “What about the people
already here, the Indians?” With independence, the colonists won the
ability to go westward, beyond the Appalachian line set by the British in the
Proclamation of 1763. “Not because they were being nice, because they
didn’t want trouble.”
So what do the Indians gain? “It’s worse
than nothing.” After the Revolution that line was wiped out and we spent
the next century taking over the rest of the continent, Zinn reminded his
listeners.
Did working people and poor people benefited
from the Revolution? Did they rush to Washington’s army? “No.
Poor people had to be conscripted. They could avoid conscription by
paying a fee, a practice begun with the Revolution that was carried over to the
Civil War. Poor white people weren’t eager to join the army, but they
were promised land if they won. And much like today, a young man from a
tough background, not knowing what the future will bring, might join the
army. You get a uniform, a gun, some status, maybe some medals, a little
land.”
After they joined, many found they weren’t
treated well. They found the officers got good clothes and shoes and food
and paid a salary. Consequently, troops mutinied. “How many of you
learned that in school?” Zinn asked, adding that all the way to a Ph.D., he
didn’t.
“Thousands mutinied. Washington had to
deal with it. He made concessions. But when smaller mutinies
happened, he rounded up the leaders and had them shot by their fellow
mutineers.”
All this is to say that the Revolutionary War,
like all wars, was a class war. But we’re not supposed to bring that
up. “We’re all one class, all one patriotic body. No. Wars
affect us all differently,” Zinn observed.
After the Revolution, the Western Massachusetts
land given to former soldiers was taxed beyond their ability to pay. Land
confiscations were followed by Shays Rebellion in 1786. Thousands
rebelled and an army raised by the rich merchants of Boston put it down, Zinn
revealed. “But it raised the question for whom was the war fought?
Who was betrayed by it?”
The founding fathers were worried about Shay’s
Rebellion and Massachusetts wasn’t the only place in revolt. Gen. Henry Knox wrote to warn
Washington [7] that thousands were beginning to demand an equal share of
the wealth gained by the Revolution.
In the shadow of Shay’s and in fear of future
rebellions, the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia in
1787. A strong central government was set up “not just because it’s nice
to have a strong central government,” Zinn said, alluding to history text
explanations, “but to be able to suppress rebellions” by workers and slaves,
and to protect settlers moving into Indian territory. It should be noted
that conventioneers met originally to amend our original constitution, the
Articles of Confederation. Once together, however, they ditched the Articles
with the more top-down, property-friendly constitution we know today.
Then Zinn asked a key question about our first
“Holy War.” Could we have put something good on the positive side of the
balance sheet without that human cost? Could we have won independence
without a war?
“If something has happened a certain way in
history, we assume that’s the only way it could have unfolded,” he said.
But unless we use our imagination, “we’re going to be stuck doing the same
thing over and over.”
In this particular case, we have more than just
imagination to guide us.
The year before Lexington and Concord, farmers
in 90% of Massachusetts, everywhere except Boston, had nonviolently driven out
British officials. Zinn cites the work of historian Ray Raphael, author
of “The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord,” describing
how nonviolent action made that state ungovernable. “When a place becomes
impossible to govern even imperial powers withdraw because they can’t control
the situation,” Zinn explained.
To close this examination of Independence Day,
it’s worth quoting Raphael at length, from the Journal of the American Revolution [8].
On September 6, 1774, at dawn
and through the morning, militia companies from 37 rural townships across
Worcester County marched into the shiretown (county seat) of Worcester. By an
actual headcount taken by Breck Parkman, one of the participants, there were
4,622 militiamen, about half the adult male population of the sprawling rural
county. This was not some ill-defined mob but the military embodiment of the
people, and they had a purpose: to close the courts, the outposts of British
authority in this far reach of the Empire.
Lining both sides of Main
Street for a quarter mile, the insurgents forced two dozen court officials to
walk the gauntlet, hats in hand, reciting their recantations more than thirty
times each so everyone could hear. The wording was strong: the officials would
cede to the will of the people and promise never to execute “the
unconstitutional act of the British parliament” (the Massachusetts Government
Act) that would “reduce the inhabitants … to mere arbitrary power.” With this
humiliating submission, all British authority vanished from Worcester County,
never to return.
So too in every shiretown save
Boston: some 1,500 patriots in Great Barrington, 3,000 in Springfield, and so
on. In Plymouth, 4,000 militiamen were so pumped up after unseating British
rule that they gathered around Plymouth Rock and tried to move it to the
courthouse to display their power. The rock stood where it was, but British
authority was gone from Plymouth and every other town. The disgruntled
Southampton Tory Jonathan Judd, Jr., summed it all up: “Government has now
devolved upon the people, and they seem to be for using it.”
Raphael’s comment following the letter from
Knox describes in one sentence what groups like the Program
on Corporations, Law and Democracy [9] and Move
to Amend [10] have
said for many years: it’s not enough to just react to one corporate harm after
another; it’s not enough to singularly protest inadequate health care,
education, jobs, weapons systems, invasions. We have to become
self-governing. As Raphael put it: “They rose up as a body, not just
to protest Crown and Parliament, but to displace their authority.”
Now cue the
fireworks!
Mike Ferner was formerly a member of Toledo
City Council and the national president of Veterans For Peace. He belongs
to Move to Amend and the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy.
Links:
[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
[2] http://countrystudies.us/united-states/government-18.htm
[3] http://www.aei.org/publication/the-first-presidential-election-and-other-firsts/
[4] https://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrhSuEhJ4OY
[6] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm
[7] https://books.google.com/books?id=ox91llFB5j4C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=%22Henry+Knox+Letter+to+George+Washington+%28October+23,+1786%29%22&source=bl&ots=jP5pM3fDbK&sig=NrJO0LtdnMQm23Y1T2g1uZhy680&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiuxov32MzUAhUKKyYKHX0vCHEQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=%22Henry%20Knox%20Letter%20to%20George%20Washington%20%28October%2023%2C%201786%29%22&f=false
[8] https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/the-true-start-of-the-american-revolution/
[9] http://www.poclad.org
[10] http://www.movetoamend.org
[2] http://countrystudies.us/united-states/government-18.htm
[3] http://www.aei.org/publication/the-first-presidential-election-and-other-firsts/
[4] https://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrhSuEhJ4OY
[6] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm
[7] https://books.google.com/books?id=ox91llFB5j4C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=%22Henry+Knox+Letter+to+George+Washington+%28October+23,+1786%29%22&source=bl&ots=jP5pM3fDbK&sig=NrJO0LtdnMQm23Y1T2g1uZhy680&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiuxov32MzUAhUKKyYKHX0vCHEQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=%22Henry%20Knox%20Letter%20to%20George%20Washington%20%28October%2023%2C%201786%29%22&f=false
[8] https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/the-true-start-of-the-american-revolution/
[9] http://www.poclad.org
[10] http://www.movetoamend.org
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