A War Between History and Memory: The American Revolution at 250

The sestercentennial (250th anniversary) of the American Revolution and War for Independence is nearly upon us. It is destined to reach new heights of commercialism, with beer companies no doubt leading the parade. Corny commemorations and mythical tales will all be a part of the celebration. Will there be room for calm reflection on the events of 1775-1783? Not much, I fear, especially in the Age of Trump and MAGA.   

The revolution will be celebrated as a victory for liberty and equality. That is true in part, though more in rhetoric than in reality. Awkwardly, it was also a war to preserve slavery. In 1773, High Court judge Lord Mansfield declared in the Somerset Case that slavery had no basis in English law. The Somerset ruling caused panic, especially in the southern, slave-owning colonies, and helped unite them with the northern colonies, where the rallying cry was no taxation without representation. 

Alarmed southern slaveholders denied the right of Parliament to pass laws affecting the internal or domestic affairs of the colonies. Slavery, they argued, was a domestic issue. In 1775, on the verge of war, they accused the British of plotting slave (and Indian) revolts as a means of subduing the rebellious colonies. In 1776, they decided that independence was necessary to prevent emancipation and loss of control over enslaved Blacks. 

In that sense the War for Independence had more in common with the Civil War than is generally acknowledged. Looked at from the perspective of the enslaved population, both were wars for liberty. Many Blacks believed the rhetoric of their white masters and saw the Revolutionary War as an opportunity to secure their freedom, by joining the British. Historians estimate that around 100,000 enslaved persons ran off to British lines between 1775 and 1783, 25,000 in South Carolina alone. They were not complacent bystanders, but active participants in the struggles that gave birth to a nation. 

History is often unpleasant, messy, and chaotic. It is seldom as simple as we would like it to be. Historical myth is the opposite: neat, generally pleasing -- at least to our prejudices -- and comfortably black and white. The myths are "alternative facts" or "fake history." Not surprisingly, myths tend to dominate if not obliterate actual history in the popular consciousness, or public memory. 

By "actual history" I do not mean the "truth" but the result of painstaking historical research, writing, and interpretation. If well done, the result is our best current approximation of the truth. In that sense, history resembles science. Science is a more exact business, of course. Scientists can use repeated experiments to confirm their hypotheses. Historians do not have that luxury. They cannot repeat history. In most cases, they would not wish to. 

Historian Lewis Namier wrote that the writing of history "is not a visit of condolence." He might have added that the same is true of reading it. Learning our history is often troubling and confusing. If it never is, we are reading the wrong stuff. Some people avoid the trouble by ignoring history. Henry Ford is alleged to have said that "history is bunk." He didn't say exactly that, but he did reject the past as dead and meaningless, not worth bothering about. 

Abraham Lincoln disagreed with Ford. In his Second Inaugural Address he declared, "My Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history." He understood that the terrible war nearing its end was the result of the country's failure to abolish slavery early in its history. Novelist William Faulkner held a similar view: "The past isn't dead. It is not even past." His characters are prisoners of their history, in this case the history of the Deep South. 

Karl Marx wrote in much the same vein in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." Marx prefaced that statement with "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." One does not have to be a Marxist to agree with that statement. Our history, like our biology, constrains us, for good or ill.