Volume 52, Number 14 · September 22, 2005
The Other Founders
By Edmund S. Morgan
The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
by Gary B. Nash
Viking, 512 pp., $27.95
For the past ten or twelve years we have been celebrating the well-known Founding Fathers of the American Revolution in the biographies of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Franklin that have graced the best-seller lists. Is there an element of self-gratification here, of self-congratulation, in a wishful identification with great Americans of the past, in default of any on the scene today? If so, The Unknown American Revolution offers an antidote, a bill of particulars of what the Founding Fathers failed to do, spelled out in the stories of people for most of whom the Revolution brought betrayal, disappointment, and misery. In one sense the book is an invitation to a guilt trip for our sins of the past. But that, I think, is not its intention. It is, rather, a celebration of a different cast of players with different heroes and heroines and different villains, fitting to sustain a left-wing opposition to injustice then and now. If any of us have been content with the appellation of 'liberal' in opposition to the illiberal policies confronting us, Nash invites us to become heirs to a more vigorous radicalism. A bit of explanation is necessary.
Review, 4155 words
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