Fredric Smoler’s mockery (above) of wannabe worldly—truly deadly—approaches to the American Revolution has an extra kick for this editor. My son’s assigned reading in his 7th grade class this season is a Y.A. text, My Brother Sam Is Dead, that leeches glory—and all the juice—out of our country’s creation story. Higher learning’s disdain for “American exceptionalism” seems to have trickled down to progressive high schools and middle schools.
American history is nothing but comeuppance in My Brother Sam Is Dead. The teen narrator is witness to a killing family conflict between his brother, who joins the revolution, and his Tory father. Brother Sam’s adventure ends when he’s executed by the Continental army after he’s falsely accused of a breach of military conduct. Sam’s father, in turn, dies at the hands of the Brits. The book’s lesson(s) for teens: politics is limbo, war is hell, and may you never live in interesting times.
My Brother Sam Is Dead dates from the post-Viet Nam War era. Its anti-heroic stance reflects the mood back in that day. The readiness of the authors, James and Christopher Collier, to take down the American Revolution is a reminder there was a period in the 20th C. when it seemed, as Hannah Arendt once noted, “like an event of little more than local importance.” The American Revolution was dismissed because, unlike the French or Russian ones, it avoided “the social question”—i.e. what to do about economic inequality. (Only reactionaries are upset the American Revolution’s rep has improved overseas since the Wall came down, though it’s true our history may now be traduced by globalizing neo-liberals out to put a squeeze on the role of governments and redefine freedom as consumer choice.)
Americans who realize “public happiness” isn’t about bread alone should share Arendt’s faith in politics qua politics. Yet you can dig her hymn to our revolution without denying the Founding Fathers should be held accountable for slipping the key social question of their time/place. Every patriot ought to read Henry Wiencek’s devastating books on Washington (An Imperfect God) and Jefferson (Master of the Mountain). (While Washington beat the hell out of Jefferson when it came to slavery, George’s tight mouth in all those portraits of rectitude looks different when you know it was filled with teeth he bought from his “servants,” who weren’t vending their molars in a sellers’ market.)
Wiencek’s unillusioned works have more in common with revolutionary acts of clarity than with the Colliers’ doomy My Brother Sam Is Dead. (His hard lines on Washington’s teeth come to mind when I gnaw on Vaclav Havel’s famous passage evoking what happens in revolutionary times: “For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, ‘The emperor is naked!’—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.”) Hannah Arendt’s great refusal to reduce revolution to the quotidian puts her in Wiencek’s (and Havel’s) party of hope. The Colliers, OTOH, are on the draggy side of history. Their miniaturizing fam-first take on the American Revolution places them among enemies of promise Arendt once decried: “Under the concerted assault of the modern debunking sciences, psychology and sociology, nothing indeed has seemed to be more safely buried than the concept of freedom. Even the revolutionists, whom one might have assumed to be safely and inexorably anchored in a tradition that could hardly be told, let alone made sense of, without the notion of freedom, would much rather degrade freedom to rank of a lower-middle-class prejudice than admit the aim of the revolution was, and always has been, freedom.” Arendt’s antimony between freedom and meaner motives is all there in the epilogue to My Brother Sam Is Dead. The narrator recounts how he grew up to become a businessman after the revolution, eventually joining “with some other men to found a bank.” He confesses he still has misgivings about the founding of his country. He thinks there may have been a way to avoid a violent break with England, though he’s not complaining too much. When this fictional witness looks back on the revolution, what matters to him is “the nation has prospered, and I along with it.” His bottom line is pretty far removed from Common Sense of revolutionaries.
It’s stirring to hear Hamilton revels in their freewheelin’ times. The musical’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, seems to be working in the tradition of Timothy Mayer’s Adams Chronicles. That 70s teleplay was a hoot too as you may gather from the excerpts below. Let’s hope some kid out there (who can’t afford to see Hamilton?) will read Chronicles. (I’m reminded just now somebody needs to get Mayer’s Running from America back into print.) It’s all in the treatment, of course, but Mayer’s revolutionary pedagogy breaks it down for Americans (and all humanity): Stay Free. B.D.
(A meeting at the Grand Dragon, a tavern. Night. Some fifteen men are gathered. Among them are James Otis, John and Sam Adams, Pitts and Molyneux. Sam, who is the possessor of an almost angelic tenor voice, which is at odds with both his appearance and his character, has been singing, “The Liberty Song,” with new lyrics by John Dickinson. His song is coming to an end. Although this is a tavern, most of the men are not drinking. Otis, however, is halfway through his second bottle.)
Otis: Damnation. No more songs. Men’s reputations are being murdered.
Sam Adams: Rest easy, Brother Otis, We are in receipt of another letter from the Pennsylvania Farmer.
Otis: The farmer.
Sam Adams: Yes he speaks for many here, I think.
Otis: John Dickinson’s no more a farmer than the Pope. He has a London education and a thousand pounds a year.
Sam Adams: Which makes him eloquent, James, and a great foe to ruinous taxation. The cause is always strengthened when it is able to enlist the services of men who have, as it were, something to lose. The growing political maturity of young Hancock, for example, is a source of considerable satisfaction and, I think I may say, anticipation for all of us.
Otis: You’ve done good work there.
Sam Adams: I thank you. But listen. (He reads.) “The cause of liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult…Let us behave like dutiful children who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent. Let us complain to our parent; but let our complaints speak at the same time the language of affliction and veneration.”
John Adams: This is so much gruel.
Sam Adams: Yes, but our Liberty is an infant. There are as yet no teeth to chew the stuff—the very strong stuff—which is to come.
John Adams: But surely this is just the sort of thing that will not, can not, do the job. Parliament does not believe we are in earnest. They have never believed we are in earnest. I apprehend they are misinformed by those who should be representing our best interests—but no matter. The point is that only by the strongest of petitions on our part will they come to see the light. (A pause) Well, why is everyone so silent? To persuade London to redress her many wrongs to us, to ensure our rights as free-born Englishman: that surely is what we’ve been about these many months
Sam Adams: Insofar as it is practicable, yes. But we do well to listen to the other colonies and to make common cause with them, even though from our vantage point in Boston that common cause seems timid and understated. Our unity will be of paramount importance in the days and weeks ahead.
Otis: Quite right. Already the Circular which Sam and I sent out to the others—big response, don’t you see. Common cause. The little snivelers are in the thick of it with the great explosions such as I myself and you, Brother Adams, don’t deny it. God have mercy on our souls, they want to hang us—oh yes, there has been talk. I am in correspondence with London and my informants have assured me that there has been talk. They want to watch us swing like clothes hung out to dry, yes, and they will do it too, if we are not nimble. Treason’s what they’re talking, friends; a lewd gesture at the Lord’s Annointed, George III, poor bastard, not a bad man, but distant, don’t you see, distant and a little mad, I’ll drink to that, and cry hot tears for the bad business we have set about.
Sam Adams: (to Molyneux) Get him out of here.
Otis: (being led away…) There’s going to be a bang-bang firecracker. Why? WHY? (He turns.) Failureof imagination.
Sam Adams: (to John) I entreat you not to worry, Cousin. Otis has been increasingly unlucid lately…but there’s method in his, ah, Massachusetts.
***
(A street. John Adams is trudging through the slush, his head buried in a heavy law book. Suddenly, a snowball whizzes past his ear and splats on a neighboring house. He looks up, startled, as Jonathan Sewell, two more snowballs at the ready, jumps out from behind a tree.)
Sewell: Stand and deliver.
John Adams: What?
Sewell: (brandishing his snowballs) Your money or your virtue.
John Adams: (marking his place in his book) You have, if I may say so, Jonathan, a simpleton’s view of a lawyer’s profession if you conceive that I am rich in either.
Sewell: (walking with him) Piffle. As to your virtues, John, I will not suffer you to deprecate them. You are very well equipped with virtue, Sir. You are handsomely turned out in good. That sturdy frame of yours, which I have so often looked at with particular pleasure, that sturdy frame, I say, enshrines more merit than the treasuries of Crassus held gold. Why you cut a splendid figure John, caparisoned with honest and robed in reputation. And, as the muzzleman swears by the beard of his prophet and a lover knows no greater pledge than that of his mistress’s beauty, so I will ever take my oath on the wig of honest lawyer Adams.
John Adams: You have been drinking.
Sewell: To your good health, I raised the brimmer. No glass of cheer, but a cup of consequence. For touching on your riches, John, it is my ambiguous duty to inform you that they are soon to be enhanced. Your babes will be provided for and you yourself will prosper. It’s not as I might have wished it, but no matter.
John Adams: And how is this to come my way?
Sewell: By your industry and toil.
John Adams: Jonathan?
Sewell: Hancock is to be arrested tomorrow evening. You’d better warn him. His bail will be 3000 pounds.
John Adams: 3000?
Sewell: Yes
John Adams: You cannot be serious.
Sewell: I am. His bail will be 3000 pounds. And the same figure will apply for each of his co-defendants.
John Adams: This is an outrage.
Sewell: May be, but it is not without precedent. Bail in these matters is regarded as securitiy for the damages sought, and we shall be seeking very high damages indeed.
John Adams: I see.
Sewell: It promises to be the dreariest of cases. Your fee should be enormous…He’s broken a law John. Everybody knows it…
John Adams: If that is true, and I don’t admit for a minute, mind, it is an unjust fee.
Sewell: So you say, but the Crown does not agree, and the Crown is my employer. (a pause) But as for my brother-in-law Johnny the swell, I cannot find it in my heart to feel sorry for him. (As Sewell speaks, the scene dissolves to the parlor of the Hancock’s private residence, where John Hancock is being fitted for a new velvet coat by three obsequious tailors. Sewell’s speech continues as a Voice Over.)
***
(The parlor of Hancock’s private residence.)
Sewell: (Voice Over) Oh, he’s a good enough fellow, I suppose, but a terribly silly one, and your friend Sam Adams has got him convinced he ought to be a Duke or something I don’t know. He has a fearful amount of money—too much, perhaps, although it’s not for me to say—and this won’t ruin him. Quite the contrary. It ought to teach him a lesson. Old Thomas, his uncle who made the money that John has been wasting, went in for a little sharp practice himself—bringing in tea from St. Eustacia in molasses barrels, if you believe the rumor—but he was a careful old bird and never thought himself a grander fellow than the governor. Now John, vain man that he is, has boasted that he doesn’t need the law, and damme if he hasn’t financed every politician who agrees with him. And meanwhile what? He keeps his carriages and he gives his balls. They are very elegant affairs, I’m told; I wouldn’t know. My wife and I are not invited. I’m too poor to be worthy of his flattery and too much the Tory to flatter him—the popinjay. (A bell rings.)
John Hancock: Who is it, Peters? (John Adams walks in.)
John Adams: It’s me, Mr. Hancock.
John Hancock: (still being fussed over by the three tailors) Ah, Adams. Good to see you. What brings you here at this hour?
John Adams: The crown is bringing suit against you, Sir. The Marshall will come tomorrow afternoon.
John Hancock: (shooing off the tailors) Good Lord, man what are you saying?
John Adams: You will be arrested tomorrow afternoon.
John Hancock: You will represent me?
John Adams: Of course.
John Hancock: And the bail, what sort of bail are they asking?
John Hancock: 3000 pounds a piece for you and five associates, yet to be named.
John Hancock: (almost in tears) No, no, you can’t be serious. They mean to bleed me white. And my boat. (He goes to a model of the “Liberty,” one of several models in the room, snatches it, and holds it to his chest.) They already have my boat. Do they mean to sell me at a public auction as they might a slave? Oh I have been most grievously abused.
John Adams: Nevertheless, let’s try to put a bold face on it, shall we, Sir?
John Hancock: I shall try…
(The next day, Arodi Thatcher, “his hanger by his side,” which is to say, an unlikely looking weapon half way between a long hunting knife and a very short sword—knocks on the door of Hancock’s Counting House and is admitted by a wizened clerk, who seemingly has worked there since the dawn of time. The portly Marshall is conducted through a maze of desks and assistants to an elevation at the rear of the room where John Hancock is established.)
Thatcher: Mr. Hancock? (Hancock does not look up from his ledger.) Mr. Hancock, Sir. I’ve come with warrants for your arrest and that of five of your associates.
John Hancock: (very calm) You are?
Thatcher: Arodi Thatcher, Sir, Marshall of the Court.
John Hancock: So. Let me see your documents. (Thatcher produces them.) Well, well, you can’t have Captain Bernard, I’m afraid. He’s off on another voyage to Madeira. As for the others—Wigglesworth?
Wigglesworth: Yes Sir.
John Hancock: (flipping him the warrants.) Have these fellows brought around, won’t you? There’s a good chap. Now, Mr., ah…
Thatcher: Thatcher.
John Hancock: Yes, of course. Now Mr. Thatcher, my lawyer, Mr. Adams, informs me that you people want some sort of bail.
Thatcher: (enjoying himself) Yes, indeed. We will, Sir. 3000 pounds sterling for each and every one of you. (He waits for a gasp and doesn’t get it.)
John Hancock: Very good. Well, I’ll post bond for everyone, shall I? It will be less troublesome that way. (to another clerk) Nickerson, fetch me 15,000 pounds—five chests of three apiece, I think, to help Mr. Thatcher here in his counting. (The chests are packed and brought forward by several clerks. Thatcher tries to keep his amazement out of his face, but he’s never been this close to so much money in his life.) Well then, let’s be on our way. Dottridge, my cloak. (A procession is formed with several clerks, weighted down with money. Thatcher attempts to lead the way. Hancock gestures him aside.) Mr., ah, Thatcher, it would be more to the point if you brought up the rear. (Thatcher complies and they all file out.)
Adapted from “Adams: Scenes from a Chronicle” in Timothy Mayer’s Running from America.