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Review
| Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution, by Alfred F. Young. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 417 pages. $22.00, paper.
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| Alfred F. Young has been a longstanding and tireless advocate of casting the light of historical scholarship on the contributions of ordinary men and women to the founding of the United States of America. On page 4 of his introduction to these collected essays, he writes, "If ... a fraction of the resources that have poured into the projects publishing the papers of the leaders of the Revolution went into assembling the full record of popular participation, we might have a more proportionate sense of the role of ordinary people in the Revolution." It is with this sense of filling out an incomplete record that Young goes about the work of producing this wonderfully enlightening and engaging book. Liberty Tree is composed of eight essays examining aspects of the American Revolution or colonial society that are not frequently understood or discussed in history classrooms. In this sense, the book's examination of the contributions of average American men and women opens up all sorts of avenues for the history teacher – avenues that are too often left unexplored. While the so-called "Great White Man" theory of history has fallen out of favor at the university level, it is still alive and well in America's primary, middle, and secondary schools. A book like Liberty Tree is a major step towards correcting this imbalance. |
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The first two essays of this book provide an excellent example of the kind of history Young feels has been neglected. The first essay, "The Mechanics of the Revolution: 'By Hammer and Hand All Arts do Stand,'" looks at the impact artisans and tradesmen had on the direction – indeed, the very radicalism – of the pre and post Revolutionary period. Young manages the herculean feat of rescuing a man like Paul Revere from the sentimental mist of Longfellow's poetry and places him in the midst of what Young calls the first real labor movement in America. The second essay, entitled "'Persons of Consequence': The Women of Boston and the Making of the American Revolution, 1765–1776," draws the reader's attention to the role Boston women played in the early days of American resistance to British authority. This essay takes the reader beyond the well-worn narrative of Abigail Adams and her relationship with and influence upon her husband, and includes descriptions of women in a myriad of revolutionary roles, including boycotters, manufacturers, rioters, and others. |
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Perhaps the most enlightening and interesting essays included here make up the second section of the book called "Accommodations." They are entitled "Conservatives, the Constitution, and the 'Genius of the People'" and "How Radical was the American Revolution?" Both essays force new appraisals of thought in the colonial era and the years during which the Constitution was developed and ratified. The discussion offered here of the complicated motives of the Founders is one that occurs all-too-rarely in most history classrooms. Were the Founders seeking to bestow a radical and all-encompassing democracy on their fellow Americans and, indeed, the world, or were they attempting to find a formula that gave just enough to "the people" while allowing their class to hold onto and consolidate power? It is a question fraught with controversy, and therefore precisely the kind of question we must be asking. As Young chides us on page 232, to do otherwise is to "evade ... responsibility for historical analysis." |
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Perhaps the most successful aspect of Young's book is that it does not force a false choice on his readers. Young does not argue that we receive a better understanding of the Revolutionary period by ignoring the men who have come to embody it. Hancock is here, as is Adams and Revere and Madison. Their contributions are in no way ignored, but Young makes a compelling case that these contributions alone would never have been enough to set America on a journey towards revolution. This book will be an invaluable resource for history teachers at all levels. |
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| Appalachian State University, North Carolina |
James A Bryant, Jr. |
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