Ray Raphael - Books: The American Revolution and Founding Era

Books: The American Revolution and Founding Era

In 2001, Raphael’s People’s History of the American Revolution synthesized the “bottom-up” history that grabbed the attention of scholars in the field since the 1960s. Howard Zinn, author of People’s History of the United States, endorsed the book and used it to initiate his “People’s History” series, published by The New Press. While both Raphael and Zinn view common people as significant historical agents, Zinn’s focus is decidedly more political, focusing on dissent and protest, while Raphael deals with everyday experiences as well as social movements.

In 2002, in The First American Revolution, Raphael chronicled the overthrow of British authority in the hinterlands of Massachusetts in 1774, the year before Lexington and Concord. The dynamics of the buildup to war have been generally overlooked in America’s core national narrative, but Raphael showed how the citizens of Massachusetts, in response to being disenfranchised by the Massachusetts Government Act, seized political and military power throughout the province in dramatic form. In the town of Worcester, 4,622 militiamen from 37 towns throughout the county — half the adult male population — lined both sides of Main Street and forced the British appointed officials to walk the gauntlet between them, hats in hand, reciting their resignations 30 times apiece. Similar takeovers occurred in every county seat outside Boston, which was garrisoned by British troops. These events, well documented at the time but dropped from the national narrative since the mid-19th century, provide fuller context for the outbreak of war. Raphael demonstrated that the British march on Lexington and Concord, rather than “starting” the Revolution, signaled a counteroffensive to regain control of a province that American patriots had already seized.

Alerted by the disappearance of the 1774 Massachusetts rebellion from history texts, Raphael explored the underpinnings of our national storytelling. In 2004, his Founding Myths examined thirteen time honored tales — Paul Revere’s Ride, the Winter at Valley Forge, “Give me liberty or give me death,” etc. — and detailed their etymology in the 19th century, when an emerging nationalism and narrative demands combined to alter the historical record.

In 2009, in Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, Raphael developed an original synthesis of the Founding Era, blending his previous bottom-up approach into the traditional national narrative. His seven lead characters — some high, some low — include both General George Washington and Private Joseph Plumb Martin, and both Robert Morris, so rich that he bailed out the bankrupt nation, and Thomas Young, a peripatetic revolutionary who spread rebellion in seven states.

In 2012, having shifted his emphasis toward how stories get told, he created an original narrative of the creation of the presidency: Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive.