George III Would Have Loved Stacy Schiff’s New Biography of Samuel Adams

If politics is indeed downstream of culture, then the fight brewing over the American Revolution may wind up being more significant than any result from this week’s midterm elections. The debate is heating up as the 250th anniversary of American independence approaches.It flared earlier this year with the publication of a favorable biography of George III, the British monarch against whom the North American colonists were rebelling. That book insisted that the Declaration of Independence was “mendacious,” which is a fifty cent word for full of lies.The latest entrant in this genre is Stacy Schiff’s “The Revolutionary,” a biography of Samuel Adams. Please feel free to discount for the fact that I have a commercial interest here, having written my own biography of Samuel Adams, “Samuel Adams: A Life.” Ms. Schiff, who in 2000 won a Pulitzer Prize for her book about Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, Vera, is advancing the “Big Lie” theory of the American Revolution. She describes Samuel Adams as a purveyor of “pure propaganda,” “falsehoods,” “a wealth of misinformation,” and “false and exaggerated tales.” The reputations of the founding fathers have already been besmirched by historians and journalists critical of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison for failing to live up to 21st century standards of racial justice. The American Revolution, in this view, was an example of our country’s ongoing structural racism. The signers of the Declaration of Independence are accused of being the antecedents of modern racial discrimination, a bunch of Bull Connors in breeches. This new parallel assault on the founding fathers, the one Ms. Schiff is participating in, leads to a similarly dim view of the American Revolution. If Samuel Adams were deliberately dishonest — a liar — then it would logically follow that the American Revolution was basically a fraud and the American people were deceived. If only FactCheck.org, Politifact, or Glenn Kessler had been around during the 1760s and 1770s to set the colonists straight, we North Americans could have saved ourselves a lot of unnecessary trouble.It’s not a new complaint. Already in 1936, John C. Miller wrote a book titled “Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda.” That was issued by Little Brown, the same publisher that is bringing out Ms. Schiff’s book. Yet merely because an accusation is old does not make it accurate.Samuel Adams was a politician, not a historian. Any exaggeration Adams may have committed, though, is negligible compared to the major interpretive error of categorizing the American Revolution as about fake news rather than about freedom. Were the inhabitants of colonial Boston deluded by Samuel Adams when they observed British Redcoats marching through their streets?Did Samuel Adams manufacture the idea that Parliament imposed taxes on the colonists without representation? Was Samuel Adams making it up when he said that the British had dissolved the elected legislatures of the colonies?Was the Declaration’s big idea—that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .” Was all that a lie?Was it false to suggest, as the Declaration did, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — just “propaganda” signed at the bottom by Samuel Adams?No way. Let’s hope that by the time the 250th arrives in 2026, Americans understand this clear and straight. Failure could have consequences for American confidence that would make it harder for our country to survive to its 300th birthday.Samuel Adams and his fellow revolutionaries were advocates, spokesmen, storytellers, patriots, revolutionaries, sons of liberty. They were not fact-checkers in the 21st-century pedantic sense, but propagandist isn’t really the right word.In focusing on “falsehood” when it comes to the American Revolution, Ms. Schiff and similar critics miss the big truths, the ones about freedom and self-government, that have been inspiring Americans, and people around the world, since 1776. Correction: “Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda” is the name of the 1936 book by John C. Miller. An earlier version of this column gave the incorrect book title.

George III Would Have Loved Stacy Schiff’s New Biography of Samuel Adams

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