Fighting over the Founders (PDF)

TheAmerican Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards andas small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns,relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation's foundingmoment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths,and remains the most accessible and most contested event in U.S. history: morethan any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation'saspirations. Americans' increased fascination with the Revolution over the pasttwo decades represents more than interest in the past. It's also a site to workout the present, and the future. Whatare we using the Revolution to debate? In Fightingover the Founders, Andrew M. Schocket explores how politicians,screenwriters, activists, biographers, jurists, museum professionals, andreenactors portray the American Revolution. Identifying competing"e;essentialist"e; and "e;organicist"e; interpretations of the American Revolution,Schocket shows how today's memories of the American Revolution revealAmericans' conflicted ideas about class, about race, and about gender-as wellas the nature of history itself. Fighting over the Founders plumbsour views of the past and the present, and illuminates our ideas of what UnitedStates means to its citizens in the new millennium. Instructor's Guide