America’s Dominant Founding Narratives, Once Again Being Challenged

In the three books under review, mid- to late twentieth-century American founding narratives and their supporting myths—of a democratic, liberal, and enlightened revolutionary-era America—are in varying ways challenged. Richard Bensel, for instance, rejects the truthfulness of any founding narrative and suggests that if one were to make public the dishonesty of one’s own country’s founding myths, it would be heretical. The ideological coherence of the rebellious colonists, owners of a half-million slaves, is also questioned by Peter Moore. As much as one might consider such attacks novel, they are not. One hundred years ago, Progressives attacked the class and cultural biases of the American founding, especially those of the US Constitution. Today, the same is true of contemporary progressives and, in some instances, a subset of the Christian Right—a subset Cooper and Dyer are keen to refute. It is in this intellectual context that these three works offer their revisionary fare.