Mary's Reflections on American Print Culture

1850 was long enough after 1776 to see how narratives and stories have shaped a very traditional understanding of the American Revolution. Like Foucault would say, most histories are really a story of the present. In William P. Lyon's "An Unwritten Story of the Revolution," found in the Ladies Repository: a Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature, Art and Religion Feb. 1850, we read the tale of a woman of the present recalling an important moment, she believes, in defining American nationhood. In giving this 94 year old story-teller a voice, Lyon establishes his own rhetorical ethos. The subsequent narrative is not merely and idealized re-telling of the stories everyone in the town already knows. It is a distinctive memory from Mrs. Cornelia Beekman who has a "retentive memory" and "full exercise of her vigorous faculties."

He retells her story with all her great patriotism shining through. He first gives background to her story by telling the narrative everyone knows of Lexington and Concord, how the true Americans did everything in their power not to start war, only resisting the tyranny of Great Britain. However, when blow came to blow, they were ready to sacrifice all for their "inalienable rights." Mrs. Beekman, though, tells the story of a convention of mechanics who met shortly after the skirmish. These men relayed personal stories of how throughout the week their own tools seemed to be calling them to a greater cause. One man "with every stroke of his adze and hammer" could hear the words "Re-mem-ber Lex-ing-ton." Again and again, the mechanics would rise to speak and note how their tools sang the call against British tyranny and for American patriotism. In a grand display of national spirit, these mechanics threw their tools into a coffin and laid it in a ground, symbolically laying aside their own vocation for the more nobler vocation of war.

Mrs. Beekman notes that the crowds for this spectacle were not merely curious onlookers. No, indeed, they had come with encouragement for "the spirit of resistance." "O, there were no careless observers here!" she notes, assuredly.

The end of the piece reminds readers: "To the sacrifices of our forefathers do we owe the inestimable blessings of liberty which we now enjoy."

The rhetoric of the piece polarizes patriots and despots so that there is no nuance of disputed ideals within this small town. The people were united in solidarity, no factions. In fact Lyons says that Mrs. Beekham was old enough to see the days of "neutrality," I suppose before political factions. The earnestness of the common laborers reminds people of the present (1850) that true Americans will hear that inward voice of patriotism. It is not something they must be convinced of, but it will ring as truth to them. Any other response indicates a hardened heart. It is interesting to see the fervor of this rhetoric--11 years before the Civil War broke out.

What I find even more interesting is the poem that immediately follows this account. It is entitled "Musings" a piece by A. Bill. The poet "muses" about the course of men's lives. In life, each individual, the poet says, is guided by urgings of good or evil--angels or demons. "He seems alone, yet moves not alone, whersoever he goes. Legions of spirit hover in his path." The poem draws a readers' attention back to the almost supernatural leading of the mechanics to the war. The men were not acting as individuals, but as vessels, moved by the good forces of the earth. The poem also says that "There are no little things." Each person, regardless of status--(even the lowly mechanics) are the small pieces of dust of the earth that form the great sands, the poem says in metaphor. It is a reminder that to do great things, you only have to be small and follow the leading of the good, spiritual forces guiding you or else your would will be plagued by demonic forces and "sin...will creep, like serpents, all along the track of man's sad journey to the grave."