Popular Media and the American Revolution by Janice Hume

Author:Janice Hume [Hume, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, History, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Military, Revolutionary
ISBN: 9781136269424
Google: JswlAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-20T04:55:33+00:00

5

American Characters

George Washington might be the ultimate hero of the Revolution,1 but Americans also celebrated others’ contributions to the cause. These American “characters” tie region to nation via the story of the country’s origins, their deeds recalled time and again in a variety of ways including in regional and national media. Over the centuries, their memories have reinforced the notion that everyday Americans were as committed to liberty as the generals who led the fighting, that the Revolution was “of the people.”

Whether these memories are based in fact, myth, or a combination of both, hasn’t seemed to matter. The stories have survived. Citizens of Delaware, for example, recall Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his mad dash to Philadelphia to cast a tie-breaking vote for independence. In New York, “Black Sam,” the proprietor of Samuel Fraunces’ Tavern, helped save Washington’s life and later became the president’s steward. “Molly Pitcher” brought water to troops as the battle raged at Monmouth, N.J., and when her husband could no longer fire his cannon she took over the job. And teenager Sybil Ludington, a “female Paul Revere,” rode through the darkness on her horse Star to summon Patriot militia when the city of Danbury, Conn., was under siege. This chapter examines press coverage of these four American characters considering how and why their stories have evolved and why they live on in regional and national memory.

Of course these four case studies represent just a handful of remembered Revolutionary characters. Doug Gelbert identified many others in his state-by-state guidebook of Revolutionary War sites and memorials open to the public.2 These memorials, he wrote, “began appearing sporadically in the 1820s,” led in part by the Bunker Hill Monument Association which formed in 1823 to create one of the first.3 Among the many characters he and others mention are Enoch Crosby, an American spy, from Connecticut; John Adam Treutlen, a plantation owner in Rincon, Ga., who mortgaged his property to help fund the Revolution and was later murdered by Tories; Nathan Hale of Coventry, Conn., who was hanged as a spy and famously said that he regretted having but one life to give for his country; Kate Moore Barry of Roebuck, S.C., who served as a scout at the Battle of Cow-pens; and Presbyterian minister James Caldwell of Union, N.J., the “fighting parson,” and his wife Hannah who was shot and killed by Tories, according to legend.4 Much has been written about Nancy Hart, Georgia’s Revolutionary War heroine.

Rodney, Ludington, Fraunces, and Pitcher are the focus here because they represent a variety of heroic figures, including both males and females, a teenager, and an innkeeper whose ethnic heritage has been a matter of some controversy. They have been called “unsung heroes,” all while being “sung” at home and in the press. In many ways their stories helped build a “sense of place” in their communities by providing historical lore that bolstered pride in a Revolutionary past. Scholars in a number of disciplines have considered

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