Abstract
You could spark a pretty good debate by questioning whether we learn more history from historians and history courses or from popular culture. Whatever the answer, here comes Janice Hume to show convincingly that history, culture, and media have a powerful symbiotic relationship.
Hume heads the Department of Journalism at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. In this monograph-length work, she offers a case study of how our national understanding of the American Revolution coalesced over time. Shaped and reshaped by politicians, historians and especially journalists, an epic storyline eventually emerged. It was part fact and part myth, part fortuitous and part strategically reimagined to suit changing times.
Not surprisingly, according to Hume, the news media found themselves in the middle of it all.
She examines mainstream newspapers, magazines, the alternative press, and to a lesser extent broadcast media, focusing, for example, on the nurturing of the George Washington legend or the didactic and flag-waving nationalism loaded onto Fourth of July celebrations. Through “stories, memories, and shared sentiment,” she writes, there developed a “national narrative” of the Revolution, nourished and sustained by popular media and culture, determining to a large extent what Americans both “remember and forget.”
As Hume notes, the news media of the day—mostly newspapers and pamphlets—stirred the colonists toward rebellion and provided information as the war unfolded, though much of it was “rumor and hearsay.” But her main interest is in what happened afterward, as time passed and the revolutionary narrative played directly into later nation-building goals.
Hume effectively shows that it did not take long for Americans to become “nostalgic” about the Revolution. In newspaper obituaries of veterans of the war, according to one study she cites, “service to country during the war . . . was mentioned more frequently even than religious affiliation.”
While it has become common to speak of journalism as the first rough draft of history, Hume demonstrates that its influence goes much further. From the Revolution forward, even historians often used press accounts as sources, especially those with “colorful language, quotations, and narrative.” In addition, of course, much history has been written by journalists and former journalists (think of the current work of Walter Isaacson). So that first rough draft may not be as ephemeral as we sometimes think.
Beyond contributing to historical accounts, the media also frequently influenced which episodes, lessons, and memories were repeated, stressed, and carried forward, often with overtly inspirational intent. An 1837 magazine article, for instance, noted that the Revolution “ought never to be forgotten,” with its lessons “instilled into the minds of our children . . . and handed down from generation to generation.” Popular legends, some documentable and some dubious, were repeated and legitimized in service of this goal. Did Molly Pitcher really exist? Did a female teenager make a Paul Revere-type ride? Did a tavern keeper of Haitian descent help thwart a plot to poison Washington? These and other legends, Hume writes, most with at least a “foundation of fact,” were “embellished” to help establish an “American ideal.”
This ingrained and sustained narrative of heroism and patriotism was also regularly used via the media to rally support for later causes. As the Civil War neared, newspapers and magazines called for the same kind of courage and brilliance that marked the Revolution. Women’s suffrage publications repeated the demand for “no taxation without representation.” The dissident press “called upon the memory of the Revolution” in opposing America’s perceived failure “to live up to its own ideals.”
Using examples, quotes, and anecdotes from a variety of sources, Hume is able to conclude that “popular media have contributed to a particular memory narrative ever since the war ended.” They formed a “symbiotic relationship with historians . . . and with families, communities, and organizations that marked particular people or events as worthy of remembrance.”
The book seems most likely to be useful for history and persuasion courses, although its narrow, case-study approach positions it as a supplement and not necessarily a primary text.
Hume writes clearly and concisely. She chooses examples well and makes creative use of multiple sources. She is more effective in describing those elements of the revolutionary narrative that have remained in our collective memory than in identifying those left behind or deliberately obscured. Perhaps, too, she could have paid some more attention to those individuals who, over time, have managed to present alternative views of the Revolution and its aftermath. Overall, though, this book makes a positive contribution. It really takes little more than a visit to any community July 4th celebration to underline that her insights stand up well.