America's Revolutionary Heritage PDF
Preview America's Revolutionary Heritage
America's Revolutionary Heritage Alllerica's Revolutionary Heritage MARXIST ESSAYS GEORGE NOVACK Editor Pathfinder New York London Montreal Sydney Copyright© 1971, 1972, 1975, 1976 Pathfinder Press All rights reserved ISBN 0-87348-465-7 paper; ISBN 0-87348-464-9 cloth Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-12292 Manufactured in the United States of America First edition, 1976 Third printing, 1993 Cover design by Eric Simpson. The cover illustration is a detail of the fresco "Revolutionary Prelude," from the Portrait of America series by Diego Rivera. Depicted in the front is the Boston Massacre of 1770, with Crispus Attucks at center being shot by British troops. At the upper left is a scene from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, with patriot forces dumping a shipment of British tea into Boston Harbor. Pathfinder 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Fax: (212) 727-0150 Pathfinder distributors around the world: Australia (and Asia and the Pacific): Pathfinder, 19 Terry St., Surry Hills, Sydney, N.S.W 2010 Britain (and Europe, Africa except South Africa, and Middle East): Pathfinder, 47 The Cut, London, SEl 8LL Canada: Pathfinder, 6566, boul. St-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec, H2S 3C6 Iceland: Pathfinder, Klapparstig 26, 2d floor, 121 Reykjavik New Zealand: Pathfinder, La Gonda Arcade, 203 Karangahape Road, Auckland Postal address: PO. Box 8730, Auckland Sweden: Pathfinder, Vikingagatan 10, S-113 42, Stockholm United States (and Caribbean, Latin America, and South Africa): Pathfinder, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014 Contents Introduction 9 THE NATIVE AMERICANS The Conquest of the Indians 23 George Novack The Destruction of Indian Democracy 38 George Novack The Struggle for the Land 45 George Novack THE FIRST AMERICAN REVOLUTION Was the Revolution Necessary? 59 George Novack Organizers of the Revolution 75 George Novack Tom Paine-Revolutionist 92 Jean Y. Tussey Mercy Otis Warren-Mother of the American Revolution 104 Dianne Feeley Class Forces in the American Revolution 115 Harry Frankel How the Constitution Was Written 127 Harry Frankel THE SLAV OCRACY Slavery in Colonial America 137 George Novack The Struggle for National Supremacy 149 George Novack The Jackson Period 158 Harry Frankel Three Conceptions of J acksonianism 170 Harry Frankel The Rise and Fall of the Cotton Kingdom 181 George Novack Homage to John Brown 221 George Novack Martin R. Delany-Pioneer Black Nationalist 231 Derrick Morrison THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION The Civil War-Its Place in History 249 George Novack The Emancipation Proclamation 262 George Novack Two Lessons of Reconstruction 275 George Novack THE TRIUMPH OF THE MONOPOLISTS Historians and the Belated Rise of American Imperialism 287 George Novack Big Business and the Two-Party System 308 George Novack The Spanish-American War 325 John G. Wright A Forgotten Fighter Against the Plutocracy 334 George Novack The Rise and Fall of Progressivism 349 George Novack THE FIRST WA VE OF FEMINISM The Suffrage Movement, 1848-1920 361 Debby Woodroofe How Women Won the Vote 391 Stephanie Coontz Index 401 George Novack George Novack (1905-1992) joined the communist movement in the United States in 1933, and remained a member and leader of the Socialist Workers Party until his death. As national secretary of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, Novack helped organize the 1937 International Com mission of Inquiry that investigated the charges fabricated by Stalin's Moscow trials. In the 1940s Novack was national secretary of the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which gathered support for leaders of the SWP and of the Midwest Teamsters' strikes and organizing drive who were framed up and jailed under the witch-hunting Smith Act. He played a prominent role in numerous other civil liberties and civil rights battles over subsequent decades, including the landmark law suit against FBI spying and disruption won by the Socialist Workers Party in 1986. He was also active in defense of the Cuban revolution and against the war in Vietnam. His works include: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism; Geno cide against the Indians; The Origins of Materialism; Existentialism versus Marxism; Empiricism and Its Evolution; How Can the Jews Survive? A Socialist A>iswer to Zionism; The Marxist Theory of Alien ation; Democracy and Revolution; Understanding History; Humanism and Socialism; The Revolutionary Potential of the Working Class; Pragmatism versus Marxism; America's Revolutionary Heritage; and Polemics in Marxist Philosophy. Introduction Two hundred years ago the American colonists waged a War of Independence against British tyranny and economic domina tion-the first victorious national liberation struggle of modern times. Today, when many Americans are reexamining our revolutionary heritage, the publication of this new edition is especially timely and appropriate. The essays on various aspects of American history collected in this volume appeared over a span of forty years in the International Socialist Review and its predecessors, The New International and Fourth International.* They were prompted by special occasions or written in response to particular problems. Yet all have been motivated by a comprehensive conception of the rise of American civilization that differs in essentials from the views taught in the schools and universities and accepted as gospel by most scholars and students. Is There a Pattern in American History? The most popular nineteenth-century historians of the United States, such as George Bancroft and John Fiske, had no doubts about the significance of our history. They were convinced, along with most of their contemporaries, that the ascendancy of the Yankee republic exhibited, above all, the triumph of the spirit of liberty and the institutions of democracy peculiar to the Anglo- * With the exception of "The Rise and Fall of the Cotton Kingdom," originally written in 1939, which appeared in 1968 in Studies in Afro American History, published by the National Education Department of the Socialist Workers Party. 9
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