Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned

380 Pages·2003·2.58 MB·English

by  Kenneth C. Davis

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DON'T KNOW
MUCH ABOUT
®
HISTORY
EVERYTHING
YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY
BUT NEVER LEARNED
KENNETH C. DAVIS
HarperCollinsPublishers
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DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT® HISTORY. Copyright © 2003 by Kenneth C. Davis. All rights reserved. Printed in the United
States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address
Harper-Collins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10072.
HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please
write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
FIRST EDITION
Designed by Elliott Beard
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Kenneth C.
History : everything you need to know about American
history but never learned / by Kenneth C. Davis.—1st ed.
p. cm. — (Don't know much about)
Rev. ed. of: Don't know much about history.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-06-008381-6 (acid-free paper)
1. United States—History—Miscellanea. I. Davis, Kenneth
C. Don't know much about history. II. Title.
E178.25.D37 2003
973—dc2l 2002038739
03 04 05 06 07 4•/RRD 10987654321
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To my children, Jenny and Colin
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CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S NOTE

CHAPTER I
Brave New World
CHAPTER 2
Say You Want a Revolution
CHAPTER 3
Growth of a Nation:
From the Creation of the Constitution to Manifest Destiny
CHAPTER 4
Apocalypse Then: To Civil War and Reconstruction
CHAPTER 5
When Monopoly Wasn't a Game:
The Growing Empire from Wild West to World War I

CHAPTER 6
Boom to Bust to Big Boom:
From the Jazz Age and the Great Depression to Hiroshima

CHAPTER 7
Commies, Containment, and Cold War: America in the Fifties

CHAPTER 8
The Torch Is Passed: From Camelot to Hollywood on the Potomac

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CHAPTER 9
From the Evil Empire to the Axis of Evil

AFTERWORD
APPENDIX I
The Bill of Rights and Other Constitutional Amendments

APPENDIX 2
Is the Electoral College a Party School? A Presidential Election Primer

APPENDIX 3
U.S. Presidents and Their Administrations
624
Selected Readings
Acknowledgments
Index
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P R E F A C E T O T H E
R E V I S E D E D I T I O N
W
hen Don't Know Much About" History first appeared in 1990, it was simply meant to serve as
a fresh new take on American history. Busting myths with a dose of humor and real stories
about real people, the book was conceived as an antidote to the dull, dreary text-books we
suffered through in high school or college. Nobody was more surprised than I was when the
book spent 35 weeks on the New York Times Best-seller list and became an "antitextbook" that
has sold 1.3 million copies. If nothing else, this little book proved that Americans don't hate
history—they just hate the dull version they got when they were growing up.
With the same question-and-answer style, this updated, revised, and greatly expanded edition
brings history right up to Bill Clinton's impeachment and the bizarre 2000 election.
Incorporating new discoveries, revelations, and theories about America's past, this revised edi-
tion elaborates on such long-standing American controversies as the Jefferson-Hemings affair,
the Hiss and Rosenberg cases, and the Iran-Contra adventure. There are also many new
questions, many of them resulting from readers' questions to me over the years.
For history buffs and history-phobes, longtime fans and a new generation still in the dark
about America's past, this book provides "Every-thing You Need to Know About American
History." And more!

Kenneth C. Davis
AUGUST 2002

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I N T R O D U C T I O N
B
ack in the early 1960s, when I was growing up, there was a silly pop song called "What Did
Washington Say When He Crossed the Delaware?" Sung to the tarantella beat of an Italian
wedding song, the answer went something like "Martha, Martha, there'll he no pizza tonight."
Of course, these lyrics were absurd; everybody knew Washington ate only cherry pie.
On that December night in 1776, George might have told himself that this raid on an enemy
camp in Trenton, New Jersey, better work. Or else he might he ordering a last meal before the
British strung him up. But as the general rallied his ragged, barefoot troops across the icy
Delaware, one of his actual comments was far more amusing than those fanciful lyrics. Stepping
into his boat, Washington—the plain-spoken frontiersman, not the marbleized demigod—nudged
280-pound General Henry "Ox" Knox with the tip of his hoot and said, "Shift that fat ass, Harry.
But slowly, or you'll swamp the damned boat."

According to Patriots, A. J. Langguth's fascinating history of the Revolution, that is how Knox
himself reported the story after the war. I certainly never heard that version of the crossing when
I was in school. And that's too bad, because it reveals more of Washington's true, earthy nature
than all the hokey tales about cherry trees and nonexistent prayer vigils in Valley Forge. And
that's the point of this book: much of what we remember about our history is either mistaken or
fabricated. That is, if we remember it at all.
For all too many Americans who dozed through American History 101, the Mayflower
Compact might as well be a small car. Reconstruction has something to do with silicone
implants. And the Louisiana Purchase means eating out at a Cajun restaurant. When the first
edition of this book appeared more than twelve years ago, several writers had just enjoyed
remarkable success by lambasting Americans' failure to know our past. Americans were shown
to be know-nothings in the books Cultural Literacy and The Closing of the American Mind.
Well, we're probably not as dumb as those books would have us. But the sad truth is clear:
we are no nation of scholars when it comes to history. Just as I was writing the first edition of
this book, a highly publicized example of our "historical illiteracy" appeared. It was a 1987
survey of high school juniors that exposed astonishing gaps in what these seventeen-year-olds
knew about American history and literature. A third of the students couldn't identify the
Declaration of Independence as the document that marked the formal separation of the thirteen
colonies from Great Britain. Only 32 percent of the students surveyed could place the American
Civil War in the correct half century.
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Sadly, I must say that things have not improved much — if at all — in the past fifteen or
twenty years. Every few years, it seems, another survey comes along that blasts the historical
ineptness of American students. Part of the problem may be that those juniors who didn't do so
well in 1987 may be teachers now!
But why dump on the kids? While there are constant warnings issued about the yawning gaps
in the education of American students, another question looms larger. Would most of their
parents or older brothers and sisters do any better? Most thirty-seven-year-olds or forty-seven-
year-olds might not pass a similar pop quiz. Comedian Jay Leno routinely proves this on
Tonight with his "Jaywalk" segments in which adults demonstrate that they are incapable of
answering the simplest questions about history. When Bill Clinton went to Normandy as pres-
ident for a D-Day observance, even he had to be tutored on what had happened there. So don't
ask for whom the gap yawns. The gap yawns for thee.
The reason for these historical shortcomings is simple. For most of us, history was boring,
and a great many Americans were taught by a football coach who got dropped into the history
class to give him some-thing to fill out his day. Many of us also learned about the past from
textbooks that served up the past as if it were a Hollywood costume drama. In schoolbooks of an
earlier era, the warts on our Founding Fathers' noses were neatly retouched. Slavery also got the
glossy makeover—it was merely the misguided practice of the rebellious folks down South until
the "progressives" of the North showed them the light. American Indians were portrayed in
textbooks in the same way they were in Hollywood Westerns. Women were pretty much left out
of the picture entirely with the exception of a mythical Betsy Ross or a lovely Dolley Madison
rescuing the White House china.
Truth isn't so cosmetically perfect. Our historical sense is frequently skewed, skewered, or
plain screwed up by myths and misconceptions. Schools that packaged a tidy set of simplistic
historical images are largely responsible for fostering these American myths. There has always
been a tendency to hide the less savory moments from our past, the way a mad aunt's photo gets
pulled from the family album.
On top of that, the gaping chasms in our historical literacy have been reinforced by images
from pop culture. Unfortunately, highly fictionalized films, such as Oliver Stone's JFK or
Disney's Pocahontas, make a much greater impression on millions of people than a carefully
researched, historically accurate, but numbingly dull, documentary. Occasionally there are films
like Glory or Saving Private Ryan that can stimulate interest in history they way few textbooks
or teachers can. Since this book was first written, there has also been an explosion of cable
television programming, including the History Channel, Discovery, and The Learning Channel,
that offers excellent documentaries. But for the most part, mainstream movies and network
television have magnified the myths and makeovers. It is important to understand that looking
past these myths is revealing. The real picture is far more interesting than the historical tummy-
tuck. And truth is always more interesting than propaganda.
Somebody will surely read this and say, "So what?"
Why bother with history anyway? What difference does it make if our kids know what the
Declaration says—or doesn't say? Why does it matter if most people think Watergate is just old
news?
The answer is simple because history is really about the consequences of our actions—large
and small. And that has never been more apparent than in the aftermath of the terror attacks of
September 11, 2001. This revised edition is being written in the wake of that horrible day, and if
the terror attacks haven't changed anything else, they certainly changed many Americans'
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appreciation of the past and what it has to do with the present.
But perhaps more importantly, history can explain how we got where are. We can use it to
connect the dots from past to present. Take the Versailles Treaty. (Please!) I know. The very
words sound BORING. I can see your eyes grow heavy as you read the words "Versailles" and
"Treaty." But consider what that treaty, which supposedly settled World War I back in 1919,
actually did. In one very clear and obvious sense, it laid the groundwork for another world war
only twenty years later.
But look past that. You can draw a straight line from the Treaty of Versailles to the modern
Middle East, Iran and Iraq, the Balkan countries of Europe, and even Vietnam. All these hot
spots of the past few decades were created in the aftermath of Versailles, when the European
powers carved up the world into colonies that they thought they could rule as they pleased.
When the CIA overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 during the Eisenhower
administration, nobody thought about what it might mean in 25 years. At the time, Americans
were worried about Russia and the oil companies. What did it matter what the Iranians thought?
Restoring the shah to the Iranian throne in place of a government hostile to America seemed like
a good idea. Until the Iranian people thought otherwise in 1979 and began the first wave of
Islamic revolutions that have altered recent history.
Another example closer to home is COINTELPRO, a largely for-gotten FBI program of
illegal wiretaps, dirty tricks and smears of individuals first aimed at suspected Communists and
later at members of the antiwar and civil rights movements. Today, as America debates the
future of its intelligence agencies and domestic spying, it is important to remember FBI
operations like COINTELPRO and other abuses by America's intelligence agencies in the past.
People in the American government, some of them with the absolute best intentions, have
trampled rights and destroyed lives in pursuit of short-term goals. As George Kennan, the
American diplomat and architect of America's Cold War "containment" policy, once said, "The
worst thing the Communists could do to us and the thing we have most to fear from their
activities is that we should become like them." This is the essence of learning from history. But
if we all have those enormous gaps in our understanding of the past, how can we possibly learn
from it?
This book's intent is to fill those gaps in our historical knowledge with some simple,
accessible answers to basic questions about American history. This single volume is obviously
not an encyclopedic history of America. For simplicity, I use a question-and-answer approach,
and there are literally shelves of books about each of the questions I have included. My intent is
to refresh the shaky recollection, remove the old myths, or reshape the misconceptions with some
simple answers. Or, in some cases, to point the way to longer answers. I like to consider a Don't
Know Much About book the first word on the subject rather than the last.
What's different about this version? First, there is an entire new chapter that includes a review
of the events that have taken place since I completed the original edition in 1989, including some
of the most remarkable events in American history. Like the original, this new edition is
organized along chronological lines, moving from America's "discovery" by Europe to more
recent events, including the Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, and the events leading up to the
enormous national tragedy of September 11, 2001. At this writing, we are still trying to uncover
the "truth" about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, what the American government
knew beforehand, what it did—and didn't do. The answers to those questions are still very much
in the air, and it is difficult as a historian to assess some of these issues yet. But we can try to
figure out how we got to that awful moment in history.
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