Olwell, Robert

Texas ScholarWorks

The past is never dead. It's not even pastNOT EVEN PASTSearch the site ...   Like 93 TweetYou Say You Want a Revolution?Reenacting History in the Classroomby Robert OlwellTwo students stand back-to-back in the center of the room.  At my signal, they step inopposite directions, turn, and shoot. Afterward, one crumples to the  oor dead while therest of the class erupts in cheers of glee or howls of outrage. This scene took place inmy classroom last fall. My students were all “in character,” acting the part of historical gures. The duelists were Abraham Brasher, a New York City silversmith and member ofthe “Sons of Liberty,” and Christopher Billop, a Staten Island farmer loyal to the king.Although Brasher and Billop were both genuine historic  gures and real political foes,their fatal meeting never actually took place. The student playing Billop had provoked theduel, gambling that if the dice fell his way (the projectiles they each “shot” were notbullets but dice), Brasher’s death might prevent the New York Provincial Congress fromvoting for independence.Such  ctitious events and “unhistoric” outcomes are an integral part of a class that Ihave taught for the past few years called “Debating the American Revolution.” The classwas  rst inspired by the book Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776 written by William Offutt (a history professor at Pace University in New York City).This book is part of a series called “Reacting to the Past” launched in the late 1990s byProfessor Mark Carnes of Barnard College. Each of books in the series focuses on aparticular historical event or debate. Carnes believed that students would be moreengaged with history if they encountered it as a participant rather than as a spectator. Inthe case of Offutt’s book, the chosen setting was New York City in the period betweenthe start of the revolutionary war in April 1775 and the passage of the Declaration ofIndependence  fteen months later, and the historical debate was whether or not NewYork should join the American Revolution.As soon as I read Offut’s book I knew that I wanted to try it. However, as I became moreexcited about the idea, I also became convinced that I would need an entire semester,and not merely the  ve weeks he allotted, to do the job properly. I believed the students’role-playing would be more historically accurate if they were given a deeper backgroundin the ideas and material life of late colonial New York before the “game” began.Privacy  - TermsIn my course we devote the  rst half of the semester to background research. We beginby discussing things colonial New Yorkers would have, or at least could have, read.These include extracts from “classics” of early modern political theory (Locke, Hobbes,and Montesquieu) as well as from less well remembered writers  such as LordBolingbroke, and John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s “Cato’s Letters.” From there weprogress to reading the pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic during theimperial crisis of the decade prior to 1775. We  nish with political tracts written bycolonial New Yorkers themselves. Students read an essay by the loyalist parson, SamuelSeabury, writing under the pseudonym the “Westchester Farmer,” and the robust rebuttalpenned by Alexander Hamilton, then a twenty-year-old student at Kings College (nowColumbia University).From the world of political ideas, we move on to the nitty-gritty of daily life. To givestudents a sense of the physical landscape of colonial New York City, we pore over awonderful map of the southern end of Manhattan Island made by an o cer in the RoyalEngineers on the eve of the revolution. On the map, the city sits on the southernmost tipof the island, occupying an area about the same size as UT’s campus. Colonial NewYorkers still lived in close proximity to the countryside. On the engineer’s map,Greenwich village was still literally that, a rural hamlet separated from the city proper bya mile and a half of  elds and forest.Yet, despite its small size, colonial New York City was a surprisingly urban place. Withapproximately 25,000 inhabitants, the city was the second largest in the colonies (afterPhiladelphia). Crowded together into such a con ned space, in buildings only three orfour stories tall, all colonial New Yorkers, rich and poor, black and white, lived in closeproximity to each other. They walked the same broad streets or narrow alleys and oftenslept beneath the same roofs (although the poor – or enslaved – were likely to berelegated to cramped and unheated attics, or dank basements).Lastly, each of my students is tasked with reading one month’s worth of a newspaperprinted in New York City between July 1773 and March 1775. Digital versions of theseand many other Early American newspapers are available online through the UT libraryweb-site. Then as now, newspapers are written for the moment; yesterday’s newspaperis used to wrap the  sh. Everything you read in the paper speaks to immediate concerns.We will never know if the runaway slave advertised for by his master escaped or wascaught and returned for the reward. In the woodcut that accompanies theadvertisement, he is caught in mid-stride, perpetually on the run. My students arenaturally appalled by such notices, but they also are intrigued by the minutiae of adistant time and place whose fervent desires (for wealth, good health, fashionableattire), and fears (illness, debt, death) seem surprisingly familiar.Besides writing papers on their newspaper reading, the students present their  ndings tothe rest of the class. Because each student reports on a different month between July1773 and March 1775, listening to their presentations in chronological orderencapsulates the last stages of the imperial breakdown as it was happening. This senseof the impending crisis ends in April 1775, the  rst meeting of the New York ProvincialCongress, and the start of the “game.”At last, midway through the semester, comes the moment everyone has been waitingfor. From a tri-cornered hat, each student draws the name of his or her character. I leavethe room for  ve minutes and anyone unhappy with their “lot” can try to persuadesomeone to trade with them. I then give every student a sealed envelope containingsecret information about their character which they are not to reveal to anyone andwhich they should use to guide their conduct in the game.Each character belongs to one of four larger groups or in 18th-century language“factions.” Five students are patriots, charged with promoting the revolution anddeclaring independence. Four students are loyalists, tasked with preventing the same.Another four classmates are “moderates,” members of the Provincial Congress whohave yet to decide between the  rst two options. This moderate bloc forms the “swingvote” whose support the patriots will need to win if they are to prevail. The tri-partitedivision of our in-class Congress echoes John Adams’s post-war calculation that at thestart of the revolution Americans were evenly divided between patriots, loyalists, andneutrals.The patriots’ challenge of winning over the moderates is made harder by the last andlargest segment of the class representing the great majority of colonial New York’sinhabitants: those people who were not permitted to vote or sit in the ProvincialCongress. In our class, this group consists of two poor men, two women, two slaves,and a clandestine Catholic. In class, we call the politically disenfranchised the “People-Out-of-Doors” (or PODs). This was a polite 18th-century term for people more oftencalled “the lower sort,” the “mob,” “crowd,” or, in Edmund Burke’s memorable phrase: “theswinish multitude.” In modern political parlance, we might call them “the street.”Pulling Down the Statue of King George III by William Walcutt (Wikimedia Commons)In the early modern era, however, people excluded from the formal political processcould still make their opinions known by means of popular protest. Once each classsession, I ask the back of the classroom where the PODs gather if a mob is forming inthe city’s streets, and if so, who is the crowd’s target and what is their demand? Thoseconfronted by a mob have three choices: capitulate to the mob’s demand,  ee (in whichcase they cannot vote in that game session), or resist. The latter choice could end in tar-and-feathers or even death.Although their power lay in numbers, each of the PODs also has an individual agenda.Slaves want to gain their freedom. One of the women seeks the right to divorce herabsent ne’er-do-well husband. All of the PODs would like political rights, and a chance tovote in the class’s ultimate vote on independence. To this end, they must persuade theCongress to remove the disquali cations, whether of property, gender, or religion thatbarred them from having political rights in the colonial period. Both the patriot andloyalist factions fear the mob’s wrath, but they also see it as a weapon that can be usedto threaten their opponents and whose actions might be swayed by promising tosupport some of the “liberal” reforms.With the possibility of adding members to the Congress (as individual PODs gain thevote), as well as the likelihood of subtracting them (either permanently by death, ortemporarily by  ight), you can see how complicated the political calculus and gamestrategy can become and why the weekly game sessions of the class as well as theweeks between classes were  lled with intense negotiations and intrigue.At the start of each week’s game session students meet brie y with the members oftheir group to plan and plot. Afterwards comes the most formal item on the agenda:speeches. In the course of the game, each student has to write and present two ten-minute-long speeches. Although everyone speaks from the same podium at the front ofthe classroom, members of the Congress are presumed to be speaking before thatassembly, while the PODs pretend to address the tavern-table-democracy at the “BunchO’ Grapes” tavern, located across the street from the statehouse      I am always pleased(and, to be honest, surprised) by the earnestness and skill students display in portrayingtheir characters and presenting their opinions to the rest of the class. Nor does the restof the class sit idle while the speeches were being made. I encourage the audience tointerject freely with cheers, and table-pounding when they approve of what the speakersays or with hisses or cries of “rubbish!” when they disagree with the sentiments beingexpressed.Besides speaking and voting, students’ are also required to submit two anonymous (orpseudonymous) letters to our in-class newspaper. The letters allow for a great deal ofmischief (the Billop-Brasher duel began when the former planted a letter falselyaccusing the latter of beating his wife), but the assignment also re ects a historicalreality, for the print culture of the 18th-century was  lled with pseudonym andimposture. Famous examples in early American history include young BenjaminFranklin’s “Silence Dogood” letters, or the contributions made to the New Yorknewspapers by “Publius,” (a composite of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, andJohn Jay) which urged rati cation of the Constitution and which are now collectivelyknown as the “Federalist Papers.”Students  rst send their letters to me (so I know who wrote what and can assigngrades), and I remove their actual names before publishing the letters in the ournewspaper, “The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury” that I distribute before eachweek’s meeting.(View a full issue of “The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury” below)Our in-class newspaper also provides students with a short reminder of the previousweek’s class and what was scheduled to happen this week. Most importantly, the paperadvances the hands of time. Each weekly session of the game is set three months afterthe previous one from April 1775, until our sixth and  nal session: July 1776. Each issueof the newspaper informs the students what had happened in England and in the othercolonies since the last game turn. These “outside” events, decisions, and declarations,drawn verbatim from the actual historic record, force students to react to the changingpolitical and military situation as events in America and Britain spiral toward revolution.It is this ongoing “course of human events” (to quote from Jefferson’s Declaration ofIndependence) that drives the game. For example, if the main item on the patriots’agenda in the April 1775 session was to get New York to join the economic boycott ofBritain, by the next week’s session (July 1775), the war has begun and the patriots arecharged with answering the call of the Continental Congress to raise troops for GeneralWashington’s new Continental Army. By the winter of 1775, New Yorkers read of theroyal governor of Virginia’s call to arm slaves who agree to  ght for the King against theirpatriot masters. In the spring of 1776, the newspaper includes extracts from ThomasPaine’s “Common Sense,” then hot-off-the-press.My loyalist students  nd the rising revolutionary tide vexing. Often, when they read thelatest issue of the newspaper they learn that their carefully negotiated agreement withthe moderate faction has been undermined not by the radicals in Philadelphia, but by thehard-liners in London, and by a British policy that becomes increasingly militaristic andintransigent as the year wears on.Eventually, the middle ground erodes, and everyone must choose sides. Most of themoderates reluctantly join the patriots. Those PODs who have gained the vote, also tendto lean patriotic, reasoning that their new found liberties depend on the success of theAmerican cause. All my classes thus far have voted to declare independence and jointhe revolution when the push  nally comes in July 1776.But what I  nd fascinating is that no two classes have arrived at that destination by thesame route. John Adams once famously remarked that getting the Congress to declareindependence was like trying to “make thirteen Clocks, Strike precisely alike, at the SameSecond.”  As Adams’s remark suggests, until July 1776, the American Revolutionconsisted of thirteen closely related but distinct crises. Each colony followed its ownpeculiar political path to independence, shaped in part by the colonies’ own particularhistories and circumstances, but also by the choices made by individual actors. No twoof these thirteen revolutions were exactly alike.In trying to make the revolution happen in our class, my patriot students oftenunknowingly follow the actual historical paths that lead one colony or another to join therevolution. For example, when one class voted to print paper money in order to pay forthe troops required by Congress (risking in ation and the wrath of the poor), theyinadvertently adopted the same course their historic predecessors chose in the New19th century 20th Century African American History american history Asia Asia & Middle East book review BrazilBritish Empire China Civil War Cold War Colonialism communism cultural history digital history Early Modern Europe Europe  lm gender history History of Science immigration India Islam Latin America Latin American History Mexico Not Even Past Public History race religion Russia slavery Texas Texas History Texas History Day Transnational Twentieth Century History United States US History USSR Womens History world history World War IIYork Provincial Congress. In another case, the class-appointed commander of NewYork’s Continental Brigade ordered his troops to purge the Congress and declared NewYork to be independent by something like a military coup-d’etat, (which parallels whatactually happened in Pennsylvania).Playing historical characters based on real historical sources immerses my students inideas, events, and drama of the American Revolution. Better than any class I have evertaught, this  format teaches students how history is woven from the interaction betweenstructure and contingency, between the warp of the larger forces of economics, politics,and culture and the weft of immediate consequence of events and of individual choice.In “Debating the Revolution,” my students learn about history by helping to make it.As to what my students feel they get out of the class, perhaps the best way to illustratethis is to let one of them speak for herself. Sara Gordon shared this description of herexperience in the course, written for another purpose, with me:“Every week, I temporarily become Bathsheba Spooner, an impoverished laundress whosupports women’s civil rights and the Patriot cause. As Bathsheba, I yell my opinionsand pleas through the windows of the Colonial Assembly, I argue with my fellow people-out-of-doors regarding what the best course of action for our colony of New York wouldbe, and I march through the streets with the Daughters of Liberty.I am able to become Bathsheba through my History 350R seminar class entitled“Debating the American Revolution.” Though this class began with a . . . study of Britishand early American political theory and a detailed summary of the years leading up tothe American Revolution, it was not long before my professor, Dr. Robert Olwell,assigned us each a character from the colonial time period, and as a class, we beganhistorical role-playing.I must admit, I was at  rst skeptical and hesitant about this aspect of the class. I havesuch a deep interest in the study of the American Revolution that I was inclined to prefera more traditional lecture and discussion based class. This class, however, has mademe incredibly glad and grateful to be a history major. When my peers and I enter theclassroom, we take on our assigned character’s identities. We have set aside time forfaction meetings, for congressional discussion and voting, for court, and even for mobs.Each class period is intense, and we must each be able to truly represent our characterand argue, debate, and vote as if we are he or she.”In “Debating the American Revolution,” history comes alive for my students, and, in theend, that is what I hope to achieve in all of my classes.The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (A full issue of the course newspaper.)More books in the series, Reacting to the Past  Posted May 19, 2014More Features, Monthly Features, TeachingNOT EVEN PAST is produced by The Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN  We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts And our READERSDONATE  CONTACT  All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise notedSign up to receive the monthly Not Even Past newsletterSUBSCRIBEYour email addressFEATURES BOOKS TEACHING DIGITAL & FILMBLOG IHS & PUBLIC HISTORY TEXAS ABOUT

English

You Say You Want a Revolution? Reenacting History in the Classroom

The past is never dead. It's not even pastNOT EVEN PASTSearch the site ...  Like 93 TweetYou Say You Want a Revolution?Reenacting History in the Classroomby Robert OlwellTwo students stand back-to-back in the center of the room.  At my signal, they step inopposite directions, turn, and shoot. Afterward, one crumples to the  oor dead while therest of the class erupts in cheers of glee or howls of outrage. This scene took place inmy classroom last fall. My students were all “in character,” acting the part of historical gures. The duelists were Abraham Brasher, a New York City silversmith and member ofthe “Sons of Liberty,” and Christopher Billop, a Staten Island farmer loyal to the king.Although Brasher and Billop were both genuine historic  gures and real political foes,their fatal meeting never actually took place. The student playing Billop had provoked theduel, gambling that if the dice fell his way (the projectiles they each “shot” were notbullets but dice), Brasher’s death might prevent the New York Provincial Congress fromvoting for independence.Such  ctitious events and “unhistoric” outcomes are an integral part of a class that Ihave taught for the past few years called “Debating the American Revolution.” The classwas  rst inspired by the book Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776 written by William Offutt (a history professor at Pace University in New York City).This book is part of a series called “Reacting to the Past” launched in the late 1990s byProfessor Mark Carnes of Barnard College. Each of books in the series focuses on aparticular historical event or debate. Carnes believed that students would be moreengaged with history if they encountered it as a participant rather than as a spectator. Inthe case of Offutt’s book, the chosen setting was New York City in the period betweenthe start of the revolutionary war in April 1775 and the passage of the Declaration ofIndependence  fteen months later, and the historical debate was whether or not NewYork should join the American Revolution.As soon as I read Offut’s book I knew that I wanted to try it. However, as I became moreexcited about the idea, I also became convinced that I would need an entire semester,and not merely the  ve weeks he allotted, to do the job properly. I believed the students’role-playing would be more historically accurate if they were given a deeper backgroundin the ideas and material life of late colonial New York before the “game” began.Privacy  - TermsIn my course we devote the  rst half of the semester to background research. We beginby discussing things colonial New Yorkers would have, or at least could have, read.These include extracts from “classics” of early modern political theory (Locke, Hobbes,and Montesquieu) as well as from less well remembered writers  such as LordBolingbroke, and John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s “Cato’s Letters.” From there weprogress to reading the pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic during theimperial crisis of the decade prior to 1775. We  nish with political tracts written bycolonial New Yorkers themselves. Students read an essay by the loyalist parson, SamuelSeabury, writing under the pseudonym the “Westchester Farmer,” and the robust rebuttalpenned by Alexander Hamilton, then a twenty-year-old student at Kings College (nowColumbia University).From the world of political ideas, we move on to the nitty-gritty of daily life. To givestudents a sense of the physical landscape of colonial New York City, we pore over awonderful map of the southern end of Manhattan Island made by an o cer in the RoyalEngineers on the eve of the revolution. On the map, the city sits on the southernmost tipof the island, occupying an area about the same size as UT’s campus. Colonial NewYorkers still lived in close proximity to the countryside. On the engineer’s map,Greenwich village was still literally that, a rural hamlet separated from the city proper bya mile and a half of  elds and forest.Yet, despite its small size, colonial New York City was a surprisingly urban place. Withapproximately 25,000 inhabitants, the city was the second largest in the colonies (afterPhiladelphia). Crowded together into such a con ned space, in buildings only three orfour stories tall, all colonial New Yorkers, rich and poor, black and white, lived in closeproximity to each other. They walked the same broad streets or narrow alleys and oftenslept beneath the same roofs (although the poor – or enslaved – were likely to berelegated to cramped and unheated attics, or dank basements).Lastly, each of my students is tasked with reading one month’s worth of a newspaperprinted in New York City between July 1773 and March 1775. Digital versions of theseand many other Early American newspapers are available online through the UT libraryweb-site. Then as now, newspapers are written for the moment; yesterday’s newspaperis used to wrap the  sh. Everything you read in the paper speaks to immediate concerns.We will never know if the runaway slave advertised for by his master escaped or wascaught and returned for the reward. In the woodcut that accompanies theadvertisement, he is caught in mid-stride, perpetually on the run. My students arenaturally appalled by such notices, but they also are intrigued by the minutiae of adistant time and place whose fervent desires (for wealth, good health, fashionableattire), and fears (illness, debt, death) seem surprisingly familiar.Besides writing papers on their newspaper reading, the students present their  ndings tothe rest of the class. Because each student reports on a different month between July1773 and March 1775, listening to their presentations in chronological orderencapsulates the last stages of the imperial breakdown as it was happening. This senseof the impending crisis ends in April 1775, the  rst meeting of the New York ProvincialCongress, and the start of the “game.”At last, midway through the semester, comes the moment everyone has been waitingfor. From a tri-cornered hat, each student draws the name of his or her character. I leavethe room for  ve minutes and anyone unhappy with their “lot” can try to persuadesomeone to trade with them. I then give every student a sealed envelope containingsecret information about their character which they are not to reveal to anyone andwhich they should use to guide their conduct in the game.Each character belongs to one of four larger groups or in 18th-century language“factions.” Five students are patriots, charged with promoting the revolution anddeclaring independence. Four students are loyalists, tasked with preventing the same.Another four classmates are “moderates,” members of the Provincial Congress whohave yet to decide between the  rst two options. This moderate bloc forms the “swingvote” whose support the patriots will need to win if they are to prevail. The tri-partitedivision of our in-class Congress echoes John Adams’s post-war calculation that at thestart of the revolution Americans were evenly divided between patriots, loyalists, andneutrals.The patriots’ challenge of winning over the moderates is made harder by the last andlargest segment of the class representing the great majority of colonial New York’sinhabitants: those people who were not permitted to vote or sit in the ProvincialCongress. In our class, this group consists of two poor men, two women, two slaves,and a clandestine Catholic. In class, we call the politically disenfranchised the “People-Out-of-Doors” (or PODs). This was a polite 18th-century term for people more oftencalled “the lower sort,” the “mob,” “crowd,” or, in Edmund Burke’s memorable phrase: “theswinish multitude.” In modern political parlance, we might call them “the street.”Pulling Down the Statue of King George III by William Walcutt (Wikimedia Commons)In the early modern era, however, people excluded from the formal political processcould still make their opinions known by means of popular protest. Once each classsession, I ask the back of the classroom where the PODs gather if a mob is forming inthe city’s streets, and if so, who is the crowd’s target and what is their demand? Thoseconfronted by a mob have three choices: capitulate to the mob’s demand,  ee (in whichcase they cannot vote in that game session), or resist. The latter choice could end in tar-and-feathers or even death.Although their power lay in numbers, each of the PODs also has an individual agenda.Slaves want to gain their freedom. One of the women seeks the right to divorce herabsent ne’er-do-well husband. All of the PODs would like political rights, and a chance tovote in the class’s ultimate vote on independence. To this end, they must persuade theCongress to remove the disquali cations, whether of property, gender, or religion thatbarred them from having political rights in the colonial period. Both the patriot andloyalist factions fear the mob’s wrath, but they also see it as a weapon that can be usedto threaten their opponents and whose actions might be swayed by promising tosupport some of the “liberal” reforms.With the possibility of adding members to the Congress (as individual PODs gain thevote), as well as the likelihood of subtracting them (either permanently by death, ortemporarily by  ight), you can see how complicated the political calculus and gamestrategy can become and why the weekly game sessions of the class as well as theweeks between classes were  lled with intense negotiations and intrigue.At the start of each week’s game session students meet brie y with the members oftheir group to plan and plot. Afterwards comes the most formal item on the agenda:speeches. In the course of the game, each student has to write and present two ten-minute-long speeches. Although everyone speaks from the same podium at the front ofthe classroom, members of the Congress are presumed to be speaking before thatassembly, while the PODs pretend to address the tavern-table-democracy at the “BunchO’ Grapes” tavern, located across the street from the statehouse      I am always pleased(and, to be honest, surprised) by the earnestness and skill students display in portrayingtheir characters and presenting their opinions to the rest of the class. Nor does the restof the class sit idle while the speeches were being made. I encourage the audience tointerject freely with cheers, and table-pounding when they approve of what the speakersays or with hisses or cries of “rubbish!” when they disagree with the sentiments beingexpressed.Besides speaking and voting, students’ are also required to submit two anonymous (orpseudonymous) letters to our in-class newspaper. The letters allow for a great deal ofmischief (the Billop-Brasher duel began when the former planted a letter falselyaccusing the latter of beating his wife), but the assignment also re ects a historicalreality, for the print culture of the 18th-century was  lled with pseudonym andimposture. Famous examples in early American history include young BenjaminFranklin’s “Silence Dogood” letters, or the contributions made to the New Yorknewspapers by “Publius,” (a composite of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, andJohn Jay) which urged rati cation of the Constitution and which are now collectivelyknown as the “Federalist Papers.”Students  rst send their letters to me (so I know who wrote what and can assigngrades), and I remove their actual names before publishing the letters in the ournewspaper, “The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury” that I distribute before eachweek’s meeting.(View a full issue of “The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury” below)Our in-class newspaper also provides students with a short reminder of the previousweek’s class and what was scheduled to happen this week. Most importantly, the paperadvances the hands of time. Each weekly session of the game is set three months afterthe previous one from April 1775, until our sixth and  nal session: July 1776. Each issueof the newspaper informs the students what had happened in England and in the othercolonies since the last game turn. These “outside” events, decisions, and declarations,drawn verbatim from the actual historic record, force students to react to the changingpolitical and military situation as events in America and Britain spiral toward revolution.It is this ongoing “course of human events” (to quote from Jefferson’s Declaration ofIndependence) that drives the game. For example, if the main item on the patriots’agenda in the April 1775 session was to get New York to join the economic boycott ofBritain, by the next week’s session (July 1775), the war has begun and the patriots arecharged with answering the call of the Continental Congress to raise troops for GeneralWashington’s new Continental Army. By the winter of 1775, New Yorkers read of theroyal governor of Virginia’s call to arm slaves who agree to  ght for the King against theirpatriot masters. In the spring of 1776, the newspaper includes extracts from ThomasPaine’s “Common Sense,” then hot-off-the-press.My loyalist students  nd the rising revolutionary tide vexing. Often, when they read thelatest issue of the newspaper they learn that their carefully negotiated agreement withthe moderate faction has been undermined not by the radicals in Philadelphia, but by thehard-liners in London, and by a British policy that becomes increasingly militaristic andintransigent as the year wears on.Eventually, the middle ground erodes, and everyone must choose sides. Most of themoderates reluctantly join the patriots. Those PODs who have gained the vote, also tendto lean patriotic, reasoning that their new found liberties depend on the success of theAmerican cause. All my classes thus far have voted to declare independence and jointhe revolution when the push  nally comes in July 1776.But what I  nd fascinating is that no two classes have arrived at that destination by thesame route. John Adams once famously remarked that getting the Congress to declareindependence was like trying to “make thirteen Clocks, Strike precisely alike, at the SameSecond.”  As Adams’s remark suggests, until July 1776, the American Revolutionconsisted of thirteen closely related but distinct crises. Each colony followed its ownpeculiar political path to independence, shaped in part by the colonies’ own particularhistories and circumstances, but also by the choices made by individual actors. No twoof these thirteen revolutions were exactly alike.In trying to make the revolution happen in our class, my patriot students oftenunknowingly follow the actual historical paths that lead one colony or another to join therevolution. For example, when one class voted to print paper money in order to pay forthe troops required by Congress (risking in ation and the wrath of the poor), theyinadvertently adopted the same course their historic predecessors chose in the New19th century 20th Century African American History american history Asia Asia & Middle East book review BrazilBritish Empire China Civil War Cold War Colonialism communism cultural history digital history Early Modern Europe Europe  lm gender history History of Science immigration India Islam Latin America Latin American History Mexico Not Even Past Public History race religion Russia slavery Texas Texas History Texas History Day Transnational Twentieth Century History United States US History USSR Womens History world history World War IIYork Provincial Congress. In another case, the class-appointed commander of NewYork’s Continental Brigade ordered his troops to purge the Congress and declared NewYork to be independent by something like a military coup-d’etat, (which parallels whatactually happened in Pennsylvania).Playing historical characters based on real historical sources immerses my students inideas, events, and drama of the American Revolution. Better than any class I have evertaught, this  format teaches students how history is woven from the interaction betweenstructure and contingency, between the warp of the larger forces of economics, politics,and culture and the weft of immediate consequence of events and of individual choice.In “Debating the Revolution,” my students learn about history by helping to make it.As to what my students feel they get out of the class, perhaps the best way to illustratethis is to let one of them speak for herself. Sara Gordon shared this description of herexperience in the course, written for another purpose, with me:“Every week, I temporarily become Bathsheba Spooner, an impoverished laundress whosupports women’s civil rights and the Patriot cause. As Bathsheba, I yell my opinionsand pleas through the windows of the Colonial Assembly, I argue with my fellow people-out-of-doors regarding what the best course of action for our colony of New York wouldbe, and I march through the streets with the Daughters of Liberty.I am able to become Bathsheba through my History 350R seminar class entitled“Debating the American Revolution.” Though this class began with a . . . study of Britishand early American political theory and a detailed summary of the years leading up tothe American Revolution, it was not long before my professor, Dr. Robert Olwell,assigned us each a character from the colonial time period, and as a class, we beganhistorical role-playing.I must admit, I was at  rst skeptical and hesitant about this aspect of the class. I havesuch a deep interest in the study of the American Revolution that I was inclined to prefera more traditional lecture and discussion based class. This class, however, has mademe incredibly glad and grateful to be a history major. When my peers and I enter theclassroom, we take on our assigned character’s identities. We have set aside time forfaction meetings, for congressional discussion and voting, for court, and even for mobs.Each class period is intense, and we must each be able to truly represent our characterand argue, debate, and vote as if we are he or she.”In “Debating the American Revolution,” history comes alive for my students, and, in theend, that is what I hope to achieve in all of my classes.The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (A full issue of the course newspaper.)More books in the series, Reacting to the Past  Posted May 19, 2014More Features, Monthly FeaturesNOT EVEN PAST is produced by The Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN  We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts And our READERSDONATE  CONTACT  All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise notedSign up to receive the monthly Not Even Past newsletterSUBSCRIBEYour email addressFEATURES BOOKS TEACHING DIGITAL & FILMBLOG IHS & PUBLIC HISTORY TEXAS ABOUT

You Say You Want a Revolution? Reenacting History in the Classroom

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Texas ScholarWorks

Texas ScholarWorks