Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth

by Holger Hoock

As they engaged global terrorism, Americans appeared to be clinging to a romanticized image of their original war—at least if the continued success of founders’ biographies, and campaign narratives privileging Patriot perspectives, are anything to go by. But, as I have suggested in this book, we should be mindful of the messy and intrinsically violent nature of America’s Revolution and first civil war. The violent story of the nation’s not-so-immaculate conception reads as a cautionary tale for the American empire, with its persistent impulse to intervene in other countries’ revolutions and civil conflicts, and its quest for nation building in little-understood regions. Seeing the contradictions of America’s founding more clearly, and being alert to the complexities and potential pitfalls of pursuing moral objectives by violent means, advises an approach to global leadership less missionary and aggressive, more restrained, finely calibrated, and generously spirited.35 At a moment when Americans are beginning to face many painful truths about their society perhaps more directly than they have for some time, they might be ready to reappraise their nation’s beginnings, too. If Americans let go of their last great romance with war, the whitewashing and strategic forgetting of Revolutionary-era violence may yield to a candid reckoning and honest remembering—one that allows both for proud, grateful celebration and for frank reflection on the ambiguities and the contradictory leg...