Chapter 15 - Revolutionary Lives

Summary

In the years and decades following the end of the Revolutionary War, dozens of ordinary Americans engaged in different ways the burgeoning genre of memoir writing. In fragments and half-told stories, as well as whole-of-life biographies, ordinary colonists offered a rich and inclusive history of the era. In their varied forms and diverse styles, they were among the earliest group of Americans to try and explain themselves, and often emphasized themes of betrayal, deprivation, divisions, violence, disease, and chaos. In doing so, these writers undermined or complicated more well-known narratives about the Revolutionary era that dominated the mainstream print culture and subsequent histories of the Revolution. In that respect, those who wrote about their Revolutionary era experiences were also engaging in a Revolutionary act. Collectively and over many decades, memoir writers drew on and enriched a new medium of storytelling that ultimately reveals a more complicated founding story of a nation.