Table Of ContentAmerica’s Hidden HiTory
a
U
ntold Tales of the First
Pilgrims, Fighting Women,
and Forgotten Founders Who
˜
Shaped a ation
z
Kenneth C. Davis
I
n grateful memory of my father, Richard McShane Davis, for
those childhood camping trips to Lake Champlain, Valley Forge, and
Gettysburg that sparked my abiding passion for history.
Contents
a
Introduction v
I Isabella’s Pigs 1
II Hannah’s Escape 37
III Washington’s Confession 81
IV Warren’s Toga 119
V Arnold’s Boot 161
VI Lafayette’s Sword 203
235
Acknowledgments
237
Notes
247
Bibliography
261
Index
About the Author
Other Books by Kenneth C. Davis
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
a
If you are of a certain age, the name Flip Wilson may mean something
to you. After all, comedian Flip Wilson made history. During the
early 1970s, the late comic became one of the first African American
stars to host a hit television series. With his prime-time variety hour,
Wilson helped put some of the color in color TV. But Flip Wilson
might not be the first name you would expect to find in a book about
America’s beginnings.
Here it is, though, because one of his signature routines was
a sketch in which Wilson, bewigged, bejeweled, and fabulously be-
decked in elaborate drag, played Spain’s Queen Isabella. The queen
is pondering whether to give Columbus what he wants when the Ital-
ian sailor whispers something into the regal ear. Sashaying across the
stage, Wilson’s Isabella exults in a triumphant falsetto, “Chris gonna
find Ray Charles!”
And that, my friends, is what Columbus was really looking for
1492
when he sailed from Spain in .
I relate this story because my historical sensibilities have admittedly
been shaped by bits from Flip Wilson, Laugh-In, Mr. Peabody’s Way-
back Machine, and Mad magazine, alongside such masterly historians
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America’s Hidden HiÇory
as William Manchester, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin,
and Thomas Fleming—and because I have always believed that his-
tory should be much more fun than most Americans believe it is. But
fun doesn’t have to mean frivolous.
Take “Isabella’s Pigs,” the opening chapter of this book. If it were
a movie, Johnny Depp might get the lead. If it were a video game, par-
ents wouldn’t let their kids play. Spotlighting the Spanish conquest of
Florida long before Jamestown and Plymouth were settled, it includes
pirates, shipwrecks, lost treasure, cannibalism, torture, and numerous
massacres, all topped off by feuding monarchs who put the current
crop of royals to shame. And pigs.
It was, after all, the real Isabella who told Columbus to pack some
pigs on his second voyage. Those pigs kept Spain’s conquistadors alive
as they laid waste to the Americas—and the pigs also possibly intro-
duced some of the diseases that wiped out whole native nations. So
Isabella’s pigs may have played a leading role in the accidental discov-
ery and conquest of the Americas and the decimation of millions of
people—certainly one of history’s great unintended consequences.
Another of those world-changing accidents came when a brash, un-
trained young militia officer in colonial America led his men on a mur-
derous raid that set off the first “world war” in history. That ambitious
twentysomething was George Washington, and his first brush with
battle was nearly his last. Young Washington’s deadly miscalculation
not only altered history but also clearly helped forge the man who led
America through the Revolution and became its first president.
It is those unintended consequences, particularly the ones that were
overlooked or sanitized in gilding America’s great national myth—Co-
lumbus as intrepid discoverer, Pilgrims and Indians at a joyous feast,
the Continental Congress as a colonial-era Kiwanis club—that lie at
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vi
Introduction
the heart of this book. The stories that unfold in these six chapters,
which span a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George
1789
Washington’s inauguration in , were selected because each plays a
central part in shaping the nation’s destiny and character and each, in
some way, belies that American myth.
For the most part, these are tales that the textbooks left out. The
picture they present is largely at odds with the safe, sterile version still
provided by schoolbooks, teachers, and Hollywood. Those tidy tab-
leaus are the ones preferred by politicians, preachers, and pundits who
cling to the simple, whitewashed portrait of America’s past. If any of
the harsher realities found their way into our schoolbooks, they were
boiled down to a single bloodless line of text, or worse, to a monoto-
nous list of dates and documents. In these stories, I’ve tried to flesh
out that picture and set the record straight by unearthing some of the
buried pieces of America’s “hidden history.”
Some of these episodes were chosen because they reveal unfamil-
iar details about familiar events, such as the battles of Lexington and
Concord. And some uncover the unknown side of very well-known
people, as in the rise and fall of a young American hero whose ego
and greed wreaked havoc, turning him into America’s greatest villain:
Benedict Arnold. Others were chosen because they include “fulcrum
moments” in which America’s future was tipped in a new direction.
Such a shift came when a British assassination plot aimed at a trio of
Boston’s leading patriots went awry. Had the plan—detailed in “War-
ren’s Toga”—succeeded, the course of the Revolution might have been
completely altered.
These stories also highlight what novelist Graham Greene called
“the human factor.” Textbook writers rarely explore such human moti-
vations as ambition and avarice, loyalty and betrayal, duty and honor,
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America’s Hidden HiÇory
courage and cowardice. They prefer to leave pride and prejudice to the
novelists. But these stories fascinate because they plumb the flesh and
blood behind the marble statues or the faces on our currency. The
three Puritan women depicted in “Hannah’s Escape” never made it
onto any of our money. But the courage and resilience they displayed
speaks loudly of a harsh colonial environment far removed from the
traditional Thanksgiving Day idyll.
Most importantly, all of these stories continue to reverberate in our
world. And that is the real point of telling them—and of teaching his-
tory—in the first place. We have been conditioned, by television and
now the Internet, to look at history in short bursts. These disjointed
bits and pieces rarely seem to have much connection to the present. But
of course they do; as Shakespeare put it, “The past is prologue.”
The great conflict engulfing the Western world and elements of
Islam is the most immediate and pressing example of history’s long,
slow ripples. It returns us to Isabella’s triumphant “Chris gonna find
1492
Ray Charles.” To most Americans, means only one thing: “Co-
lumbus sailed the ocean blue.” But that is only one part of the story of
that year. A dynamic, extraordinary woman in a man’s world, Queen
1492
Isabella also set in motion two other events in that remain ful-
crum moments for our times: the forced conversion or exile of Spain’s
Jews and the culmination of la reconquista—the Reconquest—in which
Spanish armies defeated the last remnant of the Moors, the North
African Muslims who had invaded and then occupied the Iberian pen-
insula for centuries.
So why does that matter? The bombers who struck Madrid’s com-
11 2004
muter railroads with murderous force on March , , saw their
1492
attack as long-deferred vengeance for . Their hope for an Islamic
Reconquest of Spain was not some radical religious fantasy but has a
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Description:Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don't Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis's dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths
