Table Of ContentAmerica's Revolutionary Heritage
Alllerica's
Revolutionary
Heritage
MARXIST ESSAYS
GEORGE NOVACK
Editor
Pathfinder
New York London Montreal Sydney
Copyright© 1971, 1972, 1975, 1976 Pathfinder Press
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-87348-465-7 paper; ISBN 0-87348-464-9 cloth
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-12292
Manufactured in the United States of America
First edition, 1976
Third printing, 1993
Cover design by Eric Simpson. The cover illustration is a detail of the
fresco "Revolutionary Prelude," from the Portrait of America series by
Diego Rivera. Depicted in the front is the Boston Massacre of 1770,
with Crispus Attucks at center being shot by British troops. At the
upper left is a scene from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, with patriot
forces dumping a shipment of British tea into Boston Harbor.
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Contents
Introduction 9
THE NATIVE AMERICANS
The Conquest of the Indians 23
George Novack
The Destruction of Indian Democracy 38
George Novack
The Struggle for the Land 45
George Novack
THE FIRST AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Was the Revolution Necessary? 59
George Novack
Organizers of the Revolution 75
George Novack
Tom Paine-Revolutionist 92
Jean Y. Tussey
Mercy Otis Warren-Mother of the American Revolution 104
Dianne Feeley
Class Forces in the American Revolution 115
Harry Frankel
How the Constitution Was Written 127
Harry Frankel
THE SLAV OCRACY
Slavery in Colonial America 137
George Novack
The Struggle for National Supremacy 149
George Novack
The Jackson Period 158
Harry Frankel
Three Conceptions of J acksonianism 170
Harry Frankel
The Rise and Fall of the Cotton Kingdom 181
George Novack
Homage to John Brown 221
George Novack
Martin R. Delany-Pioneer Black Nationalist 231
Derrick Morrison
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The Civil War-Its Place in History 249
George Novack
The Emancipation Proclamation 262
George Novack
Two Lessons of Reconstruction 275
George Novack
THE TRIUMPH OF THE MONOPOLISTS
Historians and the Belated Rise of American Imperialism 287
George Novack
Big Business and the Two-Party System 308
George Novack
The Spanish-American War 325
John G. Wright
A Forgotten Fighter Against the Plutocracy 334
George Novack
The Rise and Fall of Progressivism 349
George Novack
THE FIRST WA VE OF FEMINISM
The Suffrage Movement, 1848-1920 361
Debby Woodroofe
How Women Won the Vote 391
Stephanie Coontz
Index 401
George Novack
George Novack (1905-1992) joined the communist movement in the
United States in 1933, and remained a member and leader of the
Socialist Workers Party until his death.
As national secretary of the American Committee for the Defense of
Leon Trotsky, Novack helped organize the 1937 International Com
mission of Inquiry that investigated the charges fabricated by Stalin's
Moscow trials. In the 1940s Novack was national secretary of the Civil
Rights Defense Committee, which gathered support for leaders of the
SWP and of the Midwest Teamsters' strikes and organizing drive who
were framed up and jailed under the witch-hunting Smith Act. He
played a prominent role in numerous other civil liberties and civil
rights battles over subsequent decades, including the landmark law
suit against FBI spying and disruption won by the Socialist Workers
Party in 1986. He was also active in defense of the Cuban revolution
and against the war in Vietnam.
His works include: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism; Geno
cide against the Indians; The Origins of Materialism; Existentialism
versus Marxism; Empiricism and Its Evolution; How Can the Jews
Survive? A Socialist A>iswer to Zionism; The Marxist Theory of Alien
ation; Democracy and Revolution; Understanding History; Humanism
and Socialism; The Revolutionary Potential of the Working Class;
Pragmatism versus Marxism; America's Revolutionary Heritage; and
Polemics in Marxist Philosophy.
Introduction
Two hundred years ago the American colonists waged a War of
Independence against British tyranny and economic domina
tion-the first victorious national liberation struggle of modern
times. Today, when many Americans are reexamining our
revolutionary heritage, the publication of this new edition is
especially timely and appropriate.
The essays on various aspects of American history collected in
this volume appeared over a span of forty years in the
International Socialist Review and its predecessors, The New
International and Fourth International.* They were prompted by
special occasions or written in response to particular problems.
Yet all have been motivated by a comprehensive conception of
the rise of American civilization that differs in essentials from
the views taught in the schools and universities and accepted as
gospel by most scholars and students.
Is There a Pattern in American History?
The most popular nineteenth-century historians of the United
States, such as George Bancroft and John Fiske, had no doubts
about the significance of our history. They were convinced, along
with most of their contemporaries, that the ascendancy of the
Yankee republic exhibited, above all, the triumph of the spirit of
liberty and the institutions of democracy peculiar to the Anglo-
* With the exception of "The Rise and Fall of the Cotton Kingdom,"
originally written in 1939, which appeared in 1968 in Studies in Afro
American History, published by the National Education Department of
the Socialist Workers Party.
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