Radicalism Is Rad

Radicalism is Rad
A wise person once said that 90% of doing good history was to ask the right questions and the other 10% percent was serendipity. The questions asked are almost always shaped by the tide of times, so if those are both correct, it’s easy to say that everything we do and how we influence our generation influences how questions are asked and how the history of a generation is written. The Common people just go about their lives shaping history, whether they know it or not. The common people have the power. The aforementioned wise person was Alfred F. Youngand he was influenced by the 50’s, the 60’s, and the 70’s, three unique times full of all sorts of turmoil and people coming together for a cause, making history, and shaping the questions of the future. The one “common” person Young decided to research was anything but common. George Robert Twelve Hewes Altered History, whether he knew it or not. He showed a group of kids that the way we learn is based mostly on what gets remembered and how it gets remembered. George Robert Twelve Hewes had a bad memory. Young probably hated him for it, too, but it was a love/hate relationship. Most of Young’s sources were Hewes’ memoirs written in the 1830’s and every Historian hates a memoir. Since he certainly couldn’t interview Hewes as he was long dead, Young had his job cut out for him. Poor Young must have been kicking himself.
In his Introduction, Young poses the question, “How does an ordinary person win a place in History?” and tells about some of the people that pulled the strings of the American Revolution behind the scenes. People like Ebenezer McIntosh didn’t have such recognizable roles in history because posterity shoves people aside. Professional energy and financial support are put into publishing the founding father’s papers but almost no one pays attention to the little people. They left out all of the radicalism—the Urban “mobs”, agrarian rebellions, slave resistance, and the awakenings of...