Jonathan Mirsky
CREATION MYTH
The Fourth of July and the Founding of America
By Peter de Bolla (Profile Books 195pp £15.99)

Millions of Americans insist that the earth was created on a particular day thousands of years ago, that evolution is rubbish, and that the Bible is the literal truth. But even haters of Darwin, who may include President Bush, would be surprised by the central contentions in The Fourth of July and the Founding of America. I was brought up in America, and every week in school, with my right hand over my heart, I pledged allegiance to the flag. Of course I sniggered at the 'Guidelines for Displaying the Flag', which stipulate that the flag must never touch anything beneath it, and that worn or soiled flags must be 'destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning'. But like the Darwin-bashers I assumed that the first American flag had been designed and stitched in 1777 by a simple American woman, Betsy Ross, acting on the secret instructions of three men, one of whom was George Washington.

I also believed that the huge painting hanging in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC really depicts the signers, on 4 July 1776, of the Declaration of Independence. And I believed that the original Liberty Bell that hangs in Philadelphia, with its celebrated crack, was rung on 4 July 1776 to 'proclaim liberty throughout the land'.

Well, maybe Yes to Betsy Ross, but absolutely No to the painting and the Bell. I dare even the creationists to challenge what Peter de Bolla has laid out here, as part of a series from Profile Books that includes Et Tu Brute and Why Alfred Burned the Cakes. But while I bet few have ever imagined that Caesar actually said 'Et tu, Brute', the Fourth of July debunking must undermine the convictions of many otherwise sceptical people - like me.

According to De Bolla, who generously shows in his notes that his main conclusions have long been known to American historians, 'The story of the Fourth of July presents a supreme fiction. That the nation came into being on a particular day in 1776.' He makes this point often, sometimes in that coded language so dear to some scholars. For instance: the belief that attracts so many Americans, for whom their independence is sacred, he describes as 'not a metaphysics but what might be called an apodictic declaratory act'. Apodictic, I find, just means 'clearly explained'.

Never mind: here are De Bolla's big points. The artist John Trumbull began his studies for the great painting of 'the signers' in Paris in 1785, and finished it in 1818. Thomas Jefferson, who advised Trumbull and was, of course, a key figure in the painting, 'misremembered many of the details'. No one signed on the 4th. When they did sign, days later, they never came together to do it. The agreement to publicise the Declaration was made on 2 July, the day a local printer was instructed to print the text. And, De Bolla claims, the decisions to call for independence probably began in June. Jefferson seems to have been the man who, in 1819, alleged the signing had occurred on the 4th. De Bolla calls this, somewhat awkwardly, the 'punctual moment that never was'. For years, he writes, fervent Republicans who adored the French Revolution and Federalists who abhorred it quarrelled over the meaning of 4 July, and it was only in 1870 that federal legislation decreed that 4 July should be a national holiday.

Betsy Ross's role in creating a national flag was alleged in 1870 in a speech by her grandson, William Canby. There is 'no evidence' for this, says De Bolla. 'It is a myth.' Nor is there evidence, he adds, that Washington was a member of a committee that secretly arranged for Betsy Ross to create a national flag. Why do Americans love this story? Because Betsy Ross, an ordinary woman, 'is testament to the fact that each citizen has equal opportunity, equal rights, equal potential to become a significant player in the history of the nation'. This explains why the flag is treated with such bizarre veneration in the United States, and why on several occasions the Supreme Court has had to strike down attempts to make damaging the flag a criminal offence. Nonetheless, on a single day after 9/11, De Bolla says, Wal-Mart sold 118,000 flags. One of the leading flag manufacturers spoke of panicky people who 'didn't just want to buy flags, they needed flags'.

As for the Liberty Bell, the myth is simple: in 1750 three superintendents of the Philadelphia State House commissioned a bell from the foundry in London which had cast Big Ben. When it arrived in Philadelphia and was struck, it cracked. The bell was smashed, melted down, and recast - twice. This third bell also cracked. The myth holds that it was rung on 4 July 1776. It wasn't. And it was not called the Liberty Bell until 1839. The sound of the bell, on the rare occasions it was struck, was 'tinny and unimpressive'. It has not been struck since 1846. One and a half million people visit it every year. As De Bolla says of such American stories, 'the foundations ... lie in the playful enjoyment of fabulation'. Fabulation? Come come. Until I read this book I thought the stories not only made sense but were true. I'm glad to know the facts, but I have to say that Peter de Bolla could have said all this in about twenty pages.