I previously reviewed the book “A Renegade History of the United States,” by Thaddeus Russell, who teaches history and American studies at Occidental College. It gives an alternative, sometimes politically-incorrect, view of our history.

He starts with colonial, pre-Revolution America. My image of early America revolves around the aristocrats with their fancy clothes, high morals, and impeccable manners. But Russell focuses on the far more numerous lower classes, which included hordes of immigrants fresh off ships from Europe, forced to do whatever they could to survive in the New World.

It was a free-wheeling place, with few rules, very much an early version of the Wild West. In those days, the mid-1700s, Pennsylvania was the West. Colonial America had laws, but not many. Likewise with morals. It’s not the early America we were taught.

According to Russell:

• 40% of pregnancies in the late 18th century New England were premarital.
• Alcohol flowed in abundance, among both men and women.
• Far more women chose not to marry than at any other time in our history.
• Men and women often married, and divorced, without anything “legal” from the government.
• Among the lower classes, people of all ethnicities–including blacks and whites–mixed socially and sexually. Taverns, like brothels, were not segregated, but had all kinds of people drinking, dancing, and sleeping together.
• One-third of the adult female population was not only unmarried, but living with nonrelatives.
• In early America, urban women worked in every imaginable profession. Russell says historians estimate that up to half of all shops in early American cities were owned by women (true of 40% of the taverns in Boston during the 1760s). Many such taverns doubled as brothels.

Russell points out that the upper classes barred their “respectable” women from frequenting taverns. But in those days, most women were from the lower classes, and didn’t concern themselves with being respectable.

If American society was ever characterized as “free,” this was it—a time with few rules, moral or otherwise. There was very little government to interfere in anyone’s life.

And then came the Revolution, the war for Freedom.

After the Revolution, the upper classes began passing laws to regulate, if not reform, the immorality they so despised in the lower classes. They didn’t like all the drinking. They didn’t approve of women working—it wasn’t their place. They felt uncomfortable with blacks and whites mixing it up. And they especially didn’t like illicit sex. And so, they began legislating their morality.

The first target was illicit sex. Arrests for prostitution increased dramatically. Prostitutes or simply promiscuous women were confined in asylums until they were deemed “respectable.” Anti-vice organization targeted gambling houses, brothels, dance halls, and lower-class taverns.

In some places, women who bore children out of wedlock were forced to turn them over to the state, which officially labeled them as “illegitimate.” Welfare for unmarried mothers was discontinued, replaced by asylums for illegitimate children.

New medical literature described certain types of sexual activity, even among spouses, as deviant. Women were told they were inherently non-sexual. It became unseemly for women to run businesses and work in a “man’s” job.

Divorce became more difficult, no longer a matter between spouses. Now the government began regulating divorce. An abused wife seeking divorce had to show how attentive, obedient, and sexually faithful she had been while being victimized. A husband was deemed okay, as long as he provided economic support.

People were arrested for interracial sex, which had flourished before the Revolution, according to Russell. Brothel owners were charged with race-mixing. Post-Revolution America became more racially intolerant (England, of course, banned slavery long before we did).

Most of the Founding Fathers felt we should restrict voting and public office to landowners.

The new country became a place of regulated morality, rife with laws. As compared to the free-wheeling, almost-anything-goes life under the British.

In the process, the Founding Fathers, these firebrands for liberty and the pursuit of happiness, actually inflicted less freedom on Americans. Which is, of course, very ironic. Fight a war for freedom, and then become less free.

We like to romanticize the American past. Thaddeus Russell, in his book “A Renegade History of the United States,” (2010) does somewhat the opposite. He shows how our cherished, traditional views of American history may not tell the whole story. This is not a partisan book; there is no political agenda or even any political point of view. He’s just a historian who says, “It didn’t necessarily happen like you were taught.”

I love this kind of stuff. At the same time, I don’t swallow everything Russell writes as the Gospel truth; it’s dangerous, and simple-minded, to believe a writer just because you are predisposed toward their views. But, like a good historian, he documents what he writes. Most of it rings true.

His continuing thesis is that much of what made American great is attributed to the dregs of society—the underclass, the scorned, immigrants, minorities, criminals. The renegades. He brings these people to light in fascinating ways. This contrasts with the traditional narrative that America’s greatness is the fruit of brave and righteous people who fought for freedom and justice. Yes, there were plenty of those people. But he shows how America excels at assimilating renegades, and how they’ve made real contributions to Who We Are.

For instance, Russell contends that prostitutes did as much as anyone to advance women’s rights, and were among the wealthiest—and most liberated–women of the American West. He shows how mobsters advanced gay rights (most early gay bars were backed by the mob). He deals at length with some of the immigrant classes and how they were initially scorned—the Irish, Jews, Italians, and others. He delineates the contributions and culture of rednecks and hippies. He has chapters like this:

• “How Gangsters made America a Better Place.”
• “How Juvenile Delinquents Won the Cold War.”
• “Whores and the Origins of Women’s Liberation.”

The most interest chapter, to me, was the first: “Drunkards, Laggards, Prostitutes, Pirates, and Other Heroes of the American Revolution.” He portrays a Colonial America far different from the genteel, astutely-dressed, well-mannered society we typically envision. Our image relates only to the upper classes, who may have held power, but they were the minority. A whole different kind of society existed for the lower classes, including the thousands and thousands of people pouring off the boats from Europe, trying to make their way in the New World. They were a rowdy, immoral bunch, doing whatever they could to survive in a land without rules.

The most controversial part of the book comes next—chapters about slavery. He paints a very politically incorrect picture, yet one which I’m sure bears much truth. It rings true to me, and fits with other things I’ve read. While he emphasizes that slavery was a horrible thing which needed to end, he portrays the daily plight of slaves as not quite as bad as we usually think.

There were parts of this book I loved, and parts I found not so interesting. But overall, it’s a book I highly recommend if you are intellectually curious enough to let your presuppositions be challenged.