Did the Bostonians Really Provoke the Boston Massacre?

By editor, 9 April, 2012, No Comment

Question: Were the Bostonians in the 1760s and 1770s a petulant, childlike bunch who provoked British soldiers into firing upon them–only to shamelessly use the “Boston Massacre” incident as propaganda?

What do the textbooks say? The textbooks, whether intentionally or not, certainly do communicate this negative image of these New Englanders. The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed.) specifically highlights two causes of Bostonian ire: (1) Protestant bigotry towards Irish Catholics, as many of the British soldiers were of the latter persuasion, and (2) frustration that many of the soldiers, free to seek employment while off-duty, competed with them for work. The book does mention the death of “an eleven-year-old boy” at the hands of a customs informer on 22 February, 1770. The Boston Massacre, the textbook declares, occurred when “an officer tried to disperse the civilians [but] his men endured a steady barrage of flying objects and dares to shoot. A private finally did fire, after having been knocked down by a block of ice, and then shouted, ‘Fire! Fire!’ to his fellow soldiers” (p. 148). The scene is thus painted as entirely provoked by the rabid crowd. Or observe the tone of the following, from Nation of Nations (McGraw-Hill, 3rd ed.), p. 135:

British troops found themselves regularly cursed by citizens and occasionally pelted with stones, dirt, and human excrement. The British regulars were particularly unpopular among Boston’s laboring classes because they competed with them for jobs…

With some 4000 redcoats enduring daily contact with some 15,000 Bostonians under the sway of Samuel Adams, what happened on the night of March 5, 1770, was nearly inevitable. A crowd gathered around the customhouse for the sport of heckling its guard of 10 soldiers. The redcoats panicked and fended off insults and snowballs with live fire, hitting 11 rioters and killing 5. Labeling the bloodshed “the Boston Massacre,” Adams and other propagandists publicized that “atrocity” throughout the colonies.

According to this narrative, then, the Bostonians were an easily swayed homogenous mass prone to flinging feces, and they were gathered on the night of March 5th for no other purpose than to “heckle” the British soldiers. The deaths that followed, the narrative continues, were inaccurately labeled a “massacre” and used, somewhat shamelessly, by Samuel Adams and others–all “propagandists,” after all.

Created Equal (Prentice Hall, Brief 3rd ed.), while commendably underscoring Real Whig beliefs that “any appearance by a standing army in peacetime constituted danger,” mostly highlights the rage of the Bostonian unemployed laborer whose jobs were being taken by off-duty, moonlighting soldiers. The textbook blames the Massacre on an earlier “run-in” the same day between “local workers and job-seeking soldiers,” a confrontation that was subsequently taken to the customs house, where a crowd gathered. “When a harassed sentry struck a boy with his rifle butt, angry witnesses pelted the guard with snowballs.” The British soldiers pressed against the crowed, fixing their bayonets, as Boston’s firebells “summoned more townspeople to the scene.” Then appeared a mob of angry sailors, led by Crispus Attucks, brandishing sticks and pushing their way to the front of the crowd. “In the mayhem, a British gun went off, prompting a volley of fire from the other soldiers.” Paul Revere’s subsequent engraving the of the event was “inflammatory.”

Answer: As can be clearly observed from the accounts presented above, the order of events, the events themselves, and the details surrounding them differ widely from textbook to textbook. What is consistent, however, is the conveyance of a certain petulance on the part of the Bostonians, as well as a child-like resentment that easily boils over into brazen hostility. The British troops that fired into the crowd are depicted as innocent victims of the clamoring multitudes. What the textbooks leave out is most of what led up to the Massacre, its real purpose, and perhaps its real perpetrators.

In the eyes of many a Bostonian, the situation in their city from 1768 amounted to nothing less than a foreign occupation. As they saw it, they were thus justified–even bound by duty and honor–in struggling and otherwise agitating for the troops’ removal. Each week, the Boston Gazette published an account of the troops’ alleged brutalities and atrocities, adding to that resentment. Of course, while the textbooks are happy to include details of Bostonian excrement-tossing, absent are accounts of any wrongdoing on the part of the soldiers, many of which, one dares say, far surpassed the flinging of poo on the scales of injustice.

Considering the importance of the Boston Massacre in American history (John Adams: “On that night the foundation of American independence was laid”), the varieties of its telling (and their contradictions with one another) are curious. And since most textbooks leave out several important details concerning the event’s lead-up, crucial context is typically missing in the incident’s attempted retelling. Most of the following details tend not to make it into the textbooks:

It must be remembered that the Bostonians had suffered through a year-and-a-half of military occupation, with roughly one British soldier in their midst for every four city locals. Where are the charges leveled against the soldiers by the citizenry of Boston? These were thoroughly documented by the Sons of Liberty, and while there are surely exaggerations, certainly not every account of British atrocity is worthy of omission…
Bostonian merchants had been engaged in a non-importation movement (one that hurt many of them financially) against British goods for quite some time. There were a handful of holdouts, and these were very unpopular. Perhaps the only ones hated more than the British soldiers occupying their city were these “traitorous” holdouts, the customs officials, and their informers.
Less than two weeks before the Boston Massacre, two eleven-year-old boys were shot by just such a customs informer. A crowd, led by some schoolboys, had gathered outside the house of one of the last individuals refusing to take part in the non-importation movement (Theophilus Lillie), in order to to protest his decision. The customs informer, named Ebenezer Richardson, fired repeatedly into the crowd. One of the two boys he shot, young Christopher Snider, died. Richardson was subsequently tried and found guilty of murder–only to be pardoned by the Crown and allowed to escape from the country by the authorities.
Perhaps the grief and the rage of Boston was best expressed in the funeral procession of Christopher Snider: it stretched two miles long (Rothbard speculates that it may have been the longest in American history). The American Revolution had its first martyr.
All of this (the murder of Snider and the Bostonian desperation for justice) was why soldiers were to be found, on the night of 5 March, guarding the customhouse (and the commissioners inside) on King Street. It was the commissioners, after all, who had brought the troops to Boston in the first place.
Several events that same day increased the already tense atmosphere pervading the city: an insulting handbill printed by the British troops that morning, a fist fight between rope workers and soldiers that culminated in a minor riot, and the assault by a British soldier on a boy who had been taunting the troops (the soldier struck the boy with the butt of his musket).
When the crowd gathered at King Street, several in the crowd recognized the soldier who had struck the boy earlier; he was one of the sentries. Immediately snowballs, sticks, and broken ice began to fly in his direction. It was at this juncture that the customs officials within the customhouse called for Captain Preston and his troops.
As Captain Preston and his soldiers pushed through the crowd in answer to the commissioners’ summons, they pricked the Bostonians with their fixed bayonets; reacting, the crowd pressed in on them all the more. One of the soldiers dropped his gun, and the others fired into the crowd.
Critically, the customs officials, firing from “the privileged sanctuary of the upper floor of the customhouse,” in the words of Rothbard, joined in the killing.
The next day the Bostonians, instead of falling on the troops, embarking on a killing spree, or rioting…called a town meeting. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were selected to bring the demands of the people to the governor. This they did, and in the end the troops were removed, satisfying the meeting’s first demand. But the second–for justice to be meted out on the Massacre’s perpetrators–was not.
First, the trial of Preston and his troops was delayed for seven months. Then an entire jury was assembled, completely made up of non-Bostonians. Preston and most of the soldiers were acquitted, and the two that weren’t (convicted of manslaughter) were merely branded on the hand. Perhaps this is because the angle of some of the bullets that killed their targets were shown to have come from above–from the upper story of the customhouse, in fact, where the customs officials had joined in the shootings. (For this last, see the work of Oliver Dickerson). Of course, these officials, who may have been responsible for the bulk of the killing, were never brought to justice. And what of the judges that weighed five deaths by shooting to be equal to two hand brandings? They left Boston–and were paid, writes Rothbard, “a handsome reward by the Crown for their patriotic work.”

Surely these critical details paint the Boston Massacre in a different light than the one employed currently in the average textbook.

References:

1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000).

William Tecumseh Sherman a “Psychopathic Killer”

By editor, 12 September, 2011, No Comment

Question: Was William Tecumseh Sherman a “tough Ohio soldier” who did what was necessary to end the war–accomplishing this goal without targeting innocent civilians?

What do the textbooks say? Nation of Nations (McGraw Hill, 3rd ed.) describes Sherman as Grant’s “gaunt and grizzled” subordinate upon whose army all depended, and who heroically captured Atlanta. His army cut “a path of destruction,” but the only destruction indicated in the book targeted property, not the lives of civilians. Created Equal (Prentice Hall, 3rd ed.) is careful to explain that “Sherman never systematically attacked civilians, a characteristic of the Union’s [later] ‘total war’ against Native American peoples in the West.” All descriptions of the havoc wreaked by Sherman’s army involves property destruction, not the taking of innocent life. America: Pathways to the Present (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007) admits that “a number of Union commanders considered Sherman mentally unstable,” but adds that “Grant stood by” the “tough Ohio soldier.” Again, the destruction of property is described–but never the murder of civilians.

Answer: Dr. Thomas J. DiLorenzo had the following to say recently in a post at LewRockwell.com:

William Tecumseh Sherman was indeed the founding father of terrorism perpetrated by the U.S. government and disguised by the language of “collective security.” Sherman biographer William Fellman (author of Citizen Sherman) quotes Sherman as saying this about his fellow American citizens from the Southern states: “To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources” (emphasis added). Sherman was referring here to his plans for the civilian population of Georgia after the Confederate Army had left the state.

Referring to his plans for the civilian population of Northern Alabama, Fellman quotes Sherman as saying that the “Government of the United States” had the “right” to “take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . . We will take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property . . . ” And he was not referring to slaves when he used the word “property.”

In a July 31, 1862 letter to his wife Sherman wrote that “the war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people… There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed . . .”(emphasis added).

After describing the utter destruction of several towns and cities by Sherman’s soldiers, Dilorenzo continues:

When Sherman’s chief military engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, advised that the bombing of Atlanta after the Confederates had fled was of no military significance, Sherman ignored him and declared that the corpses of women and children in the streets was “a beautiful sight,” as Fellman writes in Citizen Sherman.

In October of 1864 Sherman ordered the murder of randomly-chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks on his army. He wrote to General Louis Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses . . . , kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a [military] train is fired upon . . . ” (See John B. Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137).

After the war against the South, Sherman would demonstrate a similar mentality fighting the Plains Indians. DiLorenzo writes:

Fellman quotes Sherman’s marching orders as the following (p. 26): “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to the extermination, men, women and children” (emphasis added). Fellman writes that Sherman “had given [General] Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary.” “The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year,” Sherman wrote to Sheridan. By 1890 the U.S. Army murdered as many as 60,000 Indians, placing the survivors in concentration camps known as “reservations.”

According to DiLorenzo, the war against the Plains Indians was motivated in large part by railroad interests.

Thus the Civil War, particularly in the form of Sherman, gave birth to the total state and total war. For further reading on this aspect of the conflict, see On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), by Jorg Nagler and Stig Forster.

“All Men are Created Equal” a Mandate for Government?

By editor, 18 August, 2011, No Comment

Question: Was the Declaration of Independence a mandate for an American government to impose “equality” on people?

What do the textbooks say? In reference to the Declaration, The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed.) explains that, “for better or worse, the struggle for national independence had hastened, and become intertwined with, a quest for equality and personal independence that, for many Americans, transcended boundaries of class, race, or gender. In their reading, the Declaration never claimed that perfect justice and equal opportunity existed in the United States; rather, it challenged the Revolutionary generation and all who later inherited the nation to bring this ideal closer to reality” (p.159).

Answer: According to lawyer and historian Kevin Gutzman (in a 4 July, 2011 interview with Kurt Wallace):

The main thing the Declaration of Independence asserts is that “all men are created equal.” This, of course, does not mean that we are all equally intelligent, or equally attractive, that we have the same scent or the same height or any other kind of equality than moral equality that comes with humanity. And what that meant for Jefferson and other people involved in this was that everybody was equally entitled to self-government. So if, for example, the king of England was not performing the duties of his office to defend the rights that the people had retained in creating the monarchy, then the people were entitled to say, “We’re going to have some new form of government.”

Dr. Gutzman explained that the most important part of the Declaration was the long list of grievances (which, in some books, is indicated by nothing but “an ellipse”) against King George III–the justifications for “showing him the door” and “replacing his government with another one.”

Later in the interview, Gutzman continues:

The Declaration of Independence was just a justification for secession from the British Empire, and it was based on the idea that the king had failed to live up to his duties. So notice this is inconsistent with today’s common idea that, number one, the Declaration of Independence was supposed to set out some idea of equality that government can constantly be striving to impose on us by finding new areas of life that it wants to mandate we behave in certain ways. It’s also not a theory of government consistent with the current idea that America has a mission that will ultimately only be accomplished when we establish schools for girls in Afghanistan and remove the Gaddafi family from the government of Libya and decide which Korean will govern South Korea, and so on; this is entirely contrary to an understanding of the Declaration of Independence. Really the Declaration was about what liberals of the 1930s and since have been pleased to call “negative liberty,” what people used to call “freedom”: in other words, government leaving us alone. And since George and his Parliament refused to do that, the colonists were saying, “Well, I think we can do it better our own way.”

The main idea inherent within the Declaration, then, is that “if we think that our current government is inconsistent with our desires, that it doesn’t protect our basic freedoms in a way that we find acceptable, we can replace it with something else.”

Textbooks Mute on Draft Law Cases of 1918

By editor, 3 June, 2011, No Comment

Anti-conscription badge from Australia, World War I. Ironically, a much more American sentiment than U.S. President Wilson's...

Question: Are the Draft Law Cases of 1918 significant (and is conscription constitutional)?

What do the textbooks say? American Stories (Pearson/Longman, 2009) explains that though “some in Congress preferred a voluntary army…Wilson turned to conscription” because he considered it “both efficient and democratic”; the Selective Service Act was thus signed into law in May of 1917 (p. 662). No mention is made of the Draft Law Cases, nor the constitutional case against conscription. A History of the American People (HBJ, 1984) devotes less than a paragraph to the draft issue of 1918, declaring that it “worked more smoothly and met with less resistance than conscription under Lincoln because it was fairer” (p. 548), with no mention of its more-than-dubious constitutionality. America: Pathways to the Present (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007) informs the reader that there was “wide acceptance of the draft” because there existed a “general feeling that this was the ‘war to end all wars’…” (p. 425), with no discussion about either the Draft Law Cases or the constitionality of the Selective Service Act. American Anthem (Holt, 2007) states that after the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1917, “most young men willingly participated in the draft,” though “a small number of men asked to be classified as conscientious objectors–members of certain religious groups, such as the Quakers, whose moral or religious beliefs prevented them from fighting in a war.” Such objectors “had to take combat positions or face prison” if drafted. But there is no word on the Draft Law Cases or the question of the draft’s constitutionality.

Answer: Few things could be more significant than the transferring to government the power to force a person into war. After all, who owns a person’s body? This question lies at the heart of any discussion of private property and/or liberty; it is, after all, the idea that no one can force another into “involuntary servitude” that makes slavery reprehensible.

Despite such seemingly self-evident truths, textbooks communicate overwhelmingly that, in the run-up to direct U.S. military involvement in WWI, the excitement for war was great–so the draft was initiated to raise an army. (This begs the question: if such a pro-war feeling had existed, why would a draft have even been necessary? Such pesky interrogatives are never asked, of course, the only hint to an answer being that Wilson thought a draft more “democratic”).

But opposition to conscription led to the Selective Draft Law Cases (1918), which in turn produced a highly significant pro-conscription judicial ruling. The defendants argued that the draft was unconstitutional on several grounds. First, neither the Continental nor Confederation Congresses had ever conscripted soldiers; this made it clear that when the Constitution says the federal government can “raise” armies, it isn’t referring to conscription (and the idea was rejected by Congress anyway during the War of 1812). Second, the 13th Amendment said that only convicts could be subject to involuntary servitude; but conscription not only threw numberless individuals (and non-convicts at that) into a state of “involuntary servitude,” it placed them in a situation in which death by violence was a very real possibility (and a fate that well over 100,000 Americans met during the war).

But the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Edward D. White, disagreed. This was, after all, an era in which politicians, lawyers, journalists, and other intellectuals had come to regard the Constitution as an antiquated document meant for a bygone age (and when sociological arguments for or against legislation were becoming the norm, rather than constitutional [read: legal] ones). No, White argued that because foreign governments conscripted soldiers, this power obviously must be considered one of the attributes of a national government!

(In doing so, he ruled against memoranda written during the Civil War by erstwhile Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who argued that Lincoln’s conscription policy was unconstitutional).

The Selective Services Act is still in effect today; all men between the ages of 18 and 25 must register to be selected randomly for military service–or face imprisonment and/or other coercive measures. There is little doubt that the Constitution’s framers and ratifiers would never have supported such an erroneous interpretation of the document they drafted and voted for.

Oppressive Theocracy (and Witch Trials) Not New England’s Great Legacy

By editor, 26 April, 2011, No Comment

Question: Was severe, narrow-minded rule via a religious oligarchy (the mixing of church and state), especially evident during the Salem witch trials, the principal legacy of the original New England colonies?

What do the textbooks say? The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed.) offers little reference to, let alone emphasis on, the New England practice of forming voluntary associations (nor its legacy); instead, the book devotes almost four pages (with illustrations) to “Salem Witchcraft” (pp. 72-75). Created Equal (Prentice Hall, 3rd ed.) likewise offers little or no emphasis on New England and voluntary association, though it devotes seven paragraphs to “Salem’s Wartime Witch Hunt” (p. 77). Nation of Nations (McGraw Hill, 3rd ed.), on the other hand, admits that “although the separation between church and state was incomplete, it had progressed further in New England than in most nations of Europe”; the book also devotes almost half a page to “the town meeting, the basis of local self-government” and precursor to the development in New England of “representative and responsive institutions” (pp. 72-73). Still, the far less important issue of “witches” receives approximately four times as much space (plus graphics) (pp. 75-77).

Answer: Many scholars would answer in the negative. Gerald S. Graham, world-renowned authority on the history of the British Empire, wrote the following about initial English settlement in New England:

One must, however, guard against overemphasizing the colonial Bible phase and its narrowing effects on men and institutions. The vital thing in the history of these small English settlements was the habit of forming, by mutual agreement, associations for any common purpose. Regardless of creed, the Anglo-Saxon throughout history set up these homespun types of government whenever it seemed necessary. The constitutional history of New England is essentially the history of governments owing their origins to agreements made voluntarily by the people. That such governments derived their powers from the consent of the governed was not a theory but a reality. (from A Concise History of the British Empire [Thames and Hudson, 1970], p. 34).

(“Anglo-Saxon” here refers not to “white people” but to the Germanic tribes who invaded much of Britain from the 400s and formed the basis of the English nation.)

While the textbooks focus on witchcraft, they tend to omit entirely any exploration into the American tradition of government by consent through voluntary association–a tradition developed and built upon in New England’s quasi-theocracies.

American Public Kept in the Dark About U.S. Covert Ops Precipitating War in Vietnam, Laos

By editor, 21 April, 2011, No Comment

CIA-orchestrated raids into North Vietnam (including the organization of guerillas)--and a coup attempt in the South--took place under the watch of John F. Kennedy.

Question: Did the CIA play a role in instigating war in Vietnam and Laos–and was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident cooked up?

What do the textbooks say? Created Equal (Prentice Hall, 3rd ed.) makes one mention of the war in Laos (in a paragraph dealing with the nefariousness of Nixon), explaining that “the president ordered the secret bombing and invasion of…Cambodia and Laos” (p. 614)–but no other information is forthcoming. The book makes no mention of covert U.S. operations in either North or South Vietnam leading up to the Vietnam War, aside from the nebulous assertion that South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem had been killed by his own generals “with the tacit support of U.S. officials in South Vietnam and Washington.” In addition, the textbook states plainly that in “August 1964, North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin fired on the U.S. destroyer Maddox,” thereby kicking off Congressional passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (which the book describes as “a substitute for a declaration of war”) (p. 602). American Stories (Pearson/Longman, 2009) states unequivocally that “on August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the Maddox, an American destroyer…in the Gulf of Tonkin,” setting the stage for full-scale war. No mention is made of pre-war CIA operations in either Laos or Vietnam. Any mention of American acts of war in Laos is entirely absent. America: Pathways to the Present (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007) makes no allusion to CIA operations in Laos or Vietnam prior to the Vietnam War; it does, however, state that the alleged Gulf of Tonkin attacks “did not occur” (p. 796). The book makes no mention of any war in Laos at all. American Anthem (Holt, 2007) actually alludes to U.S. covert operations into North Vietnam, albeit without mentioning the CIA by name (p. 953); LBJ’s nationally televised description of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was, according to the book, “not…completely accurate” (p. 955).

Answer: Covert operations orchestrated from Washington in Southeast Asia would have enormous (unintended) consequences both for the inhabitants of the region and Americans. In both Laos and Vietnam, the CIA attempted to carry out coups—the stated goal being to prevent Communism from taking hold, then spreading to the rest of Southeast Asia (“the principal world source of natural rubber and tin, and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities”)[i] and Japan.[ii]

In Laos, several coups were attempted, ostensibly to combat leftist, albeit democratically-elected, parties from taking power. Things quickly got out of hand, however, particularly when the CIA decided to organize its own shadow army in the country and carry out its own “secret war” (as scholar Loch K. Johnson, among many others, has pointed out). When many Laotians retaliated, the United States dropped more bombs on Laos than it had during the entire duration of the Second World War; one out of every four Laotians would become a refugee during this period.

And the American public funding these actions? Kept out of the loop. The public was presented with the same old story: the coalition government in Laos included the communist Pathet Lao party (“COALITION IN LAOS INCLUDES THE REDS,” screamed the New York Times).[iii] As usual, the notion that alleged U.S. action in Laos might be termed “aggressive” was explained away as coming from Moscow (even as late as 1965).[iv]

Next door, in Vietnam, the CIA had more difficulty trying to topple the North Vietnamese government (which it tried to do for years) while supporting the unpopular and tyrannical Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. Failure to succeed in these efforts led to similar escalations in that country—and, eventually, to America’s most unpopular war ever (and, to illustrate the point further, even the deciding event—the Gulf of Tonkin Incident—was itself a sham; while the public was told how the U.S. Navy had been “attacked” by “North Vietnamese torpedo boats,”[v] released-in-1998 SIGINT (signals intelligence) reports from the NSA reveal that, in fact, “it is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened…it is that no attack happened that night.”[vi] Thus the very event that allegedly thrust the United States into full-scale war in fact never even took place). This critical information regarding American covert operations in Laos and Vietnam (not to mention the Gulf of Tonkin Incident), which certainly would have affected public opinion as to a potential conflict, was virtually unknown to John Q. Public, even as the government began sending American teenagers by the hundreds of thousands into the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Almost 60,000 of them would never come back.

War against Laos was never declared by Congress, as the Constitution dictates.

War against Vietnam was never declared by Congress, either. (Unfortunately, this evidently doesn’t prevent the textbooks from presenting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as a viable “substitute” for a legal declaration of war.)

[i] From a June 1952 National Security Council secret memo; in Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial Classis, 2003. 471.

[ii] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial Classis, 2003. 471-472.

[iii] “Coalition in Laos Includes the Reds.” New York Times. 1 January 1957. 10.

[iv] “Moscow Assures Hanoi of Support.” New York Times. 5 January 1965. 5.

[v] “Johnson Directs Navy to Destroy Any New Raiders.” New York Times. 4 August 1964. 1.

[vi] Hanyok, Robert. “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964.” Cryptologic Quarterly. National Security Agency. February 1998. 3.

The Term “Anti-Federalist” a Federalist Invention

By editor, 12 April, 2011, No Comment

Question: Were those in favor of the proposed Constitution of the United States “Federalists,” while those against it were “Anti-Federalists?”

What do the textbooks say? Liberty, Equality, Power (Thomson/Wadsworth, 4th ed.) explains that the “opponents of the Constitution” were the “Anti-Federalists,” going on to use the term from here on out (p. 189). The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 5th ed.) states only that the “Constitution’s opponents commonly became known as ‘Antifederalists,’” adding that this “negative-sounding title probably hurt them”–but then failing to trace the source of that title (p. 189); the term is employed from here onwards. Created Equal (Prentice Hall, 3rd ed.) admirably describes how, in a “reversal of logic and contemporary usage,” the supporters of the Constitution called themselves “Federalists”–while dubbing their opponents with “the negative-sounding term Anti-Federalists”; however, the textbook proceeds to use the term “Anti-Federalist” to refer to the Republicans throughout the rest of the work (pp. 210-213). America: Pathways to the Present (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007) states simply that those “who opposed the Constitution were called anti-Federalists,” using the term to refer to the Republicans thenceforward (p. 61). American Anthem (Holt, 2007) states that “opponents of the Constitution were called Antifederalists,” with no mention of the name’s source; the term is used throughout the rest of the work in reference to the Republicans (p. 158).

Answer: The term “Anti-Federalist” was imposed upon the opponents of ratification by their detractors, the so-called “Federalists.” The people referred to as “Anti-Federalists” in virtually every American history textbook today actually referred to themselves as “Republicans” (not to be confused with the Grand Old Party). But as scholar Kevin R. C. Gutzman has written, “historians, never slow to take sides, have been nearly unanimous in calling Republican opponents of ratification “Anti-Federalists” (in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution [Regnery, 2007]).

In historian Jackson Main Turner’s The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (University of North Carolina Press, 1961), the author opens the book’s Introduction with the following:

They are called the Antifederalists, but it should be made clear at once that they were not antifederal at all. In reality they were determined to preserve the Confederation, and the name, far from being their own choice, was imposed upon them by their opponents, the so-called “Federalists.” The attachment to them of a word which denotes the reverse of their true beliefs, and which moreover implies that they were mere obstructionists, without any positive plan to offer, was part of the penalty of defeat. The victors took what name they chose, and fastened on the losers one which condemned them. Since the victory was a lasting one, the name and the stigma have endured. [p. xxiii]

Critics of the proposed Constitution argued that the document wasn’t specific enough about the new powers of Congress (though the Federalists would argue that Congress would adhere to a strict interpretation–something that the Supreme Court seems quickly to have forgotten), that it wasn’t specific enough about the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, that it didn’t include an immediate ban on the importation of slaves, that it made the enacting of tariffs too easy (a shortcoming that would lead to sectional strife and contribute to war between North and South less than a century later), that state and federal power was not delineated clearly enough, and that it didn’t include a bill of rights–among many other concerns.

Still, despite the valid arguments of these Republicans, they tend to be given short-shrift in the typical American history textbook–not least in the name by which they are referred.

DNA Testing “Proves” Thomas Jefferson Fathered the Children of Sally Hemings?

By editor, 10 March, 2011, 5 Comments

Question: Did DNA testing conducted in 1998 (combined with other evidence produced over subsequent years) prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings?

What do the textbooks say? According to Created Equal (Prentice Hall, 2011) “the preponderance of evidence, including the Hemings family’s oral traditions and DNA evidence, suggests that this assertion [that Jefferson fathered children by Hemings is] true.” Such a statement leaves open the possibility that Jefferson did not father Hemings’s children–but communicates the impression that Jefferson was almost certainly guilty. The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed.) does much the same, explaining that the “DNA of Sally’s male heirs” and “the timing of Jefferson’s visits to Monticello” have led “most scholars” to “view it as very likely that Jefferson, a widower, was the father of at least one of her four surviving children.”

Answer: The allegation that Thomas Jefferson had extramarital sexual relations with his slave, Sally Hemings, is over two centuries old, having first appeared in a Virginia newspaper in 1802. The story was written by one James Callender, a man who had a penchant for publishing sensational claims about those in power (many of which turned out to be conclusively false; in the case of the article about Jefferson, scholars believe Callender’s motivation lay with Jefferson’s refusal to hand him a government appointment). In 1873 the charge resurfaced when one of Sally Hemings’s children argued for its veracity. Fawn Brodie’s 1974 biography of Jefferson argued that the Founder had been the father of all of Sally Hemings’s children.

But it was the article in science magazine Nature (5 November 1998) that seemed to finally put the matter to rest; DNA tests strongly suggested that someone with the same Y chromosome as Thomas Jefferson was the biological father of Eston, the youngest son of Sally Hemings.

This DNA testing was not conclusive. Rather, it proved that Jefferson was one of a group of about 25 Jefferson-family males (all carrying the same Y chromosome) who might have impregnated Sally Hemings. Documentary evidence suggests that seven of these men would have been at Monticello at the time Eston was conceived. This didn’t stop the media from presenting the results of the DNA test as proof that Jefferson and Hemings had had sexual relations and produced children.

Finally, in 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation issued a report concluding that, most likely, “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had a relationship over time that led to the birth of one, and perhaps all, of the known children of Sally Hemings.” The matter seemed closed; Jefferson was guilty of, at best, an extra-marital affair that produced children, or, at worst, rape.

Then, in 2001, a panel of eminent scholars (the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission, made up of “some of the nation’s leading [academic] authorities on Thomas Jefferson and his era”) organized by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society published a reexamination of the Jefferson-Hemings question: “Report on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter.” A portion of the panel’s summarized findings:

The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings is an issue about which honorable people can and do disagree. After a careful review of all of the evidence, the commission agrees unanimously that the allegation is by no means proven; and we find it regrettable that public confusion about the 1998 DNA testing and other evidence has misled many people. With the exception of one member…our individual conclusions range from serious skepticism about the charge to a conviction that it is almost certainly false. [from p. 3 of the "Report"]

The scholars identified Thomas Jefferson’s brother, Randolph, as a more probable candidate for Hemings’s children’s father. The “Report” can be downloaded here.

In the words of scholar Brion McClanahan, “Because of the circumstantial nature of the evidence in the case, it cannot be proven conclusively that Jefferson fathered any of Sally Hemings’ children. It is possible but not probable. If Jefferson were to stand trial for paternity with the current evidence in hand, an honest jury would find him ‘not guilty.’ So should historians and so should the public” (from The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founders [Regnery, 2009], p. 24).

The point here, as usual, is that history isn’t black and white; it’s complicated. The more one digs, the more things typically become problematized. As convenient to some narratives as a promiscuous and even rapist Jefferson might be, textbooks should refrain from presenting the issue in conclusive terms as long as the evidence itself remains inconclusive and merely circumstantial. Whatever “most scholars” might suggest about the Jefferson-Hemings relationship, many other scholars disagree.

Massachusetts Government Act the Most Significant “Intolerable Act”

By editor, 23 February, 2011, No Comment

Question: Was the Boston Port Act the most significant of the so-called “Intolerable Acts,” rallying people from outside of Boston to come to the aid of their fellow countrymen?

What do the textbooks say? Nation of Nations (McGraw Hill, 3rd ed.) certainly thinks so, introducing in some detail the Boston Port Bill before devoting a sentence or two to each of the “other” acts–though the book does mention the Massachusetts Government Act by name (p. 138). The Enduring Vision (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed.) gives both acts (as well as the two other Coercive Acts, plus the Quebec Act) considerable space, though the very real revolution the Massachusetts Government Act sparked across all of Massachusetts (outside of Boston) goes unmentioned. America: Pathways to the Present (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007) makes only vague reference to the “Intolerable Acts” without going into any detail, while American Anthem (Holt, 2007) devotes to each act a single sentence.

Answer: According to some scholars, by far the most significant of the Coercive Acts (or “Intolerable Acts,” as they were known in Massachusetts after they were passed by the British Parliament in mid-1774) was the Massachusetts Government Act, not the Boston Port Act. Raphael, in The First American Revolution (The New Press, 2002) explains:

Partly because source material is so skewed, a sort of urban chauvinism has left its mark on the telling of the American Revolution. This has led to a serious misreading of the historical process. The standard textbook narrative goes something like this: To punish Bostonians for the Tea Party, the British government passed the Coercive Acts… The most important of these, the Boston Port Act, was meant to isloate Boston by shutting off all commerce, but it had the reverse effect: people outside of town responded by coming to the aid of their beleaguered compatriots. The American Revolution thereby sounds a philanthropic note: colonists outside of Boston acted from the goodness of their hearts.

But it was the Massachusetts Government Act, not the Boston Port Act, which led common people throughout the colony to take decisive action. Politically disempowered and fearful of economic ruin, the patriots of rural Massachusetts risked their all not just to help their neighbors but to help themselves [by wresting control from the British throughout the Massachusetts countryside from late 1774]. The other colonists, understanding that Massachusetts was already in a state of rebellion, felt compelled to take sides. If Britain could disenfranchise the people of Massachusetts, none of the colonies was safe. [p. 222]

This action kicked off what Raphael called “the first American Revolution” among the 95% of Massachusetts’s population living in rural areas. Months before any shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the rural people of Massachusetts successfully (and bloodlessly) seized control of their local governments from their erstwhile British overlords.