United we muddle
During my first years in grade school, American History seemed simple and straight forward:
The freedom the pilgrims wanted was the right to punish with the full force of the law anyone who did not conform to their ideas about worship. They got their way for awhile, until enough other colonists with differing religious beliefs arrived to out vote them. It was a Baptist theologian, Roger Williams, who first spoke of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." A phrase which Thomas Jefferson later used many times while describing the intent of the first amendment to the Constitution.
The revolutionary war began more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was written or signed. And most of the people didn't want to overthrow the King, or even cease to be British when the fighting first started. The issue was taxation without representation: the British parliament could levy taxes on the colonists, yet none of the colonies were permitted to elect any voting members of parliament.
When the war finally came to a close, the new United States operated under the Articles of Confederation, which created an extremely loose alliance between the states, governed by a congress with no executive or judicial branch, and without much power at all.
It was nearly a decade later (when nearly everyone was fed up with how poorly the Articles functioned) that the Constitution was drafted. The first U.S. Presidential election occurred in 1788--twelve years after the Declaration of Independence.
One reason these inaccurate versions of history become so firmly fixed in the collective consciousness is because they tell a simple story. Everyone wanted freedom, they fought for it, and now we have it. Isn't it wonderful what we can accomplish when we all work together for the same goal?
Except there wasn't a single goal. Some people just wanted the opportunity to elect members of parliament, and would have been happy to remain subjects of the king. Some wanted to set up a new monarchy, with someone such as George Washington as king. Some wanted a republic of some sort. Some wanted not a single nation, nor even thirteen small nations, but thought each small community should be a sovereign entity unto itself.
It was all a muddle, so it really shouldn't surprise us that someone today could so completely misremember and misunderstand the story of Paul Revere.
Paul Revere was a somewhat minor player in the American revolution. He served as a courier for the Boston Committee for Public Safety, and was one of a group of men charged with keeping track of British troop movements before open hostilities broke out. When the king's troops were sent out of Boston with orders to disarm the rebels and imprison the revolutionary leaders, Revere was one of several men who rode throughout Middlesex County to warn specific people that the troops were on their way.
Most of us would have never heard of him if not for a poem written 85 years after his famous ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem is full of inaccuracies, though they were mostly intentional. Longfellow wasn't really writing about the revolution, he was trying to rouse the citizens of his time to a sense of urgency about the secessionist movement that was about to erupt into the Civil War.
It was merely the first and most famous time that an inaccurate account of the work of Paul Revere (and his fellow riders, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, not to mention nearly 40 others whose names were not recorded) has been bandied about for political purposes.
Longfellow knew that a lone man facing that daunting task was more dramatic than a tale of 40-some men undertaking the mission. And the image of him yelling, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" only made sense if every single citizen of the colonies was in favor of revolution. Revere and his fellow riders didn't shout their warnings precisely because a lot of their fellow citizens either opposed revolution or were undecided. Since one of Longfellow's goals was to remind his fellow citizens in 1860 that there was more that united us than divided, his poem had Revere shouting in the streets.
Each inaccuracy in Longfellow's poem served his art and his message. He wasn't trying to be a historian. Art is about a truth and beauty. Facts are seldom beautiful. So there's no reason to disparage Longfellow for taking artistic license with the historical record.
However, when one insists that their muddled, inaccurate version of a tale is the historical fact, when it is not, that isn't being creative. Neither is it speaking to a higher truth.
It's simply wrong. No matter how many people you convince to yell at those who point out your mistake.
Originally published 10 June, 2011.
- the pilgrims came to America to find religious freedom
- once more freedom-loving colonists arrived, they decided they didn't want a king any more, so
- they wrote up the Declaration of Independence which led to
- the Revolutionary War, at the end of which, George Washington was elected President.
The freedom the pilgrims wanted was the right to punish with the full force of the law anyone who did not conform to their ideas about worship. They got their way for awhile, until enough other colonists with differing religious beliefs arrived to out vote them. It was a Baptist theologian, Roger Williams, who first spoke of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." A phrase which Thomas Jefferson later used many times while describing the intent of the first amendment to the Constitution.
The revolutionary war began more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was written or signed. And most of the people didn't want to overthrow the King, or even cease to be British when the fighting first started. The issue was taxation without representation: the British parliament could levy taxes on the colonists, yet none of the colonies were permitted to elect any voting members of parliament.
When the war finally came to a close, the new United States operated under the Articles of Confederation, which created an extremely loose alliance between the states, governed by a congress with no executive or judicial branch, and without much power at all.
It was nearly a decade later (when nearly everyone was fed up with how poorly the Articles functioned) that the Constitution was drafted. The first U.S. Presidential election occurred in 1788--twelve years after the Declaration of Independence.
One reason these inaccurate versions of history become so firmly fixed in the collective consciousness is because they tell a simple story. Everyone wanted freedom, they fought for it, and now we have it. Isn't it wonderful what we can accomplish when we all work together for the same goal?
Except there wasn't a single goal. Some people just wanted the opportunity to elect members of parliament, and would have been happy to remain subjects of the king. Some wanted to set up a new monarchy, with someone such as George Washington as king. Some wanted a republic of some sort. Some wanted not a single nation, nor even thirteen small nations, but thought each small community should be a sovereign entity unto itself.
It was all a muddle, so it really shouldn't surprise us that someone today could so completely misremember and misunderstand the story of Paul Revere.
Paul Revere was a somewhat minor player in the American revolution. He served as a courier for the Boston Committee for Public Safety, and was one of a group of men charged with keeping track of British troop movements before open hostilities broke out. When the king's troops were sent out of Boston with orders to disarm the rebels and imprison the revolutionary leaders, Revere was one of several men who rode throughout Middlesex County to warn specific people that the troops were on their way.
Most of us would have never heard of him if not for a poem written 85 years after his famous ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem is full of inaccuracies, though they were mostly intentional. Longfellow wasn't really writing about the revolution, he was trying to rouse the citizens of his time to a sense of urgency about the secessionist movement that was about to erupt into the Civil War.
It was merely the first and most famous time that an inaccurate account of the work of Paul Revere (and his fellow riders, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, not to mention nearly 40 others whose names were not recorded) has been bandied about for political purposes.
Longfellow knew that a lone man facing that daunting task was more dramatic than a tale of 40-some men undertaking the mission. And the image of him yelling, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" only made sense if every single citizen of the colonies was in favor of revolution. Revere and his fellow riders didn't shout their warnings precisely because a lot of their fellow citizens either opposed revolution or were undecided. Since one of Longfellow's goals was to remind his fellow citizens in 1860 that there was more that united us than divided, his poem had Revere shouting in the streets.
Each inaccuracy in Longfellow's poem served his art and his message. He wasn't trying to be a historian. Art is about a truth and beauty. Facts are seldom beautiful. So there's no reason to disparage Longfellow for taking artistic license with the historical record.
However, when one insists that their muddled, inaccurate version of a tale is the historical fact, when it is not, that isn't being creative. Neither is it speaking to a higher truth.
It's simply wrong. No matter how many people you convince to yell at those who point out your mistake.
"...and I am unanimous in that!" -- Mrs Slocombe (as portrayed by Mollie Sugden in many episodes of Are You Being Served?)
Originally published 10 June, 2011.