The trouble with history, I've decided is the historians. That is because too many of them do not take the trouble to research both sides, or sometimes many sides of a historical event before they write about it. The result is shallow at the least and dishonest at worst. I say that because there are so many incredible stories that historians just brush over or accept as fact what another historian has said about a particular historical event. No, I don't say they are merrly dishonest. I say they cheat the students of history, particularly those in high school and below.
I give some examples.
Herbert Hoover is portrayed in American history (in the United States anyway) as the person who caused the Great Depression in the United States in the late 1920s. That is about all you learn about Hoover, too, from the typical American history class.
But....if you, as I did, chance to read the "Memoirs of Herbert Hoover," you get a whole new slant, even an appreciation and admiration of the man and his accomplishments.
Just some that come to mind are that: he was an orphan; one of the first graduates of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., (the school the people who contributed to have it built determined would be the "Harvard" of the West Coast); a mining engineer who traveled all over the world in search of minerals; a mining engineer who became extremely wealthy; a man who, at the request of the American embassy in Great Britain saw to it that thousands of American tourists stranded in Europe at the beginning of World War I made it safely home; organized and ran the Belgium Relief Commission, to ensure that the entire population of Belgium and northern France (both cut off from normal food supplies by World War I) got fed despite of the British blockade of Germany and the menace of U-Boats; a man who saw to it after World War I that all the countries in Europe, including Russia, that needed food to get their populations through "until the next harvest" got it; served as food administrator in the United States during World War I; was a confident and insider on the negotiations to end World War I with Woodrow Wilson; had an incredible career as US Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge; and would have had an interesting presidency had it not been crushed by the weight of the Great Depression. And, by the way, he did not take a salary and paid his own expenses in all his public service, from the time he served on the Belgium Relief Commission until the end of his presidency. In fact, as secretary of commerce, he took his salary to pay the salaries of four assistants.
If you are bored sometime, read Hoover's memoirs. There are three volumes, and they will convince you (as all true stories do me) that non-fiction is always better than fiction.
Another disappointing history is a series of books on the American Revolution by Rise of by Page Smith, a history professor at one of the California universities, UCLA, I think.
His writing style is wonderful, and I enjoyed reading his books--until I found a couple of serious errors in his alleged reports of historical events.
One example: he alleged (as many other historians have) that the British Army band played "The World Turned Upside Down" as the army surrendered at Yorktown. Yorktown, to those of you who may not know, was the final and most decisive of the battles of the American Revolution and ended the war.
Anyway as to Page Smith and his story about the song being played when the army surrendered? Not true. I have done some research on the topic and have found that there is no mention of that in any contemporary documents or letters/diaries/other accounts written by people who were at the surrender: American or British. The first mention does not come into American histories until the 1840s or so, and there is no clear evidence from anything presented to suggest a source for that. Some other well-known historians picked up the story to add to their histories, probably because it sounded like a good American story. Good story, but, alas, as far as I can determine, not true! Not true! If it's not true, why waste space in a history book to tell me that?
I suspect Professor Smith picked up the story from one of his student's term papers, by the way!
Another curious story about the American Revolution picked up by Professor Smith which I can tell form my own research is not, cannot be true, is his account of two men who served on opposing sides in the Albany, New York area, during the war. What is that story? He tells of two men, one a sure enough villain and the other purely heroic.
The villain is Walter Butler, a man whose father, John Butler, had long been associated with one of the most influential British officials among the American Indians, William Johnson.
The story, according to Professor Smith, was that Walter Butler was a scourge of the American frontier around Albany during the war. He was blamed for leading raids by American Indians that resulted in the horrible massacres of men, women and children at some frontier settlements.
Professor Smith goes onto tell the story of Walter Butler and some of his Indian and British Rangers being chased into the wilderness as they sought to escape an American force. Butler, alas, is shot and killed on the bank of a stream, and his body left to rot by the heroic American soldier.
News of Butler's death caused great joy among the settlers in the Albany, New York area because they believed with his death the Indians would no longer be a threat.
That is Professor Smith's story.
Alas, in my own research, I don't know that I reach another conclusion about the results of Walter Butler's death, but I do get another view of the man and his role in the American Revolution.
That view is that Walter Butler was a British soldier, but he was not nearly as important as his father, John Butler, in the war waged by the British and their Loyalists and Indian allies.
I also have learned that that prior to the American Revolution there were bloody battles among settlers who challenged other settlers to land in the areas, especially the Wyoming Valley, a three mile-wide strip of exceptionally good earth stretching along a river (I can't recall the name)in New York state or eastern Pennsylvania. These battles were waged by settlers from Connecticut who believed (based on the colony of Connecticut claims) that the land belonged to that colony. Furthermore, since it did, these Connecticut colonists believed, apparently, they could push others who occupied the land off (including Indians), and some of them did just that: pushed others occupying the land off.
One story I've read tells of an American Indian delegation going to the colonial government in Connecticut to protest the settlement of the Wyoming Valley because the land belonged to them and they never had sold it to anyone. Officials in Connecticut seemed to have agreed with the Indians, but they put that issue aside as the American Revolution began. I do not know if the Indians ever pursued their claims again in Connecticut because at the end of the revolution the land in question became part of Pennsylvania or New York. The Indians and their claims are not mentioned.
The gist of all this is, therefore, that when the American Revolution came along, it presented a legal opportunity for war in some of the areas described above.
The Butlers joined the British side, as did some other settlers in the area, but they eventually lost, all of them. Walter Butler lost his life, but the Loyalists who lived in the area lost their homes to the Americans who won. Many of them, the Loyalists, went to Canada after the American Revolution.
Anyway, getting back to Walter Butler and Professor Smith? The conclusions are that Walter Butler played a role, but not a major one in the American Revolution and that whatever atrocities attributed to him are not based on solid fact; and that those who joined the revolution were sometimes as cruel and mean as the British and their Indian allies are often portrayed.
Long winded? Yes. I hope I've made some worthwhile points. I will be reviewing this over the next few days to edit etc.;
If anyone else has some ideas on this, fire away!
