Persons Who Hew Too Close to the Line of History Get Little Thanks for
Their Pains.
Iconoclasts have been busy with American history for a good many years.
They have cut the props from under more than one valued tradition. In
the interest of literal fact they have destroyed much that is
imaginatively valuable. Too often the one can be gained only by loss of
the other, and it is not easy to decide which vantages most. At least
there is some ground for nourishing tradition.
H. J. Haskell praised the “researchers” in a recent article in the
_Independent_. The Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ makes reply, saying:
Mr. Haskell cites as a correction of “important errors in the
viewpoint” “the proof that the Revolution was not the result of
conscious tyranny and oppression on the part of the British
Government.”
Well, who now cares whether it was or was not? What difference does it
make either way in the relations of the American and British peoples
and their governments? Those relations are determined by present
interests and future hopes.
We know our forefathers were right, and we do not care whether their
opponents were right from their own viewpoint or not. Englishmen who
count know that their forefathers blundered egregiously, and do not
care whether they were conscientious or not in their folly.
It may be true—it probably is—that Weems fabricated outright the
cherry-tree story about George Washington. But what difference does
that make? The story simply imputed to Washington the boy the known
character of Washington the man. It hurt no one, and it has inspired
millions of American boys, by setting before them the example of a man
whose greatness and goodness none could question, to be true rather
than false, even when it was hard to tell the truth.
The “Rehabilitation” of Burr.
A great deal is said about the “rehabilitation” of Aaron Burr. But
what is the effect of it all? To show that Burr was not technically a
traitor? The courts said so long ago, and, despite personal opinions,
the verdict was accepted as the law in practise. In trying doubly to
prove Burr no traitor, the rehabilitators have proved him a
blackmailing filibusterer—a man who lacked the courage to conquer a
State, but sought to steal one—a man whose ambition and effort it was
to play the part of
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole.
And put it in his pocket!
A great deal is also said of the evidence from his own diary of the
“hollowness” and the “double dealing” of President Polk in his conduct
toward Mexico. What is really proved by this evidence is that James K.
Polk was not a cheap opportunist, waiting to be forced to act by
situations created by others, but foresaw those situations and was
ready to take advantage of them for the expansion of his country and
the increase of its power.
To discover that James K. Polk was never taken by surprise, and that
all his great political acts were purposed and planned for long in
advance, does not degrade him, but exalts his character by proving its
conscious strength. It lifts James K. Polk out of the Gladstone class
and puts him at least on the borders of the Bismarck class of
statesmanship.
Game Not Worth the Candle.
And of what earthly or heavenly importance is it to any human soul to
know that the Pilgrims did not actually land in a body on Plymouth
Rock on a certain day? Or that the old stone tower at Newport is not
what Longfellow suggested, a relic of the Northmen, but merely
Governor Arnold’s windmill?
Or that the Spanish settlers in America treated the Indians, on the
whole, more humanely than did the English? Or that, if the Americans’
powder had not run out and they had been able to hold Bunker Hill,
they would probably have been captured the next day?
With all their labor and kicking up of dust, and the personal
notoriety they get by it, the “researchers” whom Mr. Haskell praises
have not changed the main and abiding conceptions of our history at
all. Their game seems hardly worth the candles consumed at it.
Truth is the first aim of the historian. History has been characterized
as a pack of lies, generally agreed to by its makers.
“Anything but history,” said Horace Walpole, “for history must be
false.”
The business of the scientific historian is to examine all witnesses,
hear all the evidences, and get at the exact facts, even though they
make ancient reputations tumble.
And yet we cannot but ask with Wordsworth:
Those old credulities, to nature dear,
Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of History?