the first blood shed in the Revolution was in the so-called Boston
Massacre. {437} It is well known that that event thus described was
nothing more than a street brawl in which five totally unarmed
passers-by were shot down without their making the slightest
resistance, as an act of retaliation on the part of drunken soldiers
annoyed by boys throwing snowballs at them. This has been magnified
into an important historical event. Two months before it, however,
there was an encounter in New York with the citizens under arms as
well as the soldiers, and it was at Golden Hill on Manhattan Island
and not in Boston that the first blood of the Revolution was shed.
Miss Mary L. Booth, in her "History of the City of New York," says:
"Thus ended the Battle of Golden Hill, a conflict of two days'
duration, which, originating as it did in the defense of a principle,
was an affair of which New Yorkers have just reason to be proud, and
which is worthy of far more prominence than has usually been given it
by standard historians. It was not until nearly two months after that
the Boston Massacre occurred, a contest which has been glorified and
perpetuated in history, yet this was second both in date and in
significance to the New York Battle of Golden Hill."
Practically every other incident of these times has been treated in
just this way, in our school histories at least. Every American
schoolboy knows of the Boston tea party, and usually can and does tell
the story with great gusto because {438} it delights his youthful
dramatic sense. Not only the children, but every one else seems to
think that the organization of the tea party was entirely due to the
New England spirit of resistance to "taxation without representation."
How few of them are taught that this destruction of the tea had been
definitely agreed upon by all the colonies and that it was only by
chance that Massachusetts happened to be first in the execution of the
project. My friend, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, in his article on "Some
Popular Myths of American History," in the _Magazine of History_
(February, 1905), has stated this aspect of the question very
forcibly. "Previous to the arrival of the ships in Boston, concerted
action had been agreed upon, as has been already shown, in regard to
the destruction of the tea, from Charleston, S. C., to Portsmouth, N.
H. The people of Philadelphia had been far more active and outspoken
at the outset than they of Boston, and it was this decisiveness which
caused the people of Boston to act, after they had freely sought
beforehand the advice and moral support of the other colonies."
It would be utterly unjust to limit the movement which culminated in
the Boston Tea Party to any one or even several of the colonies; to
make so much of the Boston incident is to falsify history in fact,
but, above all, in the impression produced upon the rising generation
that Boston was a leader in this movement. The first {439} tea-ship
arrived in Boston November 28, 1773, and two others shortly after, but
it was not until the evening of December 16th that their contents were
thrown overboard. Over six weeks before this a precisely similar
occurrence had taken place in New York without any such delay, and
though the movement proved futile because it was undertaken on a false
alarm, it is easy to understand that due credit should be given to
those who took part in it for their thoroughgoing spirit of opposition
to British measures. On this subject once more Dr. Emmet, whose great
collection of Americana made him probably more familiar with he
sources of American history than any one of our generation, has been,
in the article already quoted, especially emphatic.
"On November 5, 1773, an alarm was raised in the City of New York to
the effect that a tea-ship had entered the harbor. A large assembly of
people at once occurred, among whom those in charge of the movement
were disguised as Mohawk Indians. This alarm proved a false one, but
at a meeting then organized a series of resolutions was adopted which
was received by the other colonies as the initiative in the plan of
resistance already determined upon throughout the country. Our
schoolbooks are chiefly responsible for the almost universal
impression that the destruction of tea, which occurred in Boston
Harbor, was an episode confined to that city, while the fact is that
the tea sent to this country was either {440} destroyed or sent back
to England from every seaport in the colonies. The first tea-ship
happened to arrive in Boston and the first tea was destroyed there;
for this circumstance due credit should be given the Bostonians. But
the fact that the actors in this affair were disguised as Mohawk
Indians shows that they were but following the lead of New York, where
this particular disguise had been adopted forty-one days before, for
the same purpose."
Just as the Boston Massacre has been insistently pointed out as the
first blood shed for American liberty, so the Battle of Lexington has
been drilled into our school children's minds as the first organized
armed resistance to the British. Without wishing at all to detract
from the glory of those who fought at Lexington, there is every reason
not to let the youth of this country grow up with the notion that
Massachusetts was the first to put itself formally under arms against
the mother country. Lexington was not fought until April 19, 1775. The
battle of Alamance, N. C., which occurred on May 16, 1771, deserves
much more to be considered as the first organized resistance to
British oppression. The North Carolina Regulators rather than the New
England Minute Men should have the honor of priority as the first
armed defenders of their rights against encroachment. The subject is
all the more interesting because the British leader who tried to ride
rough-shod over stout Americans in North Carolina and met {441} with
open opposition was the infamous General Tryon of subsequent
Connecticut fame. Every one knows of his pernicious activity in
Connecticut, very few that he had been previously active in North
Carolina. That is the difference between history as "it has been
written" for New England and the South. That the Battle of Alamance
was no mere chance engagement, and that the North Carolinians were
aflame with the real spirit that finally gave freedom to the colonies,
can be best realized from the fact that the first Declaration of
Independence was made at Mecklenberg in North Carolina, and that some
of its sentiments, and even perhaps its phrases, were adopted in the
subsequent formal Declaration of Independence of all the colonies.
For those who may be surprised that North Carolina should have been so
prominent in these first steps in Revolutionary history and these
primary developments of the great movement that led to the freedom of
the Colonies, for we are accustomed to think of North Carolina as one
of the backward, unimportant portions of the country, it may be well
to say that at the time of the Revolution she was the third State in
the Union in population, following Virginia and Pennsylvania in the
number of inhabitants, exceeding New York in population by the total
census of New York City and Long Island, and ahead of Massachusetts,
which immediately followed it in the list by almost as many. The
sturdy {442} inhabitants of the northern of the Carolinas had been for
a decade before the Revolution constantly a thorn in the side of the
British government and had been recognized as leaders in the great
movement that was gradually being organized to bring all the colonies
together for mutual help against the encroachments of the British
government on their rights. Our school children fail almost entirely
to know this because they have been absorbed by Massachusetts
history--but then North Carolina did not have the good fortune to
have writers of history. New England had them and to spare, and with a
patriotic zeal for their native heath beyond even their numbers. Of
course it may be said that these are old-time historical traditions
which have found their way into history and are difficult to get out,
though most of those who know any history realize their absurdity, and
the modern historian, even though he may be from New England, holds
the balance much more equitably between the different portions of the
country. Apparently this is just what is not true, for New England
professors of history and writers of history still continue to write
in the same old strain of such surpassing admiration for New
Englanders that every other portion of the country is cast into
shadow. It was a distinguished professor of history at Harvard who,
within five years, in an important historical work, [Footnote 28]
said: "Whatever the social mixture {443} of the future, one thing is
certain; the standards, aspirations and moral and political ideas of
the original English settlers not only dominate their own descendants,
but permeate the body of immigrants of other races--the Puritans have
furnished the little leaven that leavens the whole lump."
[Footnote 28: "The American Nation," 27 vols.]
One wonders just what such a sentence means and, of course, finds it
in many ways amazingly amusing. One would think that the only English
settlers were the Puritans, and that they had had great influence in
the origin of our government. Apparently, for the moment at least,
this Harvard professor forgot in his enthusiasm for the forefathers in
Massachusetts that the other branch of English settlers, those of
Virginia, were ever so much more important in the colonial times and
for long afterwards, than the Puritans. Of the first five Presidents
four were from Virginia. It is possible they forget now, in
Massachusetts, that only one was from Massachusetts, and that that one
did more to disturb government "of the people, by the people, and for
the people" than any other, so that after four short years the country
would have no more of him and no more of these Massachusetts Puritans
for more than a quarter of a century. This dear, good professor of
Harvard has deliberately called all the non-English elements in our
population foreigners because of his absorption in New England. He
said: "If the list of American {444} great men be scanned the
contribution of the foreigner stands out clearly. The two greatest
financiers of America have been the English West Indian Alexander
Hamilton and the Genevan Albert Gallatin. Two Presidents, Van Buren
and Roosevelt, are of Dutch stock; five others, Jackson, Buchanan,
Grant, Arthur and McKinley of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent." All
"foreigners" except the New Englanders! Save the mark!
It is rather interesting to find that their contemporaries of the
Revolutionary period did not share that high estimation of the New
Englanders which they themselves clung to so tenaciously and have writ
so large in our history that the tradition of New England's unselfish
wonder-working in that olden time has never perished. Most of us are
likely to know something about the rather low estimation, at most
toleration, in which during the Revolutionary period many of the
members of Congress from New England were held by fellow-members of
Congress from other portions of the country. They were the most
difficult to bring into harmony with others, the slowest to see
anything that did not directly enhance the interests of New England;
they were more constantly in opposition to great movements that meant
much for the future of the colonies themselves and the government of
the United States afterward than any others. We are prone to excuse
this, however, on the score {445} of their intolerant Puritanism, and
taught by our New England schoolmasters, most of us, at least, fondly
cherish the notion that all the New Englanders made supreme sacrifices
for the country and did it with a whole-hearted spirit of
self-forgetfulness that made every man, above all in Massachusetts, an
out-and-out patriot. It is curious to find how different were the
opinions of those from other portions of the country who came in
contact with New Englanders at this time, from that which is to be
found in their histories.
Washington, for instance, had by no means the same high opinion of the
New Englanders, and, above all, of the New England troops, that they
had of themselves and that their historians have so carefully
presented of them. It is said that Sparks edited many of Washington's
criticisms of New Englanders out of his edition of the "Life and
Letters." Certain it is that some of the letters which Sparks did not
consider it proper to quote from, contain material that is very
interesting for the modern historian who wants to get at contemporary
documents, and for whom contemporary opinions such as that of
Washington cannot but seem especially valuable. In a letter from the
camp at Cambridge, August 20, 1775, to Lund Washington at Mt. Vernon,
Washington said: "The people of this Government [Massachusetts] have
obtained a character which they by no means deserve; their officers,
generally {446} speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people I
ever saw. I have already broke one colonel and five captains for
cowardice, and for drawing more pay and provisions than they had men
in their companies. There are two more colonels now under arrest and
to be tried for the same offenses; in short, they are by no means such
troops, in any respect, as you are led to believe of them from the
accounts which are published; but I need not make myself enemies among
them by this declaration, although it is consistent with truth. I dare
say the men would fight very well (if properly officered), although
they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people. Had they been properly
conducted at Bunker's Hill (on the 17th of June) or those that were
there properly supported, the regulars would have met with a shameful
defeat, and a much more considerable loss than they did, which is now
known to be exactly 1,057, killed and wounded. It was for their
behavior on that occasion that the above officers were broke, for I
never spared one that was accused of cowardice, but brought them to
immediate trial."
One of the most interesting perversions of the history written by New
Englanders is that in their emphasis of New Englandism they have
sometimes signally failed to write even their own history as the
documents show it. There has been much insistence, for instance, on
the supposed absolute purity of the English origin of {447} the
settlers in New England and especially in Massachusetts until long
after the Revolution. Palfrey, in the introduction to his "History of
New England," says: "The people of New England are a singularly
unmixed race. There is probably not a county in England occupied by a
population of purer English blood than they are." Senator Lodge, forty
years later, in his "History of the Revolution," re-echoes Mr.
Palfrey's words, and says that "the people were of almost pure English
blood, with a small infusion of Huguenots and a slight mingling in New
Hampshire of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry." During the past ten years
the Secretary of State of Massachusetts, by order of the Legislature,
has been compiling from the state archives the muster roll of the
Massachusetts soldiers and sailors of the Revolutionary War. This does
not bear out at all what Mr. Palfrey and Mr. Lodge have asserted so
emphatically as to the exclusively English origin of the population of
New England and, above all, of Massachusetts at this critical time.
There is not a familiar Irish name that does not occur many times. The
fighting race was well represented. There were 167 Kellys and 79
Burkes, though by some unaccountable circumstance only 24 Sheas. There
were 388 O'Briens and other O's and Macs galore. There are Aherns and
Brannigans and Bannons and Careys and Carrolls and Connellys, Connors
and Corcorans and Costellos and Cosgroves and {448} Costigans, and so
on right through the alphabet. Curiously enough there are no Lodges on
the muster roll, but there is not an Irish name beginning with "L"
that is not represented. There are no less than 69 Larkins and some 20
Learys and Lonergans and Lanigans and all the other Celtic patronymics
in "L."
Dr. Emmet, who has investigated very carefully the question of the
deportation of the Irish to this country under Cromwell, says that
many shiploads of them were sent to Massachusetts in the seventeenth
century. He declares that enough Irish girls were sent over to
Massachusetts at this time to furnish wives for all the immediate
descendants of the Puritans. There are certainly many more Irish names
than are dreamt of in the very early times. Priscilla Alden's name
before she tempted John to give her his rather pretty name, has never
found its way into poetry because no poetry would stand it--it was
Mullen or Mullins.
Even after the Revolution the place of New England, but especially
Massachusetts, in the Republic has been sadly misrepresented in our
American history as a rule, because our school historians at least
have usually been Bostonians. When Washington, in 1789, made his first
visit as President of the United States to New England, he was
received very enthusiastically in Connecticut, though this state had
not been wholly favorable to the new government, but in {449}
Massachusetts his reception was distinctly cold, and indeed, almost
insulting. John Hancock was Governor of this State and he absolutely
refused to meet the President at the State line, though most other
Governors had done this, and while President Washington was in Boston
he declined even to call on him. The reason for this was the
assumption of a characteristic Massachusetts attitude. There seems no
doubt now that John Hancock, not because he was pompous John Hancock,
not because he was the Governor of Massachusetts--and this idea had
been fostered among his people--honestly believed that the Governor of
Massachusetts was a greater man in every way than the President of the
nation.
There are many who might say that this state of mind has endured even
to the present time. Certainly Massachusetts' representative men have
constantly set the interests of their commonwealth above those of the
Union. New England has always had a tendency that way. During the
newspaper agitation over the recent tariff bill one of the cartoonists
represented the United States as a puppy dog with New England as the
tail, with the caption, "How long is the tail going to wag the dog?"
During the second war with Great Britain in 1812 New England was the
most recalcitrant portion of the Union, and another conceited Governor
of the State hampered the nation in every way. Our histories for {450}
schools, at least, have been so written as to produce the impression
that only the South ever was dissatisfied with the Union, inclined to
be rebellious and ready to talk about the nullification of the compact
which bound the states together. The Hartford convention is mentioned,
but not given near the place that it deserves, since it represents the
feeling, very rife at that time, that such a procedure as
nullification was quite justifiable. Twelve delegates from
Massachusetts were present in this convention and there was a decided
spirit of rebellion against the general government because, forsooth,
the war had injured Boston's business.
It is not alone in history, however, that New England's thoroughgoing
admiration for herself has served to disturb the attainment of truth
by the rising generation of Americans. Besides exaggerating the
comparative influence of New England in the affairs of the country,
they have exaggerated the place of favorite New England authors in the
literature of the world to such a degree that growing young America
cannot help but have a number of false notions of comparative literary
values, which he has to rid himself of before he is able to attain any
proper appreciation of world literature or even of English literature.
A little group of New England literary folk came into prominence about
the middle of the nineteenth century. Because they were the best that
New England could produce, {451} apparently they were considered by
New Englanders as the best in the world. English critics, of course,
laughed at their self-complacency, but our New England schoolmasters
took New England's writers so seriously and proceeded to write so much
about them and make them so much the subject of teaching not alone in
New England but in every part of the country, that now it is almost
impossible to get our people to accept any true standards, since
admiration for these quite unimportant New England writers has ruined
any proper critical literary appreciation.
As a consequence our rising generations for some time have been
inclined to take Emerson seriously as a great philosopher, writer and
thinker. They have been very prone to accept dear old Oliver Wendell
Holmes, kindliest of men, charmingest of writers, as a great literary
man. There have literally been hundreds of English writers such as
these in the past three centuries of English literary history, who now
take up at most but a few lines in even large histories of English
literature. Taking Emerson seriously is fortunately going out of
fashion. If one wanted a criterion of the depth of thought of the
generation that accepted him originally and passed him along as a
significant philosophic prophet, then surely one need go no farther.
Our optimistic Carlyle, writing in a minor key, looms up so much
smaller now than a generation ago that we can readily realize how
{452} New Englandism infected literary and philosophic standards. What
is thus said of Emerson may be repeated, with perhaps a little less
emphasis, of the other writers whom New England has insisted on
proclaiming to the world as representative of all that was best and
highest in literature--because for a moment they commanded attention
in New England.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was considered the proper
thing in this country to talk of Longfellow as a great poet. Of
course, no one does so any more. The devotion to him of so much time
in our schools, while so many much more important contributions to our
English poetry have but scanty attention paid them, is still producing
not only a false impression on children's minds as to his proper place
in literature, but is playing sad havoc with literary standards
generally, so far as they may be the subject of teaching. Longfellow
was, of course, nothing more than a pleasant balladist and a writer of
conventional thoughts on rather commonplace themes in reasonably
smooth verse. For really profound thought Longfellow's poetry has
never a place. His loftiest flights of imagination do not bring him
anywhere near the great mysteries of human life or the deep thoughts
that run through men's minds when they are touched to the quick. Of
the sterner passions of men he had scarcely an inkling.
Whittier, of course, has much more real poetry {453} in his little
store of verse than Longfellow, but Whittier's voice is only a very
low treble and his religious training was too narrow to permit him any
breadth of poetic feeling. No one thinks now that anything that
Whittier wrote will live to be read by any but curious students of
certain anti-slavery movements in connection with the history of our
civil war. He will have an interest for antiquarian litterateurs,
scarcely more than that. Of James Russell Lowell's rather charming
academic verse one would prefer to say nothing, only that the serious
study of it in our schools leads the present generation to think that
he, too, must be considered seriously as a poet. It is doubtful if
Russell Lowell ever thought of himself as a poet at all. Appropriate
thoughts charmingly expressed for occasions, in verse reasonably
tuneful, he could do better than most men of his time in America--that
was all. Of real poetic quality there is almost none. Lowell's verse
will not be read at all except by the professional critic before
another generation has passed, and I am sure that no one realized this
better than Lowell himself.