THE STEREOTYPED FALSITIES OF HISTORY.
Thinking to amuse my father once, after his retirement from the ministry, I offered to read a book of history. “Any thing but history,” said he; “for history must be false.”—Walpoliana.
What massive volumes would the reiterated errors and falsities of history fill, could they be collected in one grand omniana! Historians in every period of the world, narrowed and biassed by surrounding circumstances, each in his pent-up Utica confined, have lacked the fairness and impartiality necessary to insure a full conviction of their truthfulness. Men not only suffer their opinions and their prejudices to mislead themselves and others, but frequently, in the absence of material, draw upon their imaginations for facts. Often, too, when sincerely desirous of presenting the truth so as to “nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice,” the sources of their information are lamentably deficient.
The discrepancies of historical writers are very remarkable. If one who had never heard of Napoleon were to read Scott’s Life of the great military chieftain, and then read Abbott’s work, in what a maze of perplexity would he be involved between the disparagement of the one and the deification of the other! If one writer asserts that the Duke of Clarence was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower of London, and another derisively treats it as a “childish improbability,” and if one expresses the belief that Richard of Gloucester exerted himself to save Clarence, and another that he was the actual murderer, who, or what, are we to believe?
Knowing, as we do, that modern history abounds with errors, what are we to think of ancient history? If fraudulent and erroneous statements can be distinctly pointed out in Hume, and Lingard, and Alison, how far can we place any reliance upon Cæsar, and Herodotus, and Xenophon?
The monstrous absurdities and incongruities related of Xerxes, which have descended to our day under the name of history, are too stupendous for any credulity. The imposture, like vaulting ambition, “o’erleaps itself.” Such extravagant demands upon our faith serve to deepen our doubt of alleged occurrences that lie more nearly within the range of possibility. If it be true that Hannibal cut his way across the Alps with “fire, iron, and vinegar,” how did he apply the vinegar?
If falsities in our American history can creep upon us whilst our eyes are open to surrounding evidence, is it to be wondered at that there are so many contradictions and so many myths in the history of Rome? The very name America is a deception, a fraud, and a perpetuation of as rank injustice as ever stained the annals of human events. It is to be hoped that the time will yet come when Columbus shall receive his due. When that millennial day arrives which will insist on calling things by their right names, the battle of Bunker’s Hill will be called the battle of Breed’s Hill.
It seems incredible, and it certainly is singular, that so many errors in our history should continue to prevail in utter defiance of what is known to be fact. Historians, for instance, persist in saying, and people consequently persist in believing, that the breast-works of General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans were made of cotton-bales covered with earth, whilst intelligent survivors strenuously deny that there was a pound of that combustible material on the ground.[[38]] A well-known painting frequently
copied by line-engravers represents Lord Cornwallis handing his sword to General Washington, at the surrender of Yorktown, and this in spite of the glaring fact that, to spare Cornwallis that humiliation, General O’Hara gave his sword to General Lincoln.
The blood shed at the battle of Lexington is commonly believed and said to have been the first drawn in the contest of the Colonists with the oppressive authorities of the British Government. Aside from the Boston massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, it will be found, by reference to the records of Orange county, North Carolina, that a body of men was formed, called the “Regulators,” with the view of resisting the extortion of Colonel Fanning, clerk of the court, and other officers, who demanded illegal fees, issued false deeds, levied unauthorized taxes, &c.; that these men went to the court-house at Hillsboro’, appointed a schoolmaster named York as clerk, set up a mock judge, and pronounced judgment in mock gravity and ridicule of the court, law, and officers, by whom they felt themselves aggrieved; that soon after, the house, barn, and out-buildings of the judge were burned to the ground; and that Governor Tryon subsequently, with a small force, went to suppress the Regulators, with whom an engagement took place near Alamance Creek, on the road from Hillsboro’ to Salisbury, on the 16th of May, 1771,—nearly four years before the affair of Lexington,—in which nine Regulators and twenty-seven militia were killed, and many wounded,—fourteen of the latter being killed by one man, James Pugh, from behind a rock.
The progress of the natural and physical sciences, together with the increased facilities of intercommunication by steam, have done much towards disproving and exposing the fabulous stories of travelers. The extravagant character, for example, of the assertions of Fœrsch and Darwin in regard to the noxious emanations of the Bohun Upas is now shown by the fact that a specimen of it growing at Chiswick, England, may be approached with safety, and even handled, with a little precaution. It is equally well established that the famous Poison Valley in the island of Java affords the most remarkable natural example yet known of an atmosphere overloaded with carbonic acid gas, to which must be referred the destructive influence upon animal life heretofore attributed to the Upas-tree.