Myths in History

 

 

 

 

How many students coming out of high school and lower grade history and social studies classes will tell you that Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492 to prove that the earth was round? Or that his sailors feared falling of the end of the earth? How many students quote the final lines of Patrick Henry’s immortal speech, “give me liberty, or give me death?” And how many students really think that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then confessed because he “could not tell a lie?”

 

Perpetuating the Fiction in the Archives

 

In 1991 Jeffrey Burton Russell published Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell’s research destroys the long standing myth that contemporaries of Columbus held to a flat earth theory. How then did this notion creep into history texts? Russell demonstrates how the myth became accepted history following publication of a nineteenth century biography of Columbus by Washington Irving, whose fanciful tale was more romanticism that true history. Irving’s work was subsequently used universally as fact by generations of history teachers.

 

In his 2004 book Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, Ray Raphael casts doubt on the authenticity of Patrick Henry’s famous “give me liberty…” speech. The text of the speech was first recorded in 1817 in a biography authored by William Wirt. Wirt’s only resource was from an old eye-witness, Judge St. George Tucker, who did not have written notes but provided Patrick Henry’s text from memory. Raphael’s detailing casts significant doubt on the veracity of the speech. Founding Myths also addresses Paul Revere’s ride, Molly Pitcher, and a number of Revolutionary War subjects.

 

Henry Wiencek addresses the story of Washington and the cherry tree in his book An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. [1] Wiencek traces the store to Mason Locke Weems, an early biographer. According to Wiencek, young George Washington was responsible for the death of his mother’s favorite horse and argues that Weems altered the details into a more palatable story that still had the moral: I can’t tell a lie.

 

Many American History texts still include the anecdote that a British band played “The World Turned Upside Down” during the surrender ceremonies ending the Battle of Yorktown. But, as Barbara Tuchman explains in The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution [2], the story hails from an 1828 written account that was not based on historical fact. Tuchman demonstrates that this was probably not the tune played, but whatever the British did play “is historically obscure.”

 

In 2006 Vincent Carretta, English professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, challenged the authenticity of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiographical account of the Middle Passage, alleging that Equiano may never have been in Africa. While Carretta never set out to discredit the work [3], his painstaking research lit fires in African-American and American Slave studies. While the proverbial jury is still out, Carretta’s assertions severely questioned the use of sources without verifying all of the underlying facts. Popular stories achieve a sense of universal acceptance simply because no one vetted the original documents.

 

The Purpose of Historical Research

 

Historical research should aim toward a plausible conclusion based on verifiable sources and ironclad facts, even if it means debunking popular stories that fire the imagination. In American History, many of the early “creation myths” find roots in a post-1812 burst of nationalism that attempted to create larger than life heroes, the role models of a unique Democracy. Every civilization has done this. But for the historian, the truth is often hidden behind the fiction.

 

[1] See pages 32-33.

[2] See pages 288-289.

[3] Jennifer Howard, “Unraveling the Narrative,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Section: Research and Publishing, Vol 52, Issue 3, September 9, 2005, pp. A11ff.

Published December 14, 2008 in Suite101 by M.Streich, copyright