Education: How Old The New

I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further advice and no need for repentance. I thank you.

NEW ENGLANDISM

"It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain't so."

–-Josh Billings, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century."

NEW ENGLANDISM 27

There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial experience, that seems, to some people, at least–perhaps it may be said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New England–to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population, towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who's there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative tone, is, "I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with emphasis on the Boston, "Well, madam," Peter says in reply, "you may come in, but," he adds with a wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the same kind, "you won't like it."

Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of New England people, and especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all, all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has not failed of proper appreciation, to some degree at least, even in New England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we owe that delightful characterization of it in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," "Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You could not pry that out of a Boston man (and a fortiori I think it may be said out of a Boston woman) if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners," that have been perhaps oftenest quoted and are dear to every true New Englander's heart. Of course, he meant it a great deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than half in earnest? Their attitude shows us very well how much the daughter New England was ready to take after mother England in the matter of thinking so much of herself that she must perforce be condescending to others.

Lowell's expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver Wendell Holmes for the guidance of American minds. They are keys to the situation. "I know one person," said Lowell, "who is singular enough to think Cambridge (Mass.) the very best spot on the habitable globe. 'Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never did.'" It only needed his next sentence fully to complete the significance of Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of every good Bostonian. "The full tide of human existence may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense."

Of course there is no insuperable objection to allowing New Englanders to add to the gayety of nations in this supreme occupation with themselves, and we would gladly suffer them if only they would not intrude their New Englandism on some of the most important concerns of the nation. But that is impossible, for New Englandism is most obtrusive. It is New England that has written most of the history of this country and its influence has been paramount on most of our education. It has supplied most of the writers of history and moulded most of the school-teachers of the country. The consequence has been a stamping of New Englandism all over our history and on the minds of rising generations for the better part of a century, with a perversion of the realities of history in favor of New England that is quite startling when attention is particularly directed to it.

The editors of the "Cambridge modern History," in their preface, called attention to the immense differences between what may be called documentary and traditional history. They declare that it has become "impossible for historical writers of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled, by the classics of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals, and official publications in order to reach the truth." Most people reading this would be prone to think that any such arraignment of American history, as is thus made by the distinguished Cambridge editors of history in general, would be quite out of the question. After all, our history, properly speaking, extends only over a couple of centuries and we would presumably be too close to the events for any serious distortion of them to have been made. For that reason it is interesting to realize what an unfortunate influence the fact that our writers have come mainly from New England and have been full of the New England spirit has had on our American history.

Every American schoolboy is likely to be possessed of the idea that the first blood shed in the Revolution was in the so-called Boston Massacre. 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 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 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 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 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 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,28 said: "Whatever the social mixture 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."

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.