Schools and history

Obama’s State of the Union, Black History month, school board elections.  What we need is not so much a black history month but good history that includes those of African ancestry. 

            It was not so much that I resented my public school history teachers, but that they seemed incapable of reasoned curiosity.  One day our American History teacher told us that the cause of the Revolutionary War was taxes on paper (Stamp Act) and a tax on tea.  “Wait a minute,” I stopped him.  “The Stamp Act was a one-half of one percent sales tax on paper products.  It lasted only a year, was repealed in 1765, fully ten years before the Revolution.  The tea tax was similarly miniscule.  Do you mean to tell me that those guys like Paul Revere risked lives and families and property because they disagreed with a tiny tax?”  That was correct, the teacher avowed.  And then he gave me that paternal look, “Well, what do you think the cause was?”  I didn’t know, but his much bandied-about explanation surely wasn’t correct.  Or if Shakespeare would have been in our class, “Methinks the colonists doth protest too much.” Would you risk it all for half a percent?

            So I studied the thing and found out what they don’t tell you in public schools.  Their pro-union perspective is that all history boils down to money.  So the Roman empire fell because of economic problems; communism fell because there weren’t enough consumer goods.  Well, yeah, those things contributed, but Truth is far more interesting.  If you look at the Declaration of Independence, you notice there are 22 reasons that “impel the separation.”  No taxation without representation was #14 and it stands alone as an economic reason.  The first 11 are all abuse of power reasons.  That should tell us something!  Of course, there were monetary reasons.  The Brits needed to pay for the French and Indian War (War of Empire).  General taxes were unusual in the 18^th century and only imposed during times of National distress and upon consultation of the Parliament. That’s what “no taxation without representation” was all about and why the Stamp Act (the first internal taxation of colonies) was controversial.  There was also a Plantation Act that restricted trade and a Currency Act that outlawed Yankee paper notes.

            But there was other stuff going on.  First, in 1763, the British government decided to solve the Indian relations themselves and drew a line down the Appalachians limiting westward expansion.  This angered the colonists as an affront to their sovereignty, a threat to their future expansion, but most of all, they didn’t want government solving any Indian problem.  They had their own system.  It was called Christianity.  Colonists had noted that hostilities with tribes practically disappeared when they became Christian.  To this end they formed many Bible societies to print scriptures and Mission Societies to spread the gospel to the Indians.  But the crown was especially wary of non-Anglican colonies evangelizing. They were especially chagrinned by the Presbyterians in New Jersey and Long Island, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania who organized a multi-state inter-denominational effort and they forbid it in 1775.  This was the last straw for the colonists who saw the mother country meddling in their faith.  This is why the Brits landed at New York City as a first strike to put down the revolt. This is why the last reason for separation of the Declaration is, “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…”

            The crown set up a system of custom houses, staffed by British soldiers who imposed a martial law court in order to collect the tea-glass-lead-paint (Townsend Duties) tax that was imposed ‘externally’ on items coming into port.  The colonists noted however that the martial law court denied the longstanding right to jury of one’s local peers (oops! Magna Carta). Their argument was that as British citizens, they had all rights of the British Bill of Rights of 1689.  Now since the right to vote was restricted to only those who had land and property, 90% of the British public didn’t vote, but in the colonies 90% of the people owned land and voted.  So it was hard for colonists to accept the British language of themselves as parents and Americans as children. As unequals the colonists feared loss of control of their own affairs.  For instance, ‘general warrants’ allowed unlimited search and seizure in America but were illegal in Britain. This was the issue of the famous Boston Massacre when some harassed British regulars opened fire on a hostile crowd.  The New York Assembly refused to accept all British demands for quartering troops.  This practice often left farmers in destitution and near starvation. Parliament threatened to suspend the Assembly.  Intervening in colonies’ constitutional and charter arrangements was considered a high crime by the Americans.  And those interventions comprise most of the reasons of abuse of power at the beginning of that list in the Declaration.

            The Tea Act of 1773 gave the East India Company monopoly rights to sell tea to the colonials.  Bad move.  The Americans saw this as usurpation of the free market and boycotted the Tea. Parliament, under the Quebec Act made Roman Catholicism the official faith of French Canada and joined Canada to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.  This was considered both an illegal appropriation of lands and an attempt to thwart non-Anglican Protestants in the colonies.  Probably true.  The Brits saw Quakers and Baptists as sure insurgents.  Americans who had lived through the Great Awakening saw them as trustworthy friends and neighbors.

            And so collective action was called for.  A Continental Congress was established to transmit grievances to London in 1774.  The mood was cautious optimism for restored harmony.  The King rebuffed the petitions.  A second Continental Congress of  May 1775 was called, but the abolishment of Massachusetts government and the April 19 clash at Lexington and Concord derailed reconciliation for many delegates.  This incident was about disarming the militias. Taking guns from citizens, who had no police, no defense from bandits and Indians, and formed militias to keep law and order was considered an unbelievable usurption of rights.  In August, the King declared a state of rebellion meaning all rights were suspended.  January 1776 brought Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  The die was cast.

            My history teacher chided me that at the beginning of the Revolution, hardly a third of the colonists wanted independence.  “All the more amazing that you think this was just over taxes!” I replied.  “One third were angry enough to want independence from the most powerful empire in the world.  Folly.  And not just 1/3 but think who they were.  Men of distinction, leaders, not unemployed troublemakers.  Don’t tell me this was just in reaction to a silly tax!”

            And you wonder, if someone teaches this way, would they decide that a gathering of concerned citizens over loss of our society, loss of our rights, our faiths calling themselves a modern day Tea Party, would think, “Why this is just a bunch of people obsessed with taxes and money.  What crazy radicals they must be! We need to send the King’s army to straighten ‘em out.”