topic by
amelia gora
(468 posts)
Mililani, Hawaii,
Kingdom of Hawaii
10/12/2005 (21:25) |
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BACKGROUND of Americans through an article that was printed in THE READER'S DIGEST No. 65, September 1927 pages 309-310; and,
COLONIAL HISTORY DEBUNKED
Condensed from Harper's Magazine
Harold Underwood Faulkner
Probably no period in our history has received more exhaustive investigation by historians than that between the discovery of America and the War of the Revolution. Yet it is astonishing how large is the amount of almost unadulterated bunk which has been regularly disseminated in books and school rooms.
Virginia presents one of the most persistent bits of fiction, --that a goodly proportion of its wealthy families emanated from the nobility of England and came to Virginia after the decapitation of Charles I. Actually, the Virginian aristocracy developed almost entirely within the colony, and the larger part of it was derived from the English merchant class. The leading families of Virginia had exactly the same origin as those of New England. The Virginia middle class sprang from the families of immigrants of humble means and origin.
The colonial Virginian stock was, in fact, primarily recruited from the lower and poorer classes in England--those groups whose economic position at home was hopeless. A number of these were able to pay their own passage and to set up immediately as small proprietors. The great majority, however, of the immigrants to Virginia ccame as indentured servants. Between 1635 and 1680 there arrived in that colony annually from 1000 to 1600 servants, Governor Berkeley estimating the annual immigration at 1500. Wertenbaker believes that 80,000 would be a conservative estimate of the number of indentured servants who landed, asserting that they were the most important factor in the settlement of the colony. Becker describes these servants as an 'inferior and servile' class. In brief, then, the elite colonial population of Virginia, instead of being composed of the best elements of English society, was composed to a considerable extent of the worst.
Most people have another misapprehension when they think of the colonial South as a community in which the social and economic unit was the large plantation worked by slaves and supervised by cultured gentlemen who lived a life of opulence and refinement. As a matter of fact, there were few slaves in Virginia until the 18th century. Again, although the tone of Virginian society was given by wealthy planters of the type of the Beverleys, Carters, and Byrds, most of the southern whites were small landholders, as Wertenbaker has conclusively proved. Prof. W. E. Dodd, a leading Southern historian, maintains taht 'nine-tenths of the South's landowners at any period were small proprietors.' Moreover, the Southern planter of large estate, where he existed, like his English prototype, was a hard-drinking, horse-racing farmer whose recreation was more often found following the hounds than in prerusing the classics, and whose sexual appetite was as likely to be appeased in the quar
ters o
f
his slaves as in the bonds of holy matrimony.
From the pride with which the Colonial Dames point to their ancestors one would suppose that they were supermen, the ne plus extra of European society. On the contrary, a majority belonged to the class at home who were economically beaten or who were persecuted for religious or political beliefs. The latter element, of course, were likely to be above the average; the former group, however, driven out by economic pressure, left reluctantly and contributed a racial stock highly undesirable, except as providing a supply of cheap labor. Relatively few immigrants who were economically independent came to America of their own initiative during the colonial period.
What has been said of the population of Virginia applied to most of the norther colonies, but to a lesser degree. In the North the self-sufficient farm obtained rather than the large plantation and, as a consequence, the pressure for cheap labor was not so great. Nevertheless, indentured servants of various types and the beaten and outcast of many nations formed a goodly proportion of the immigrants. We find Governor Bradford of Plymouth describing a most degrading sex crime and trying to explain 'how came it to pass that so many wicked persons and profane people should so quickly come over into this land.'
His explanations have a modern ring to them. The chief reasons which he advanced wer (1) that the great need of servants in a new land forced those in need of help 'who could not have such as they would...to take such as they could'; (2) that ship owners 'to make up their freight and advanc4e their profits, cared little who the persons were, so they had money to pay them'; and (3) that many were sent of their friends that they might be eased of such burthens and they kept from shame at home that would necessarily follow their dissolute courses.' The colonial court records of a typical New England community, such as Plymouth, with its depressing series of indictments for sexual crimes, indicate clearly that there was a considerable sub-normal racial stock present. From whence, then, comes this exaggerated pride in colonial forbears and this idea that the colonist was a superman and the very flower of Nordic civilization?
The popular conception of colonial New England is as erroneous as that of Virgina, only in this case the trouble arises from an excess of hostile criticism, due to the tendency to blame most of the unpopular features of our civilization upon New Englalnd Puritanism. The picture which the average individual has of early New England is that of a community where a lot of long-faced hypocrites divided their attention between sterile fields and a horrible theology, and dragged out a gloomy existence under the iron rule of ministerial oligarchy, the monotony varied only by the pleasure of occasionally hanging a Quaker or burning a witch. Because a lying person, one Sam Peters, invented a number of so-called 'Blue Laws,' many today still believe that to kiss one's child on the Sabbath, to make mince pies, and to play certain musical instruments were criminal offences under the laws of New Haven.
The laws in New England were not only less cruel than in England but they were enforced with less severity. That there was considerable interference in the private life of the Colonial New Englander is not to be denied; but who are we who live in an age of innumerable violations of personal liberty, and who have barely raised a protest, to sneer at our forbears?
True enough, New England for almost two centuries was virtually, though not technically, a theocracy; but it should be remembered that the clergy of colonial New England were the best educated, often the only educated, individuals in the community, and exercised power through the force of intellectual superiority as well as through the prestige which came from their position as head of the most important social institute in the community. The possibility of a society ruled by its most intelligent citizens is so far removed from the degenerate democracies of our own then that it is quite beyond our powers of comprehension. Hence, I suspect, the somewhat condescending attitude which we assume toward our ancestors. Those of us who have dallied in the tap rooms or before the fireplaces of the cozy colorful(?) taverns, or have stood in amazement at the sure and often rich art of New England as displayed in the Royal Mansion at Medford or the Lee Mansion at Marblehead, cannot he
lp but
feel that at least 18th-century New England could not have been such a hopeless place in which to abide. If some of the evils under which we suffer are, as is contended, the result of Puritanism, it was the Puritanism of those who moved out. Certainly New England has been as much as any part of our country a home of that religious, political, and personal liberty which is fast vanishing.
Note and Comments:
America was and is made up of CRIMINAL DEVIANTS, BELIALS, SCOUNDRELS, AND SCUM documented.
Those who call themselves the better lot are the educated with a religious background. Also remember that the religious folk opposed England's rules and resorted to moving and assuming American Indian lands...
Therefore, America has different levels of SCOUNDRELS.......and then they came as mercenaries/missionaries to Hawaii after Kamehameha had set up our government, income through shipping duties, etc.
added note: There are good people too....a mixed bunch for sure....
aloha. |
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