<p>Funnily enough we never had lessons in school on choosing appropriate titles for internet forum threads.</p>
<p>The title I chose is hardly disingenuous though; the American Revolution certainly is misrepresented in some schools. Either that or students don’t listen to their teachers and make stuff up in essays/general discourse.</p>
<p>Imagine that, students not listening to their teachers, and making stuff up for essays. This could only happen in America.</p>
<p>raimius, Henry never published his words and no one took notes. A re-creation was written down many years later. The only existing comments about the speech note that he was fiery and full of invective but don’t mention “give me liberty …” So it probably never happened. </p>
<p>It’s more likely Nathan Hale said a version of “regret I have only one life to give” because he may have quoted a play - can’t remember who wrote it - with words similar to that and one of the officers present at his hanging remembered similar words in a document of that time. I mention this because that is often pointed to as untrue and yet it seems to be true.</p>
<p>Nations tend their own myths. We could talk at length about Britain’s self-mythology. Britain ended the Atlantic slave trade. Yes, but only after extracting as much money as possible, after selling 7 million human beings - with more killed - and only after they lost the colonies and had engaged in multiple wars about trade to America and the Caribbean. If Britain were still making money, they would have continued to enslave vast numbers. </p>
<p>We hear about the horrors of American slavery but the number of slaves in the US grew as they had children. This meant that births outnumbered deaths. By contrast, you can look at the figures for slaves taken into British colonies and can compare those to population over the years. Allowing for emigration, it seems many British colonies were the equivalent of death camps, with hundreds of thousands brought in and tens of thousands surviving. </p>
<p>We hear all the time about British fair play - the Irish excluded, of course. On the retreat from Concord, well before the rebellion became the Revolution, British troops bayoneted wounded Americans, including 11 in one house. British troops executed - no murdered - an entire company of Americans who surrendered at Long Island. The hideous conduct of British troops in the South may well have cost them the war because that region, which was by far the most favorably inclined toward remaining British, became so inflamed by the murder and terror that they raised ever more troops and forced the British army north. And of course you knighted Banastre Tarleton though he had repeatedly executed prisoners and non-combatants. </p>
<p>Put aside arguments about representation in Parliament, any chance the British had for ending the war peacefully was killed by their brutality. That was true in New England as early as 1775, then in New York and finally in the South. Each chance they had, they chose murder and it cost them America.</p>
<p>Ah so we’ve gone from “schools” to “some schools”. Well we’re getting closer to the truth now.</p>
<p>[The</a> University of Oklahoma College of Law: A Chronology of US Historical Documents: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death](<a href=“http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/henry.shtml]The”>http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/henry.shtml)</p>
<p>I was an adult before I read any British-written histories of the American Revolution. I was stunned by their take on it: there was a huge amount of regret over the loss of Britain’s first colony over such “trivial” reasons as representation and taxation. </p>
<p>As a collateral descendant of a Revolutionary War politician who refused to sign the Declaration because it was anti-British, I’ve read a lot of Revolutionary history. My father took us regularly to Valley Forge and asked us to walk the paths the soldiers had walked. We even went out in the winter when it snowed, both to sled and to walk those paths one more time. For Washington to keep the forces together during that evil winter at Valley Forge, in the face of the disease and starvation they faced, he must have been one hell of a leader. Perhaps not a great military strategist, but a great leader nonetheless. It’s not always the same thing.</p>
<p>the American Revolution certainly is misrepresented in some schools. OP does not seem to feel it could be equally misrepresented in British schools.</p>
<p>Ime, many Brits don’t understand our continuing cultural connection to England. That includes: if someone wants to publish new research on any topic, we re just as likely to be exposed to it and consider it. Not all Americans, we’re a varied lot. </p>
<p>It’s never wise to base judgment on a small sample one encounters. That includes a few SAT samples from high schoolers on a public forum. Imo, the SAT writing is a peculiar test of form, not the accuracy of the content.</p>
<p>ps. The resources for the Henry quote included Jefferson and the point was the sentiment. Written after the fact, not unlike many documents, including the one many religions are based on.</p>
<p>Ever since I read of Tarleton’s attrocities in South Carolina during the American Revolution, it puzzled me that so many southerners held on to their defiant pride of UK heritage in the 20th Century, particularly during the Civil Rights Movement.</p>
<p>Tarleton was a take-no-prisoners type of commander who assaged a bloody guerilla war in South Carolina against the colonials. I believe he was charged with war crimes in Britain after the war in America, but was “exonerated.”</p>
<p>As for other stories or legends from the Revolution, yes scholars have said that the Boston Massacre was a bit exaggerated, but smart anti-British antagonists like Samuel Adams knew the propaganda value of identifying the free Black man Crispus Attucks as a American martyr for liberty.</p>
<p>Finally, people today don’t realize that taking arms against Britain was not universally popular. Remember, Benjamin Franklin’s son, the Governor of New Jersey, opposed the war and eventually defected to England where he lived out his days. And other loyal colonialists, including enslaved Africans, fled to Canada, particularly Nova Scotia, after losing the war.</p>
<p>Sue, the Patrick Henry text was written up by his biographer decades later. </p>
<p>Added: Just looked it up and found the written version is from 1816, which is nearly 2 decades after Henry died and over 40 years after the speech. The only notes I’ve seen of the actual speech by a person there was that Henry did a bunch of name calling that isn’t in the printed version.</p>
<p>The Henry speech is similar to that attributed to Sojourner Truth. She gave a speech in 1851 and some years later a version was published with the repeated question “Ain’t I a woman?” and in a fairly Southern dialect. Problem is Truth was from New York, was actually raised speaking Dutch and was educated. She didn’t use uneducated dialect. The only notes from a person who heard her speak don’t include the words. But we are referred to the 1863 version created by Frances Gage in dialect. It is a better literary creation than the actual fact.</p>
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<p>During the colonial period the American colonies were required to sell their raw materials to Britain and were required to buy only British finished goods. And they were forbidden to manufacture finished good of their own. Britian basically locked the colonies into trading only with it. Britain, of course, was free to trade with whichever nation it chose.</p>
<p>The fact that Americans often chose to trade with Britain after the war is completely beside the point. If you cannot see the difference between being forced to trade with Britain and choosing to trade with Britain then you don’t really understand the concept of liberty. And liberty is what the Americans were fighting for.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t know, it wasn’t on our history syllabus (no surprises there)!</p>
<p>I must confess I am surprised nobody has disagreed with what I said about the Bill of Rights. Even though what I said was true I was expecting a bit of hostility to it.</p>
<p>With regard to Patrick Henry, he did not say it. Most famous quotes people know from the American Revolution were never said.</p>
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<p>Yes, and Alfred didn’t really burn the cakes. As others have pointed out, all nations have their myths, especially with respect to their founding.</p>
<p>Dionysus58-
While the evidence he did say it is weak (as Lergnom pointed out, it was recorded by his biographer, William Wirt, after Henry’s death) there is similarly no evidence that he did NOT say it. So I don’t think it’s possible to make a definitive statement either way.</p>
<p>So, OP, what is your perspective?<br>
The issue re: quotes is true in all instances, across all time and boundaries. Any one clear comment can be re-interpreted, meanings altered or imposed-- as we see today, in an election year. As we see when some posters try to clarify for you- and you consider it defensive. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether Henry’s words are literally 100% what he said. They fit a context. They reflect attachment to the principles of the Rev War. Many details in history are lore. And, serve other purposes than black-and-white representing what was said, down to placement of commas or pauses.</p>
<p>Think about it- it’s the job of good historians to constantly seek new lights to shed. There is no period of history that hasn’t seen alterations in viewpoints- sometimes, depending on the perspectives of an era or decade. It’s organic. It’s what makes studying history rich and thought provoking.</p>
<p>And I suspect no one tussled over the Bill of Rights because each new example is scattershot. No matter what we say, you can find new targets. Or?</p>
<p>Some people who heard Henry’s speech apparently thought he said it. But as been noted, nobody took notes and there was no text. There is no question, though, that it was an aggressive anti-British speech. </p>
<p>The list items in the first post are a mixed bag. Some of them are matters of interpretation–such as the reasons for the Revolution. Others are typical problems with history–like what Henry actually said. And others are myths that educated Americans understand are myths–although some of them, like Washington chopping down the cherry tree, are so ingrained in the American psyche that I suspect many people assume they are true.</p>
<p>OP - So what is the British perspective on why the Revolution even happened at all? If oppression by the British is just a myth, and the Brits were actually kind, benevolent, and treated the Americans as their brothers, then what was all the fuss about? Why did the Americans overthrow such an advantageous situation? Why were so many willing to sacrifice their lives and treasure to get rid of the kind, generous, and all-round wonderful British? </p>
<p>If the Brits really can’t see any errors or problems with their administration of the American colonies, then it must still be a total puzzle to them as to why the Americans would do such a foolish thing as demand their independence.</p>
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<p>I don’t know what you expect. The point is not what the Bill of Rights was intended to be, the point is what it came to mean in subsequent American history. I guess you are going to move on from criticism of America’s founding myths to criticism of America’s constitution as an outmoded document. It’s rather a large change in subject, and it makes me wonder what your purpose is, although I think I can guess.</p>
<p>Back to the original topic: George Washington may not have been a great military commander, but his identity as “father of the country” has much to do with the role model he set for peaceful civil transition of executive power from one elected leader to another. He did not give in to pressures to be “president-for-life” or quasi-king, but, like Cincinnatus, went home to his farm when his time in power was up. We take this for granted now, but it was unusual in the 18th century.</p>
<p>Every so often, it gets tiring that others (not going to label them Brits) assume Americans are a bunch of dopes. That we believe anything and everything and with 'tude, to boot. Every so often, it feels like a whole lot of attitude and assumption, on their parts.</p>
<p>We also don’t believe Columbus discovered America, that the first Thanksgiving occured as legend says, that Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake,” most of us know the Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed on July 4-- and I have always doubted Robin Hood and his band really wore green tights and tunics and pointy felt shoes.</p>
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Perhaps it’s because they see a lot of our low-brow entertainment.</p>