Examining ten commonly accepted verbal maps of American history.

Examining ten commonly accepted verbal maps of American history. There is an analogy in general semantics that words and statementsare like maps that describe territories. The purpose of the analogy isto remind us that words, like maps, only represent reality and are notreality itself (the map is not the territory). To find out how wellwords represent reality, general semantics suggests it is a good idea tocheck the map against the territory--carefully examine what is beinglabeled or described to see if the words that describe it are accurate.Let's do that with respect to ten commonly accepted verbal maps ofAmerican history. 1. The Map: Christopher Columbus Discovered America A review of the territory: A national American holiday and twocenturies of school-history lessons have led many to believe as truethat Christopher Columbus was the first to reach America. But mostscholars think Columbus actually landed in Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti andthe Dominican Republic), and on an island in the Bahamas during his 1492voyage from Spain to the New World. Archaeological evidence suggeststhat Norse sailors led by Leif Ericksson reached North America fivehundred years before Columbus, establishing a colony in Newfoundlandaround 1000 AD. It is interesting to note that Columbus's bravery,persistence, and seamanship have earned him a prominent place inAmerican history. But many school-books gloss over the fact that in hisobsessive quest for gold he enslaved the local population. With otherSpanish adventurers, as well as later European colonizers, Columbusopened an era of genocide that decimated the Native American populationthrough warfare, forced labor, and European diseases to which theIndians, a name Columbus bestowed on Native Americans, had no naturalimmunities. Considering Columbus's prominence in our nation'shistory, one might ask, why don't we live in the United States ofColumbus? The answer is that Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian who captainedfour voyages to the "New World" beginning in 1499, recognizedthat the New World, a term that he coined, was a landmass separate fromAsia. To honor his revelation, Vespucci's given name was placed onthe first map of the region. While Columbus may have found the new worldfirst, Vespucci understood that it was a new world. Columbus went to hisgrave thinking he had reached Asia. 2. The Map: The Pilgrims Landed on Plymouth Rock A review of the territory: On December 16, 1620, the Pilgrims onthe Mayflower reached their new home in America. Nearly all scholars putthe Pilgrims' landing about 10 miles north of the lumpy scrap ofstone known as Plymouth Rock. There is no mention in any historicalaccount of that rock, a large boulder located in Plymouth,Massachusetts, into which, in 1880, the Pilgrim Society carved the year1620. The legend of Plymouth Rock was started in 1741 by a 95-year-oldman who said his father told him about it. Twenty-eight years later,celebrating the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock became an annualevent in New England. By 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville reported pieces ofthe rock were being venerated in different American cities, and it wasestablished as an American icon. Offers for chunks of Plymouth Rock have occasionally popped up oneBay, where asking prices have been as much as $900. However, while itis true that lots of souvenir hunters did carve off parts of the Rockduring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is no way todifferentiate a real hunk of Plymouth Rock from a fake one. For thoseinterested in seeing what is left of Plymouth Rock (it is estimated tobe only about one-third to one-half of its original size), it ispreserved today in a state park near the mouth of Plymouth harbor. 3. The Map: Betsy Ross Sewed the First American Flag A review of the territory: The legend of Betsy Ross as the firstembroiderer of the American flag was originally brought to light in1870, when one of her grandsons, William J. Canby, reported a story hisgrandmother had told him. According to Canby, George Washington andseveral others visited Betsy's upholstery shop in Philadelphia andshowed her a crude drawing of the flag, which she then produced. AfterCanby's death, a book called The Evolution of the American Flag,published in 1909, presented the claims for Betsy Ross made by Canby in1870. While Betsy Ross did make some flags in the late eighteenthcentury, it is known that she made "ship's colors" forwhich she was paid, no one has been able to verify that the Canby storyis true. Furthermore, some evidence exists that a Philadelphia poetnamed Francis Hopkinson designed the Stars and Stripes in 1780. However,Betsy Ross is still thought of by most as the sewer of the firstAmerican flag, and her house in Philadelphia has become an historicalsite. (NB: There is doubt among some historians that she ever lived inthat house.) 4. The Map: The Evidence Is In--Thomas Jefferson Fathered Childrenwith Sally Hemings A review of the territory: A popular Federalist claim in the earlynineteenth century was that Thomas Jefferson had carried on an affairwith a young slave named Sally Hemings while he was an envoy in Paris,and that she had given birth to his illegitimate children. Jeffersonnever spoke about the charges. The controversy reemerged in 1998, when the national news mediawidely reported that DNA tests on descendants of Jefferson and Hemingsconfirmed the Jefferson-Hemings relationship and that Eston Hemings, whowas freed in Jefferson's will, was Jefferson's son. But thefindings were actually not conclusive, and they showed evidence thatothers could have been responsible for impregnating Sally Hemings. What makes this story more important than a celebrity gossip pieceis the incongruity it holds between the idea of "all men arecreated equal" and the "peculiar institution" on whichJefferson's life and fortune were built. But the fact is thatnearly all Caucasians in Jefferson's day, including mostabolitionists, assumed that blacks were racially inferior. Jefferson, tohis credit, agonized over the subject. While he was inclined to whatwould be considered today racist views, Jefferson also maintained thepossibility that he might be wrong. In this respect, compared to hiscontemporaries, he was somewhat progressive. 5. The Map: The Civil War Was a Clash between Two DiametricallyOpposed Groups: Proslavery, Anti-Union Secessionists in the South andAbolitionist, Pro-Union Forces in the North A review of the territory: After the first seven states secededthere were eight slave states left, and the U.S. government tried tocraft a compromise to keep the Union intact. While the lower Southstates where slavery was more deeply entrenched were solidlysecessionist, voters in Virginia, Arkansas, and Missouri elected amajority of pro-Unionists to state conventions to decide the question.In North Carolina and Tennessee, the voters rejected secessionconventions entirely. And in Texas, Governor Sam Houston, the greatesthero of Texas independence, opposed secession. Clearly, not everyone inthe South wanted to leave the Union. In the North, a number of people, including the prominentabolitionist Horace Greeley and lots of workingmen who believed thatfreeing the slaves would mean lower wages, argued that the North shouldallow the South to go its own way. Other Northerners wanted to preservethe Union for economic reasons (e.g., many Northern businessmen believedlosing the South would mean economic catastrophe). In fact, the questionof secession in the North and the South involved a multiplicity ofviews. 6. The Map: Abraham Lincoln Said, "You Can Fool A the PeopleSome of the Time and Some of the People All of the Time, But You CannotFool All of the People All of the Time" A review of the territory: One of the most famous quotesattributable to Lincoln is this one: "If you once forfeit theconfidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect.You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people allof the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of thetime." But there is no record that Lincoln ever really said it.Supposedly part of a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, thequotation does not show up in the text printed in the local newspaper.The best evidence available for attributing the quote to Lincoln camefrom two people who, in 1910, recollected what Lincoln had said in hisClinton speech. The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency has a page on its Website that exposes sayings Lincoln never uttered. Among them: * "To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowardsof men." * "There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way todestroy. There's nothing good in war except its ending." * "The strength of a nation lies in the homes of itspeople." Lincoln also never said "If I knew what brand he'd used,I'd send every general a bottle," in response to GeneralUlysses S. Grant's drinking. 7. The Map: Teddy Roosevelt Led the Rough Riders Cavalry ChargeThat Won the Battle of San Juan Hill A review of the territory: The Rough Riders were a cavalry regimentthat Teddy Roosevelt recruited to take part in the Spanish-American War.It was a widely varied force consisting of seasoned ranch hands, Pawneescouts, Ivy League athletes, cowboys, policemen, East Coast poloplayers, and others who represented a broad cross-section of Americansociety. Before leaving for Cuba, rigorous cavalry training was conductedfor about a month at Camp Wood in San Antonio, Texas. The Rough Ridersthen moved to Tampa, Florida, the port of embarkation for the CubanCampaign. Unfortunately, a serious lack of transport resulted in almostall of the unit's horses being left behind. The regiment landed near Daiquiri, Cuba, on June 22, 1898, as partof the cavalry division under the command of Major General JosephWheeler of the army's V Corps. Although officially a cavalry unit,the regiment fought on foot. The Rough Riders were only a few hundred men among 8,000 U.S.soldiers who took part in the battle of San Juan Hill. In point of fact,about 1,200 African Americans, known then as "BuffaloSoldiers," had as much to do with the victory as the Rough Riders.But Roosevelt's account of the battle emphasized and expanded therole that the Rough Riders played, and his chronicle of the eventshelped him to get elected president in 1903. 8. The Map: American Women Were Not Allowed to Vote before thePassage of the Nineteenth Amendment, in 1920 A review of the territory: The Nineteenth Amendment was not asrevolutionary as it may seem. Women in New Jersey had been granted theright to vote as early as 1776. At that time, a new state constitutionwas adopted that gave suffrage to any free person worth more than fiftypounds. If a woman met that financial qualification, she could vote.(The men who framed the New Jersey constitution had not expected womento take advantage of the vote and were not trying to make the state moredemocratic. But their constitution inadvertently did open up the systemto women--at least women who had more than fifty pounds.) At first, few women availed themselves of the opportunity to cast aballot. Legislators believed the constitutional loophole so harmless itwas retained when a new constitution was written in 1797. But the nextfew years saw women deciding closely contested elections, so, in 1807,the New Jersey legislature rescinded women's suffrage. In 1868, the issue of woman suffrage reemerged in the WyomingTerritory. Without controversy, a measure granting women full rightspassed the upper house of the legislature. But in the lower house thebill faced stern opposition. Men there ridiculed the bill, addedoutrageous amendments, and considered not voting on it until July 4,1870--when the legislature would no longer be in session. But the billpassed by a majority of six to four. The members voting for the measuredid not really want women voting, but because they were all Democratsthey decided it would be politically advantageous to let the governor, aRepublican, who was known to oppose woman suffrage, veto the bill. He,and not they, would be blamed for defeating women's rights. But Republican governor John Campbell did not take the bait. Thougha young man and new to the state, he detected the plot and, not willingto incur the wrath of the ladies, on December 10, 1869, signed thesuffrage bill. It is interesting to note that at the time of the passageof the Nineteenth Amendment women were allowed to vote in a dozenstates. 9. The Map: John F. Kennedy Wrote Profiles in Courage, For Which HeWas Awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 A review of the territory: It is true that Kennedy won a PulitzerPrize for Profiles in Courage, a book about senators who had performed acourageous act while in office. It is also true that the book wonKennedy national attention and cemented his standing among liberals inthe Democratic Party. But it is highly questionable whether he wrote it,or at least wrote it by himself. The idea for the book--a study of heroic U.S. senators--came toKennedy in 1954, when he was a first-term senator. Initially, heimagined it as a magazine article, but during a long convalescence aftera couple of back operations he decided to make it into a book. His chiefassistant on the project was his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, who workedon the project for six months, sometimes twelve hours a day. Sorensencoordinated the work and drafted many chapters. Others also madecontributions, most importantly Georgetown history professor JulesDavids. Garry Wills, a noted historian, has argued that JFK was the authorof the book in the sense that he "authorized" it. While it istrue that Kennedy conceived the book and supervised its production, hedid little of the research and writing. Evidence also exists thatsuggests Why England Slept, an earlier bestselling book on the causes ofWorld War II credited to Kennedy, was at least partly the work ofsomeone else. 10. The Map: The Bush Administration Moved the United States Awayfrom a Tradition of Cooperative Diplomacy by Violently Overthrowing theGovernments of Afghanistan and Iraq A review of the territory: America has had a long history oftoppling foreign regimes. Beginning with the ouster of Hawaii'smonarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War, theCold War, and the "war on terror," the United States (throughcoups, revolutions, and invasions) has overthrown fourteen foreigngovernments. Specifically, those in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines,Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile,Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the UnitedStates carried out overthrow operations openly, through military power.During the Cold War, that was no longer possible because an invasion ordirect intervention against a foreign government might bring about areaction from the Soviet Union. Therefore, in the early 1950s, the CIAwas given the job of clandestinely overthrowing governments. It did sofour times in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile. In recent decades, America has returned to its original way ofoverthrowing foreign governments: by military invasion. During thisperiod, the United States has overthrown the administrations of Grenada,Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. America will probably remain an interventionist power. Its positionin the world makes this fairly certain. But an important question to askis: Can the United States intervene more effectively, in ways thatpromote stability rather than instability? Perhaps if our leaders areable to learn from their mistakes in the past, the answer to thatquestion will be yes. References Brinkley, Alan. American History: A Survey. New York: McGraw Hill,1999. Davis, Kenneth C. Don't Know Much about History: EverythingYou Need to Know about American History But Never Learned. New York:Perennial, 2003. Johnson, Paul M. A History of the American People. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999. Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Changefrom Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Times Books, 2006. Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your AmericanHistory Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People.London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Shenkman, Richard, and Kurt Rieger. One-Night Stands with AmericanHistory. New York, Perennial, 2003. Wiegand, Steve. U.S. History for Dummies. New York: Wiley, 2001. Woods, Thomas E. The Politically Incorrect Guide to AmericanHistory. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004. Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. NewYork: Harper and Row, 1980. Martin H. Levinson is the President of the Institute of GeneralSemantics and the author of several books on General Semantics.