“History

is

Bunk”

Henry Ford

Henry Ford looked forward only; he changed the world with his vehicles but he had no time for the past.

The recording of history is a risky business, often distorted by mistranslation, lies, exaggeration, bias, typos, political ambition, gossip, misinformation, miscalculation or just plain delusion. The great pioneer industrialist, Henry Ford said "History is bunk", and he never looked back. We take a look at a few examples of facts gone wrong.

Our New 5 Part Series

IS HISTORY BUNK?

PART 5

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So, who is bunk now, Henry?

New York Times, Oct 28 1921

Sooner or later, like it or not we will all become history. As we age, perhaps we all will  start to change our minds as to whether or not history really is Bunk. Henry Ford did. Although he would likely not admit it.

As he aged Henry started to clarify his blunt statement. History was still, ‘more or less’ bunk, he insisted. He still did not believe in history. It was ‘of the past and had no bearing upon the present’. So, there being nothing to be learned from it, ‘history need not be studied nor considered’.

             To some the tragedy is not just that, as they say, ‘history will repeat itself if it is not known’. The tragedy is that it also repeats itself even when it is known. European wars dissolve into brutal repetition. The trenches of Russia’s War on Ukraine look a lot like those of World War Two, those looked a lot like World War One’s, which in turn looked a lot like those of the Napoleonic era. Not much learnt. We just keep doing the same things.

The History Channel is Canadian. The Internet tells us so.   It also tells us that:

History Channel's mission is to raise awareness about the vitality of history, promote history education, and encourage the preservation of historic archives and sites.

Many of the shows that keep them afloat don’t have much to do with history, but they do sell ads. At the top of the list are those about UFOs. We also have Pawn Stars and Border Guards and Storage Wars helping to raise ‘the vitality of History’.

Nevertheless, we are told that:

‘…. the channel has tried to honor its original mission in some way while still appealing to broad audiences. The last vestiges of history on History appear in the channel's slate of popular miniseries. They aren't particularly historically accurate, but they are at least about historical events. And people like them.’

One might be forgiven for wondering what the point is to have history programs, on the History Channel, which are not ‘particularly historically accurate’. Perhaps that’s okay because ‘people like them’. It seems that if accurate history is insufficiently interesting to support profitably advertising, then history must be amended to do so. What a world we live in.

               Henry Ford’s young self would probably have looked askance at the old man he became, for ironically that old man established a Museum!

              It has obviously been built as a display of history. But, to give Ford  credit, it is  one dedicated to innovation,  not to wars, not to rich white men, and, thank Henry, not of politicians. Ford’s outdoor Museum celebrates what he called American Innovation. Located in Dearborn, Michigan, it is essentially a Village dedicated to progress. ‘Greenfield Village’, according to the brochures allows you to ‘Play pilot as you explore flight innovations, starting with the Wright brothers' achievements, or make yourself at home inside Buckminster Fuller’s circular Dymaxion House. Put yourself in the place of the movers and shakers who blazed the trail to where we stand today. And in doing so, discover your own path’.

               In this little series, we have seen History lost in translation as, a Mr. Bishop, or maybe a Bishop, or maybe a dead man, kills his wife. We saw Rev Mason Weems, and his Canadian equivalent, William Foster Coffin, boldly make up history about George Washington and Laura Secord, respectively. Both profited from it. Is that okay if it at least gives us some heroes? You decide.

               We started with Henry Ford, so let’s end it the same way. When pushed Henry Ford summed up his philosophy.

 ‘We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.’

 

The trouble is if we only see history as a tool for profit, we may not just ‘make history today’, we may also ‘make it up’.

 

 

PART 4 (Part 3 continued)

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I get by with a Little Help from my Kings

‘Any Historical Cake is always better with lots of  Icing    

Anonymous

Years later, as a king he still donned a white hat with a board coloured ribbon

Laura Secord was not born a Canadian. So how did she become one of our great Canadian heroes? She was born in the States to a family who supported the American rebels not the British. She was moved with her family, not as Loyalists fleeing America, but, like so many others to get free or cheap land. They were established in the place now called Ingersoll which was her family name.

It was not the facts of her great hike of 1813 to warn the British troops of a coming American assault that made her famous. It was the icing slavered on those facts. After the war she repeatedly sought a pension for her services. After investigations, she was repeatedly turned down.

Only decades later would Laura get any meaningful recognition. Once she received royal attention, accommodating historians set about graduating her from simple patriot to grand hero. Not everyone would agree. Pierre Burton wrote volumes on the war but could only bring himself to mention in passing that the Battle of the Beaver Dams was the event that ‘made Laura Secord famous’. He was too much of a gentleman to complain of her fame and too much of a historian to jump onto the bandwagon. He left it  all alone.

While the eighteen-year-old Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, toured Canada, in 1860, one of his duties was to set the cornerstone for a Monument honouring Sir Isaac Brock at Queenstown. It was at the spot where Brock had fallen in battle and Laura Secord was, remarkably, still living nearby.

The Prince was our first royal visitor and he attracted no end of attention, largely from our younger set.  Often, he was seen wearing a white hat with a broad coloured band. It drew much admiration from the young ladies in the crowds that surrounded him. After he deposited it in a cloakroom, one or more of them decided to sneak in and take at least the band as a treasured memento. Even the men, it seems were copying the stylish royal. Unfortunately, there were four similar white hats. Confused as to which was his, the culprits took all four.

The Prince was later presented to veterans. At Queenstown one hundred and thirty veterans of the war of 1812 were gathered, among them one lady now of eighty-five years, Laura Secord. The Prince was interested and heard her story. Which version he heard is unclear. After his return to England, he remembered her, and granted her a one-time gift of one-hundred-pounds. News of that recognition was widely reported and it cemented her public celebrity. One hundred years later an enterprising entrepreneur decided to name his chocolates after her. They became a best seller; so historically speaking, did she.

Laura Secord’s picture hangs now in the Legislature as a royally recognized Canadian hero. Schools are named after her. All deserved perhaps.   So far at least we haven’t heard anything negative about her. For this she will likely remain a heroine fit at least to grace chocolate boxes. In comparison one might note that schools named after our first Prime Minister are now regularly renamed something else. So are pubs. And Highways.  If it is royal approval you want, Laura Secord got it. Not only did she get praise from the then future Edward the 7th,  she got it in spades from his great, great, Grandson, now Charles the Third. In what can only be described as a real stretch, Charles has declared that without her Canada may  not have  survived.  

                                   Weems and Coffin knew that  “History is what you make it.” 

 But doesn’t this mean that “Even Historians can’t predict the past.” It just keeps changing, just ask Sir John A.   Heroes seem to need constant polishing. They are hard to keep shiny. Maybe Prince Harry can help.

OVER 200 YEARS LATER, LAURA SECORD STILL HSARES BILLING WITH ROYALTY

PART 3

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The Sweet Tale of Laura Secord - First Part

“To give an accurate description of what has never happened is not merely the proper occupation of historians, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.” Oscar Wilde

We will perhaps conclude that exaggerating about their great heroes is just another bad American habit. Not so, it is something Canadians can also excel at. In fact, William Foster Coffin convincingly exceeded Weems (see our previous blog), but then Coffin was a lawyer not a minister.

Laura Secord remarkably well dressed to sneak thorough Military lines.

We all know the basic story of Laura Secord. She is said to have saved Canada by walking many miles through swamps and forest, going  behind enemy lines to warn Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon that a British defensive position during the war of 1812 was about to be stormed by the Americans. She had overheard American soldiers billeted in her home chatting about the plans. She at once realized that the Canadians had to told to avoid being slaughtered. As her husband had been disabled by an earlier war injury, she alone could take on the task.

Historian Coffin takes up the story; ‘She spoke out, she would go herself. Fitzgibbon needed to be warned.’

The next morning, she, we are told, got up at three and like a good wife would, prepared breakfast for the children to have later when they woke. Then as dawn broke, off she started on a circuitous 20 plus mile walk through American controlled territory. She was in  such a hurry she forgot to put her shoes on, and went either barefoot or in slippers, you choose.

Only a woman had any hope to get through the enemy lines. She just might be allowed through if she bettered her chances by taking a cow, and a bucket. If stopped she planned to say she was just out milking, or if challenged further, she would say she was taking Nellie to market for sale.

The first sentry was ‘difficult’ and even after letting her pass kept his eye on her, while she studiously milked the cow. The cow we are told was ‘very contrary’. Somehow, she and that cow edged away and disappeared into the forest.

Coffin continues;

‘She knew the way for miles, but fear rose within her, in spite of herself, and what scared her most was the distant cry of the wolf- they were abundant in those days; and twice she encountered a rattlesnake…..at length she reached a brook. It was hot, and the water refreshed her, but she had some difficulty in crossing’.

From there she arrived at a British post where the guards warned her to beware of Indians. Sure enough, shortly after, the sound of her footsteps on brittle leaves, aroused ‘from their cover a party of red skins.’

‘Woman, what do you want’ they demanded. She bravely spoke up and was surprised to be offered the Chief’s guidance to the British headquarters. There she delivered her news of the American plans. She saved the British forces! They promptly set up a successful ambush and later caught the advancing Yankees unawares.

Weems, with his story of George Washington and the cherry tree may be accused of putting a little icing on the historic cake, but Coffin was now about to slap it on, with cherries on top. He was writing fifty years after the war ended and had no special knowledge of Laura’s story, only a desire to make it into a moral lesson extolling patriotism and female bravery. He didn’t know the details, nor could he.

Let’s think about it. How, almost fifty years after the event, could Coffin possibly know all the particulars he spouted? Do they even make sense? First off, if you were sneaking though enemy lines, would you leave without shoes?  If her mission were so urgent, would she really prepare breakfast for the family? If you were travelling off-road to avoid detection, would you take the family cow? Pretend to milk it? Then, abandon that valuable animal in the woods? Have a dip in a hot spring on the way? The lady was too smart for all that.

Laura existed no doubt. She was brave no doubt, small, mighty, and determined. But from there Coffin and others fine-tuned the nonsensical details.  One subsequent raconteur even tried to tie the lady into the namesake chocolate company, suggesting she had used chocolates to bribe post guards to let her pass. More nonsense of course. She came one hundred years before her namesake chocolates. As for Laura herself she reported no cow, both shoes, no sentry, friendly natives, and just a really long hard walk. Other historians have said that it was all in vain as the British knew already the American were coming before she arrived.

…………………………to be continued

 

PART 2

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Does it Matter Whether it’s True?

‘History is something quite different from the past.’ 

Wayne Johnson 

Historians have sometimes simply made-up bits of the past they felt were needed to sell their books. One of these was a Minister and itinerant book seller, Mason Locke Weems. His historic invention was a whopper and it stuck.

The good Reverend claimed that young George Washington, having received an axe as a sixth birthday present, adjourned to the backyard and tried it out. He was handy enough with it to quickly dispatch the family’s cherry tree. When his father confronted him, he courageously admitted all. ‘I cannot tell a lie…I did it with my hatchet’. The story goes that this example of an honest little boy was matched by the example of a generous father. George’s father is said to have been delighted by his son’s honesty, which he declared to be ‘worth a thousand cherry trees’.

Does it matter that George Washington never cut down a cherry tree? Weems felt that even if he hadn’t, he perhaps should have, and if he should have, a person of his character would not tell a lie by denying it.

This vignette is so charming that one can only wonder that Weems left it out of the first four editions of his biography. By the time the fifth edition was to come out we may not be surprised to know that the public was perhaps wearying of the same old thing.

Weems correctly judged that they were not just looking for the straight truth. They were looking for a hero. The story of a great boy becoming a great man, was a good moral lesson. Even, apparently, if untrue.  Why shouldn’t the readers get what they want?  The Minister obliged. The new edition flew off the shelves and the story became engraved permanently in the popular imagination.

To celebrate his success Weems plunged on abusing history. Successive volumes rampaged over American history and bore increasingly lengthy and titillating titles. One of them we present in full for your consideration.

 They are all good stories but rarely good history, but they do tend to stick in the mind.

Once again history has been ‘made’.

 

GOD'S REVENGE AGAINST ADULTERY,

Awfully Exemplified in the Following Cases of American Crim. Con.

I.The Accomplished Dr. Theodore Wilson (Delaware,) Who for Seducing Mrs. Nancy Wiley, Had His Brains Blown Out by Her Husband.

II. The Elegant James O'Neale, Esq. (North Carolina) who for seducing the Beautiful Miss Matilda Lestrange, was Killed by Her Brother.

PART 1

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Lost in Translation: Did the Bishop Kill his Wife?

The past, or more specifically those bits of it we think might be important or entertaining, keeps changing. And usually, the story grows. All of us like to be accurate but also, we generally prefer to interest others if a little icing on the cake of truth will help.

J.M. Lemoine in his 1878 Chronicles of the St. Lawrence relates the changing story of a then recent tragedy which occurred at St. Albans, Quebec. The first report was in the English-speaking papers and was that one John Bishop, in a fit of jealousy, shot his wife and then himself. The French newspapers misunderstood and claimed the offender was not Mr. Bishop, but the local Bishop.

As the story was repeated it became necessary to assure the readers that the Bishop involved was a Protestant one, as, of course, a Catholic one could not have had a wife to shoot. Somehow the reports were also now amended so that the wife was expected to recover. As the story spread, it recrossed the language barrier and reached its ultimate absurdity in the Daily News. The murder suicide was reported thus; ‘In a fit of jealousy, a man killed himself and afterwards killed his wife.’ Sometimes it occurs that the past is not simply lost but simply, ‘lost in the translation’.

So is history forged.