Thanks to Lew for posting Donald Jeffries’ column, “American McHistory,” today. I can verify each of Mr. Jeffries’ criticisms against “court historians.” They are criminally inaccurate—both factually and in their interpretations; blindingly biased; and usually very poor writers who will put even the most avid enthusiast to sleep. If the corporate media hypes a historian’s work, do yourself a favor and avoid his entire oeuvre.

One small example of court-historians’ cavalier attitude towards reality: I learned quite early while researching my novel, Halestorm, that Nathan Hale’s mother died when he was 12 years old. Yet a surprisingly large number of sources claim that Nathan wrote her a farewell letter before the British Army hanged him for espionage.

A small error, true. But if historians and their editors are careless about that detail, what others have they botched?

Dwarfing such factual mistakes, however, is court-historians’ naked hostility towards freedom and their devotion to the State. As I saw from the Revolutionary generation’s songs, letters, poetry, pamphlets, journals, drinking toasts and witticisms, our forbears nigh worshipped political liberty. Their thirst for freedom drove the American Revolution. It inspired farmers and shopkeepers to defy the most formidable army of the day, to endure starvation and exposure, to risk capture, disease and death as combatants. Yet court-historians totally ignore this most obvious characteristic to paint the war as a reaction against colonialism in favor of home rule (it was actually a rebellion against all rule; many of the Revolutionaries were outright anarchists), or as a battle for democracy (the 18^th century, both here and in England, feared democracy as a surefire recipe for dictatorship), or as a proletarian protest.

I daresay my fictional take on the American Revolution in Halestorm and Abducting Arnold is far more authentic than any court-historian’s. And readers assure me that so far, neither novel has put anyone to sleep.

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