Will rewrite nation's history to suit new tenant
Vin Suprynowicz
Some publicity has been generated by the prominent play given leftist
college professor Garry Wills' review of the new book "Arming America: The
origins of a National Gun Culture," by The New York Times.
I have not yet received a review copy of "Arming America," by Michael A.
Bellesiles, though the folks at Alfred A. Knopf have promised me one.
Both Mr. Bellesiles and Mr. Wills embrace the theory that the old notion
of America being "an armed nation" from 1750 to 1850 -- that America was
conquered and defended by a rural, civilian populace mostly armed -- is a
myth. They go further, asserting that this myth has been invented on
purpose by a modern right-wing conspiracy which they call "the gun cult."
I think it would thus be fair to characterize "Arming America" as an
"anti-gun book."
Mr. Bellesiles, a colonial historian at Emory University, examined more
than 1,000 probate records from New England and Pennsylvania for the years
1763 and 1790, discovered only 14 percent of these estates conveyed
firearms to the decedents' heirs, and that "over half of them were
unusable."
From that, both Mr. Bellesiles and his happy reviewer, Mr. Wills of
Northwestern University, conclude that only 14 percent of Americans in the
period 1763 to the Civil War owned firearms.
What Mr. Bellesiles has proved, Mr. Wills instructs us, is that, "Before
the Civil War ... the average American had little reason to go to the
expense and trouble of acquiring, mastering and maintaining a tool of such
doubtful utility as a gun."
Clayton Cramer, who earned his master's degree in history at Sonoma State
University in 1998, has been on the trail of Mr. Bellesiles' thesis for
some time. He explodes it completely in his recent essay "Gun Scarcity in
Antebellum America" (www.ggnra.org/cramer/GunScarcity.pdf).
Rather than extrapolating from probate records, Cramer goes to original,
contemporary sources.
He finds Philip Gosse, an English naturalist visiting Alabama in the
1830s, writing: "The long rifle is familiar to every hand: skill in the use
of it is the highest accomplishment which a southern gentleman glories in;
even the children acquire an astonishing expertness in handling this deadly
weapon at a very early age."
Gosse goes on to note that marksmanship skills were so "universally high"
that young men had to resort to "curious tests" to prove their skill, such
as driving a stout nail halfway into a post, whereupon the young men "stand
at an immense distance and fire at the nail: the object is to hit the nail
so truly on the head with the ball as to drive it home."
Yep. I guess those southern boys had pretty much never seen a rifle before.
Touring the young nation in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville reported that in
Tennessee, "There is not a farmer but passes some of his time hunting and
owns a good gun."
In 1839, Englishman Charles Augustus Murray wrote for his British
readership of visiting a farmhouse in rural Virginia: "Nearly every man has
a rifle, and spends part of his time in the chase."
Nor was this merely a rural phenomenon. In Charles H. Haswell's
"Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian" (1896), he recalls that in
February of 1836 a mob gathered to burn "Saint Patrick's Church in Mott
Street." The effort came to naught, however, because, "The Catholics ...
not only filled the church with armed men," but put so many armed men on
the walls that Haswell describes the roof-line as appearing "crenellated"
with them.
Does Mr. Wills embrace Mr. Bellesiles' evident nonsense because it
confirms preconceived notions he wants desperately to believe? If so, was
he a miserable choice to provide Times' readers with a reasonably skeptical
analysis of the flaws in Mr. Bellesiles' methodology?
Were Joe Stalin's men ever any better at revising truth and history --
cutting unwanted middlemen out of the old photos and sliding Comrade Joe
over till he appears to be whispering in Lenin's attentive ear?
As to the flaws in Mr. Bellesiles' method, they should be fairly obvious.
My own grandfather died only a decade ago, after a long infirmity. He left
no written will that my mother can recall, and conveyed no firearms through
probate. Mr. Bellesiles would thus conclude Clarence Edward Higginbotham
never owned any guns, and had no skill in their use.
In fact, my grandfather was an accomplished and dedicated deer hunter,
with a large gun closet. He taught me to shoot the rifle. As he grew older,
he entrusted these weapons, one at a time, to friends and relations. If he,
a 20th century resident of Ohio, saw no need for a will to convey these
familiar but valued assets, how much less occasion did the average frontier
American of the late 1700s have to bring lawyers and courts into the
transfer of household goods to the next generation?
Finally, for the sake of argument, let us ask: If it could be
demonstrated that only 14 percent of antebellum Americans had been
churchgoers, could we therefore safely conclude the notion of Americans
having long been a "God-fearing people" has been newly cooked up by some
weird right-wing cult? And would it therefore become more acceptable to
infringe the First Amendment freedom of religion -- the Second Amendment
being the real target of the bizarre revisionism we have been examining
here today?
Americans without guns! These guys must be college
professors.
http://www.infomagic.net/liberty/vs000917.htm
Vin Suprynowicz
Some publicity has been generated by the prominent play given leftist
college professor Garry Wills' review of the new book "Arming America: The
origins of a National Gun Culture," by The New York Times.
I have not yet received a review copy of "Arming America," by Michael A.
Bellesiles, though the folks at Alfred A. Knopf have promised me one.
Both Mr. Bellesiles and Mr. Wills embrace the theory that the old notion
of America being "an armed nation" from 1750 to 1850 -- that America was
conquered and defended by a rural, civilian populace mostly armed -- is a
myth. They go further, asserting that this myth has been invented on
purpose by a modern right-wing conspiracy which they call "the gun cult."
I think it would thus be fair to characterize "Arming America" as an
"anti-gun book."
Mr. Bellesiles, a colonial historian at Emory University, examined more
than 1,000 probate records from New England and Pennsylvania for the years
1763 and 1790, discovered only 14 percent of these estates conveyed
firearms to the decedents' heirs, and that "over half of them were
unusable."
From that, both Mr. Bellesiles and his happy reviewer, Mr. Wills of
Northwestern University, conclude that only 14 percent of Americans in the
period 1763 to the Civil War owned firearms.
What Mr. Bellesiles has proved, Mr. Wills instructs us, is that, "Before
the Civil War ... the average American had little reason to go to the
expense and trouble of acquiring, mastering and maintaining a tool of such
doubtful utility as a gun."
Clayton Cramer, who earned his master's degree in history at Sonoma State
University in 1998, has been on the trail of Mr. Bellesiles' thesis for
some time. He explodes it completely in his recent essay "Gun Scarcity in
Antebellum America" (www.ggnra.org/cramer/GunScarcity.pdf).
Rather than extrapolating from probate records, Cramer goes to original,
contemporary sources.
He finds Philip Gosse, an English naturalist visiting Alabama in the
1830s, writing: "The long rifle is familiar to every hand: skill in the use
of it is the highest accomplishment which a southern gentleman glories in;
even the children acquire an astonishing expertness in handling this deadly
weapon at a very early age."
Gosse goes on to note that marksmanship skills were so "universally high"
that young men had to resort to "curious tests" to prove their skill, such
as driving a stout nail halfway into a post, whereupon the young men "stand
at an immense distance and fire at the nail: the object is to hit the nail
so truly on the head with the ball as to drive it home."
Yep. I guess those southern boys had pretty much never seen a rifle before.
Touring the young nation in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville reported that in
Tennessee, "There is not a farmer but passes some of his time hunting and
owns a good gun."
In 1839, Englishman Charles Augustus Murray wrote for his British
readership of visiting a farmhouse in rural Virginia: "Nearly every man has
a rifle, and spends part of his time in the chase."
Nor was this merely a rural phenomenon. In Charles H. Haswell's
"Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian" (1896), he recalls that in
February of 1836 a mob gathered to burn "Saint Patrick's Church in Mott
Street." The effort came to naught, however, because, "The Catholics ...
not only filled the church with armed men," but put so many armed men on
the walls that Haswell describes the roof-line as appearing "crenellated"
with them.
Does Mr. Wills embrace Mr. Bellesiles' evident nonsense because it
confirms preconceived notions he wants desperately to believe? If so, was
he a miserable choice to provide Times' readers with a reasonably skeptical
analysis of the flaws in Mr. Bellesiles' methodology?
Were Joe Stalin's men ever any better at revising truth and history --
cutting unwanted middlemen out of the old photos and sliding Comrade Joe
over till he appears to be whispering in Lenin's attentive ear?
As to the flaws in Mr. Bellesiles' method, they should be fairly obvious.
My own grandfather died only a decade ago, after a long infirmity. He left
no written will that my mother can recall, and conveyed no firearms through
probate. Mr. Bellesiles would thus conclude Clarence Edward Higginbotham
never owned any guns, and had no skill in their use.
In fact, my grandfather was an accomplished and dedicated deer hunter,
with a large gun closet. He taught me to shoot the rifle. As he grew older,
he entrusted these weapons, one at a time, to friends and relations. If he,
a 20th century resident of Ohio, saw no need for a will to convey these
familiar but valued assets, how much less occasion did the average frontier
American of the late 1700s have to bring lawyers and courts into the
transfer of household goods to the next generation?
Finally, for the sake of argument, let us ask: If it could be
demonstrated that only 14 percent of antebellum Americans had been
churchgoers, could we therefore safely conclude the notion of Americans
having long been a "God-fearing people" has been newly cooked up by some
weird right-wing cult? And would it therefore become more acceptable to
infringe the First Amendment freedom of religion -- the Second Amendment
being the real target of the bizarre revisionism we have been examining
here today?
Americans without guns! These guys must be college
professors.
http://www.infomagic.net/liberty/vs000917.htm