[log in to unmask] wrote:
> the winners write history.....the north and to hear it told in Mass..... New
> England won the conflict between 1861 and 1865...they get to publish the
> history and then publish the text books so everyone gets the PC version of New
> England history. It's only been in the last 20 years that other regional
> histories have come into the history story...but they still want everyone on to
> think Plymouth was the first
>
>
>
But remember that Americans started writing histories of the country
soon after independence (i.e., well before the Civil War). Also, a
reading of histories produced from the late 1860s into the mid-20th
century reveals that most are not especially critical or neglectful when
it comes to describing the southern colonies and states and their
achievements.
The skirmishing over priority in the origins of the colonies (plus
institutions) that became the US started early. For example, at the 1802
Forefathers' Day celebration at Plymouth, participants readily conceded
that Virginia was home to the oldest permanent settlement. But the roots
of America's political ideology and institutions, they said, were in
Plymouth's free soil, not the slave South. They toasted "our Sister
Virginia:--When she changes three-fifths of her Ethiopian Skin, we will
respect her as the head of our /white/ family." (from Joseph A.
Conforti, /Imagining New England /[2001], p.182) This could be read as a
complaint about slavery or about blacks or both (clearly it is critical
of the 3/5 compromise that, Northerners argued, led to
overrepresentation of the Southern slaveholding states in the H of R).
At every stage, this origins debate has tended to reflect current themes
as much as historical arguments....
Another good book on this question is Ann Uhry Abrams, /The Pilgrims and
Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin/ (Westview Press, 1999).
Doug Deal
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