{"id":6479,"date":"2017-03-30T06:40:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T10:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6479"},"modified":"2017-04-14T07:07:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T11:07:50","slug":"white-americas-fears-have-deep-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6479","title":{"rendered":"White America\u2019s Fears Have Deep Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jane

The Death of Jane McCrea, by John Vanderlyn (1804)<\/p><\/div>\n

Corrosive racial fears got a strong start in early American history, according to historian Robert G. Parkinson in a recent talk at the David Library of the American Revolution<\/a>. While today we may think abstract concepts like \u201cliberty\u201d and \u201cpatriotism\u201d motivated colonists to go to war with Britain, Parkinson suggested something quite different in his new book: The Common Cause.<\/em><\/p>\n

The founding fathers faced two almost insurmountable tasks: uniting the colonists and persuading them the British were a deadly enemy. Many fault lines weakened the prospects for union: North versus South, Tories versus colonials, religious differences, city dwellers versus frontiersmen. Almost half of colonials themselves were English or Welsh. The redcoats were their soldiers, George III was their king. Getting them to unite and take up arms would require a powerful threat.<\/p>\n

The Set-Up<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The war planners set about inventing one: savage Indians and rebellious slaves. While most students of the Declaration of Independence focus on Jefferson\u2019s stirring opening paragraphs and skip to the end, the Declaration also lays out a long list of grievances against the King, ending with:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only a strong union, with people working in common cause, could protect against these supposed dangers. Parkinson\u2019s research in colonial newspapers reveals a deliberate and ongoing campaign to exaggerate Indian atrocities, publicize the risk of slave rebellion<\/a>, and paint the British as ruthlessly allying with these \u201cuncivilized\u201d forces.<\/p>\n

He points for example to coverage of the murder of Jane McCrea, murdered by Indians in Upstate New York. McCrea\u2019s death was reported in lurid, if not always accurate, detail in every single colonial newspaper (and was one of the inspirations for James Fenimore Cooper\u2019s The Last of the Mohicans<\/em>). Only two other news stories\u2014the announcement of the Declaration of Independence and \u201cthe shot heard \u02bcround the world\u201d opening the Revolutionary War\u2014were so universally covered; even the victory at Yorktown, which ended the war, received less media attention, said Parkinson.<\/p>\n

A Lasting Legacy of Fear<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So deep was the colonials\u2019 fear of the Indians that thirty-five years later, in the War of 1812<\/a>, outnumbered British troops could still make American forces retreat in disarray by mimicking Indian war cries. The legacy from this dark side of the American Revolution\u2014the fear of white citizens\u2019 order becoming unraveled<\/a> as Chris Hayes describes it in his new book\u2014continues to plague our country today, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement on one hand and anti-immigration sentiment on the other.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with the David Library, it\u2019s a gem, located on the fringes of Washington Crossing Historic Park in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a boon to my genealogy club, and the host for many prestigious scholars speaking about the Colonial era, the Revolutionary War, and U.S. history 1750 to 1800.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corrosive racial fears got a strong start in early American history, according to historian Robert G. Parkinson in a recent talk at the David Library of the American Revolution. While today we may think abstract concepts like \u201cliberty\u201d and \u201cpatriotism\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"White America\u2019s Fears Have Deep Roots - starting with the Revolutionary War","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[266,35,104],"tags":[549,921,920,919,922],"class_list":["post-6479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","tag-american-revolution","tag-david-library-of-the-american-revolution","tag-founding-fathers","tag-revolutionary-war","tag-robert-g-parknson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Gv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6481,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6479\/revisions\/6481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}