Tag: Early American History

Insurrection Act Of 1807

Since the failed coup by insurrectionists on 06 January 2022 there has been lots of concern over the actions of a few…..and of course that made me think about history….there was a time when the president was in fear of a popular insurrection against the government of the nearly formed American government…..and he did something about the rise of insurrection…..

There has been some recent talk in Congress about changing the Insurrection Act of 1807. This act empowers the president to send federal troops to quash “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

Although altering the law has been caught up in the politics surrounding the end of the Trump administration, when the administration considered invoking it several times in 2020, the statute has always been dangerous, is outdated and unneeded, and should be either completely repealed or amended to restrict severely presidential actions.

In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed the congressional legislation when rumors abounded that the scurrilous Aaron Burr, his former vice president, was raising a personal army. During American history, it has since been used to send active U.S. military forces to both support and impair civil rights and quell a riot. In the latest case, President George H.W. Bush used federal forces to quell the 1992 Los Angeles riots in the wake of the acquittal of four policemen in the beating of Rodney King.

Yet one of the major fears of the nation’s founders—which continued well into the 20th century but has now been forgotten—was the dread that a standing military would impair Americans’ liberty. Because of the anxiety in American society about the depredations of the British military on civil liberties before the American Revolution, George Washington, the first president, had trouble getting Congress to give him enough forces to fight Native Americans on the frontier.

Only after two major defeats at the hands of the Indians did Congress even marginally increase the U.S. Army. And this skepticism of a standing military lasted through the 19th century and well into the 20th century. It was American tradition that when a war was over, most of the U.S. military demobilized—even after the sizeable conflicts in the Civil War, World War I and World War II.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp

If you are interested there is more background on this attempt by Jefferson…..

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/insurrection-act-explained

https://www.history.com/news/insurrection-act-thomas-jefferson-aaron-burr

This is the law that Trump was considering to use to try and stop the count of the electorate ballots…..lawful exercise of government.

This law needs a major overhaul…..but that is for another day because there is too much plaguing the nation for this to be a concern.

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Freedom Of The Press

A little history for this Sunday…..a tidbit from out forgotten past…..

My continuing civics series….’where it all began’….

These days with all the hate speech and the defense of such speech citing the first amendment of our Constitution……it might be a good thing to learn about the this important amendment…..

Ever hear of John Peter Zenger?

I bet your history class did not cover this important event….let’s step back into American history to the year 1735…..

No democracy has existed in the modern world without the existence of a free press. Newspapers and pamphlets allow for the exchange of ideas and for the voicing of dissent. When a corrupt government holds power, the press becomes a critical weapon. It organizes opposition and can help revolutionary ideas spread. The trial of John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was an important step toward this most precious freedom for American colonists.

John Peter Zenger was a German immigrant who printed a publication called The New York Weekly Journal. This publication harshly pointed out the actions of the corrupt royal governor, William S. Cosby. It accused the government of rigging elections and allowing the French enemy to explore New York harbor. It accused the governor of an assortment of crimes and basically labeled him an idiot. Although Zenger merely printed the articles, he was hauled into jail. The authors were anonymous, and Zenger would not name them.

In 1733, Zenger was accused of libel, a legal term whose meaning is quite different for us today than it was for him. In his day it was libel when you published information that was opposed to the government. Truth or falsity were irrelevant. He never denied printing the pieces. The judge therefore felt that the verdict was never in question. Something very surprising happened, however.

The first jury was packed with individuals on Cosby’s payroll. Throughout this process, Zenger’s wife Anna kept the presses rolling. Her reports resulted in replacing Cosby’s jury with a true jury of Zenger’s peers.

When the trial began and Zenger’s new attorney began his defense, a stir fluttered through the courtroom. The most famous lawyer in the colonies, Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, stepped up to defend Zenger. Hamilton admitted that Zenger printed the charges and demanded the prosecution to prove them false. In a stirring appeal to the jury, Hamilton pleaded for his new client’s release. “It is not the cause of one poor printer,” he claimed, “but the cause of liberty.” The judge ordered the jury to convict Zenger if they believed he printed the stories. But the jury returned in less than ten minutes with a verdict of not guilty.

Cheers filled the courtroom and soon spread throughout the countryside. Zenger and Hamilton were hailed as heroes. Another building block of liberty was in place. Although true freedom of the press was not known until the passage of the First Amendment, newspaper publishers felt freer to print their honest views. As the American Revolution approached, this freedom would become ever more vital.

(ushistory.org)

This is where the much revered first amendment got its roots….

So when you are preaching the freedom of the press we Americans can thank Zenger for the importance that this issue was given when the Constitution was being drafted.

Happy May Day one and all….

Enjoy your Sunday…..

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Citizen Genet Affair

It is the weekend and as a small diversion from the horrific news of the I would like to offer up a little American since there are moves to re-write it….I think it is important to learn it all…the good, the bad and the ugly…..so let’s step into the ‘way back machine’ to the early days of our republic.

I once taught a class on American Foreign Policy from the beginning to recent history……some say the John Adams and his Sedition Act was our first crisis on the international stage….I disagree.

The new nation of United States of America faced its first foreign policy crisis in 1793 when the US and France were at diplomatic odds….

Edmond Charles Genêt served as French minister to the United States from 1793 to 1794. His activities in that capacity embroiled the United States and France in a diplomatic crisis, as the United States Government attempted to remain neutral in the conflict between Great Britain and Revolutionary France. The controversy was ultimately resolved by Genêt’s recall from his position. As a result of the Citizen Genêt affair, the United States established a set of procedures governing neutrality.

American foreign policy in the 1790s was dominated by the events surrounding the French Revolution. Following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792, the revolutionary French Government clashed with the monarchies of Spain and Great Britain. French policymakers needed the United States to help defend France’s colonies in the Caribbean – either as a neutral supplier or as a military ally, and so they dispatched Edmond Charles Genêt, an experienced diplomat, as minister to the United States. The French assigned Genêt several additional duties: to obtain advance payments on debts that the U.S. owed to France, to negotiate a commercial treaty between the United States and France, and to implement portions of the 1778 Franco-American treaty which allowed attacks on British merchant shipping using ships based in American ports. Genêt’s attempt to carry out his instructions would bring him into direct conflict with the U.S. Government.

The French Revolution had already reinforced political differences within President George Washington’s Cabinet. The Democratic-Republicans, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, sympathized with the French revolutionaries. The Federalists, led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, believed that ties with Great Britain were more important. President Washington attempted to steer a neutral course between these two opposing views. He believed that joining Great Britain or France in war could subject the comparatively weak United States to invasion by foreign armies and have disastrous economic consequences. President Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality on April 22, 1793.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/citizen-genet

Further reading on this historic issue…..

https://www.thoughtco.com/citizen-genet-affair-4147691

The early years of our republic are fascinating….so much back and forth…..start and stop for American foreign policy.

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Founders And Political Parties

As yet another election approaches I thought since political parties are all the rage I would take a look at the beginning of the American experiment…..

In the beginning (all great sagas begin with that intro) our Founding Fathers while I may not agree with some of their thoughts did have the right idea about the possible rise of political parties, factions if you will…..

Today, it may seem impossible to imagine the U.S. government without its two leading political parties, Democrats and Republicans. But in 1787, when delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia to hash out the foundations of their new government, they entirely omitted political parties from the new nation’s founding document.

This was no accident. The framers of the new Constitution desperately wanted to avoid the divisions that had ripped England apart in the bloody civil wars of the 17th century. Many of them saw parties—or “factions,” as they called them—as corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that they wanted to discard in favor of a truly democratic government.

“It was not that they didn’t think of parties,” says Willard Sterne Randall, professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and biographer of six of the Founding Fathers. “Just the idea of a party brought back bitter memories to some of them.”

George Washington’s family had fled England precisely to avoid the civil wars there, while Alexander Hamilton once called political parties “the most fatal disease” of popular governments. James Madison, who worked with Hamilton to defend the new Constitution to the public in the Federalist Papers, wrote in Federalist 10 that one of the functions of a “well-constructed Union” should be “its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

https://www.history.com/news/founding-fathers-political-parties-opinion

Then there is Jefferson who liked the idea of factions….

Thomas Jefferson, who was serving a diplomatic post in France during the Constitutional Convention, believed it was a mistake not to provide for different political parties in the new government. “Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties,’’

With Jefferson as secretary of state and Hamilton as Treasury secretary, two competing visions for America developed into the nation’s first two political parties. Supporters of Hamilton’s vision of a strong central government—many of whom were Northern businessmen, bankers and merchants who leaned toward England when it came to foreign affairs—would become known as the Federalists. Jefferson, on the other hand, favored limited federal government and keeping power in state and local hands. His supporters tended to be small farmers, artisans and Southern planters who traded with the French, and were sympathetic to France.

And so it began!

Fast forward to the 21st century…..

This country has become the embattled nation the Founders feared….

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.

The theory that guided Washington and Adams was simple, and widespread at the time. If a consistent partisan majority ever united to take control of the government, it would use its power to oppress the minority. The fragile consent of the governed would break down, and violence and authoritarianism would follow. This was how previous republics had fallen into civil wars, and the Framers were intent on learning from history, not repeating its mistakes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/two-party-system-broke-constitution/604213/

Sadly this nation is far from finding a solution to this chaos….if it ever will is still debatable….my thought is that it is doomed….parties will bring ruination to this country….that and the corruption that goes hand in hand with parties.

Any thoughts?

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Where It All Began

Sunday and time for a little early American history……

This part of my series on the founding of this republic…..there are too many that know little to nothing about the beginnings of the United States of America…..and for me that explains why this country is so divided and chaotic.

Some seem to think that this system of government was the brain child of the Continental Congress…..but it began years before the idea of separation from Britain was the call of the day….

The Albany Plan of Union was a proposal written by Benjamin Franklin and introduced during the Albany Congress, which was held in Albany, New York in 1754.

The purpose of the Albany Congress was to have colonial leaders meet with representatives from the Six Nations to discuss how the colonies could work with them against the French. However, the idea of some type of organized union had taken hold with Franklin.

Prior to the Albany Congress, Franklin wrote down his ideas for a union of the colonies, which he called “Short Hints.” He provided a copy to Congress but soon found out that union was not only on his mind but also the mind of others. He recalled years later that “It then appear’d that several of the Commissioners had form’d Plans of the same kind.”

Franklin’s plan defined a permanent federation between the colonies, as a means to reform colonial-imperial relations and to more effectively address shared colonial interests, including making treaties, raising military forces, and levying taxes. The plan, as proposed by Franklin, proposed:

  • A President General, appointed by the Crown.
  • A Grand Council, consisting of delegates from the lower houses of the colonial assemblies.
  • Each colony would have between two to seven delegates, based on the size of the colony.
  • Each colony would have one vote, regardless of the number of delegates it sent.

Albany Plan of Union

This Albany Plan for Union was the first attempt at centralized government in the English colonies….and after a few short years, a revolution and the nation of United States of America was born.

Do learn more on the founding of this country…..

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-albany-plan-of-union-4128842

This country needs to teach the origins of the nation more heavily…..so students can see the trials and tribulations that the men, the Founders, went through to get us to this spot in history.

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Lewis And Clark

Note:  This is a draft I was holding but due to the death in the family I post it now…..

It has been awhile since I gave my readers some history….I will try and rectify my oversight.

We Americans do not remember much of history but I bet everyone knows the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of exploration of the newly acquired land out West that we purchased from France.

The movies that most will remember and think that the romantic adventure was all about exploration…..

Sadly those cinematic offerings are shirt on accuracy…..

It’s a story many American children are familiar with. President Thomas Jefferson had just bought millions of acres of land from the French — the famous Louisiana Purchase — and he needed someone to go explore this wild western territory. To that end, he recruited Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who gathered a team of brave men to go on a journey to the Pacific and back. The Lewis and Clark expedition, or the “Corps of Discovery” as it was known at the time, closely documented the flora and fauna of the uncharted West and befriended the many Native American tribes they met along the way. In particular, they made friends with the young Sacagawea, who served as a guide and translator for the Corps.

This common story, while not entirely false, is highly inaccurate. The real expedition was far more brutal — from violent conflicts with Natives to the whipping of enlisted men. This article will fill you in on all the grim details you weren’t told about in school.

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/235028/the-messed-up-truth-about-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition/

Like most of the history we are taught in school is sanitized to make it seem more noble than it actually was…..

The way that some useless politicians and equally useless individuals are trying to whitewash our history to make it seem like all was blue skies and unicorns…..

I have stated many times that ALL our history should be taught….the good, the bad and the ugly……denying our history does not make it fact.

A country of people running scared of their true history.

History should not be sanitized….it should be taught in all it’s glory and all it’s ugliness….we have had 200+ years of misinformation.

Be Smart….Learn Stuff….

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Our First Insurrection

Everyone of us citizens has an opinion on the breaching of the Capitol building on the 06 January…..some see it as the legal challenge to the Constitution and others see it as a failed coup attempt by nationalists…..who is wrong or right?

Well that will depend on who you chat with…..but the challenge happened and now it gives me a chance to inject a bit of history.

Was the failed coup attempt of 06 January the first challenge to the government?

Actually o6 January was not the first challenge to the authority of the government….the year is 1786, the place is Massachusetts….

The insurrection was lead by one Daniel Shays after the disorganization in the beginning Shays eventually became the leader of the insurrection.

What was it all about….why were the farmers so damn angry…….

In the aftermath of the American Revolution the new United States faced many challenges and difficulties. Of all the difficulties, Shays’ Rebellion was perhaps the most important.

The Articles of Confederation was the first form of organized federal government the United States employed following independence. The Articles made the federal government extremely weak and left most power to the states.

Nothing highlighted this weakness better than the outbreak of Shays’ Rebellion and the powerlessness of the federal government to respond and react.

Shays’ Rebellion was an organized rebellion of western Massachusetts farmers and countrymen against the state of Massachusetts in 1786-1787. These farmers rebelled against the unjust collection of excessive taxes and seizure of property when taxes went uncollected.

Many of the rebels were disgruntled former Continental army soldiers who went unpaid during the revolution. These poor farmers were now being forced to give up their lands when they could not pay the high taxes imposed on them by the state governments.

After peaceful attempts to come to a resolution were ignored by state leaders primarily from the eastern coastal area, the protesters took more forceful means to protect their interests. Courthouses and state buildings were surrounded and government officials prevented from following through with evictions and arrests.

The federal government was aware of the rebellion and the possibility of an attempt to take weapons from the federal armory in Springfield, MA. It soon found itself powerless to take any action given that it could not raise an army of its own nor levy taxes.

Why Is Shays’ Rebellion Important?

My thought is that this ‘rebellion’ was one reason the 2nd amendment was put into the Bill of Rights…..but that is a whole different conversation.

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The ‘Confederation’

My Civics series of ‘Where It All Began…..

“In The Beginning…..” that is how all great myths begin.

And so it was with these United States…..in the beginning was our Confederation period…that was the period after the War and before the Constitution was finalized and ratified…..

The year is 1777……

Americans had a myriad of concerns in the years following the end of the War for Independence. Many of those issues centered on the Articles of Confederation and the powers delegated to Congress. Previous attempts to amend the Articles of Confederation inside and outside of Congress proved unsuccessful. All proposals to give Congress powers to tax and regulate commerce failed to get the approval of all thirteen state legislatures which was required by Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation. Among the many considerations that Americans faced during the “critical period,” the items below certainly paint a somber backdrop to the decade following the Revolutionary War.

There were several attempts to change the Articles of Confederation as the laws of the land…..

Throughout the 1780s Congress attempted to amend the Articles of Confederation. Some of these efforts tried to empower Congress by temporary grants of power to tax or to regulate commerce. This approach appeased those who were fearful of an over-powering, consolidated government. However, even these failed to gain the necessary approval of all thirteen state legislatures. The documents below illustrate attempts to revise the Articles of Confederation. Many of these same issues would resurface later in the Constitutional Convention.

These were some of those attempts….

Did you know that there were those that thought this country should be divided into 3 or 4 separate confederacies…..

The prevailing wisdom of the late 18th century was that republics could not succeed over large territories. The French theorist Montesquieu wrote, “it is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist,” as the interests of its citizens become too diverse and extensive to be represented. The size of the United States raised doubts of its viability as a republic because of the differences in culture, economy, and climate among the thirteen states. To remedy this, sporadic proposals surfaced calling for the division of the United States into three, four, or over thirteen separate confederacies. During the Revolutionary War, this idea had less traction because of the necessity of united action against the British. Once hostilities ended, however, the idea became increasingly  part of political discussions.

During the ratification debate, Federalists criticized Antifederalists for supporting separate confederacies. John Jay addressed the issue repeatedly in Federalist 2–5. Although Antifederalists never supported the creation of separate confederacies, Federalists themselves suggested that separate confederacies might be an alternative if attempts to strengthen the central government failed.

For an extended discussion of this topic, see The Idea of Separate Confederacies in Volume XIII of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.

The Idea of Separate Confederacies

Of course this idea was squashed by the introduction of the idea of the Constitutional Convention……read on…… The Idea of Separate Confederacies  

Sadly it is looking like the anti-Federalist idea of separate confederacies is becoming more attractive these days as the country is dividing along silly lines.

An interesting part of our history that gets overlooked in the day to day teaching of our history.

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Aaron Burr–Forgotten Founder

Another weekend and another history lesson  (is that an eye roll I hear?)……since many Americans are woefully ignorant about our history I feel I must try to correct that lack of knowledge.

All the hoopla around the theatrical production of ‘Hamilton’ (No I have not seen this production (there is something repugnant, to me, about history reduced to song and dance) but the life of Hamilton got me to thinking about a ‘founder’ that was interesting to me in my college years and that is the dude that shot and killed Hamilton during a duel, Aaron Burr.

I feel I need to set the story straight for I think the Burr, granted he was an arrogant tool, has been left out of history because he was in opposition to Jefferson and as we all know he is a god among some scholars.

There is so much more to Burr than our measly history texts give….ore than his duel or his vice-presidency, his war of words with Jefferson and Hamilton or his supposed treason.

Learn about the person before you condemn….

Aaron Burr Jr. (1756-1836), was thought to be one of the most brilliant students graduated from Princeton in the eighteenth century. Woodrow Wilson said he had `genius enough to have made him immortal, and unschooled passion enough to have made him infamous.” His father was Princeton’s second president; his maternal grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, was Princeton’s third president. The younger Aaron Burr was left an orphan when he was two years old, his father and mother (and both maternal grandparents) having died within a year. He did not respond well to the discipline of his austere uncle, Timothy Edwards, several times running away from home and attempting to go to sea. He entered the sophomore class at Princeton at the age of thirteen and graduated with distinction at sixteen in 1772, a year after James Madison and Philip Freneau. He was a member of the Cliosophic Society and for his Commencement Oration chose the prophetic topic `On Castle Building.”

Burr studied theology for a while and then law. After the Revolutionary War, in which he served with distinction as a field officer, he took up the practice of law in New York City and entered politics, serving as a member of the New York state assembly, attorney general of New York, and United States senator. In the presidential election of 1800, he received the same number of electoral votes as Thomas Jefferson, but the tie was broken in the House of Representatives in Jefferson’s favor, and Burr became vice-president.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/aaron-burr-jr/

Many see him as a traitor for his supposed attempt to establish his personal empire in the American West…..but was he or was he just a victim of a smear campaign?

In the summer of 1807, the city of Richmond, Virginia, played host to one of the most remarkable trials in early American history. The case involved several legal luminaries, but its undisputed star was the defendant, 51-year-old Aaron Burr. The New Jersey native had only recently served as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, but since then his reputation had been marred by political intrigue and his participation in a duel that had left Alexander Hamilton dead. Burr now stood accused of one of the gravest crimes in American law: treason. According to one account, he had been at the heart of a “deep, dark, and wicked conspiracy” against the young United States.

What was the nature of the plot that had seen Burr charged with treason? Even today, many details of the scheme remain hazy. “Too many people told too many different stories, and too many people had things to hide,” historian Buckner F. Melton has written. What is known is that Burr worked to raise a small army on the American frontier. He may have hoped to lead an independent campaign against Spanish-held territories in Texas and Mexico, but it’s also possible that he planned to wrest a portion of the newly acquired frontier from the United States. According to some contemporaries, Burr had designs on founding a new western nation with himself as its emperor.

https://www.history.com/news/aaron-burrs-notorious-treason-case

Learn the particulars and not the ramblings of those that tend to demonize for whatever reason.

Americans needs to learn more about Burr….beyond he shot and killed Hamilton….there is always more to the story than that of academics trying to make a name for themselves.

Suggested Further Reading:

Fallen Founder: Life Of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg

Burr Conspiracy by James E. Lewis, Jr

Memoirs Of Aaron Burr, Complete Edition by Mathew L. Davis

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“That Rag-Tag Army”

The truth is that the news is so damn redundant that I have become bored with it….and after all the readership of this blog slips during the holiday season…..so I revert back to my secondary interest…history.

I have been doing a lot of reading about the beginnings of the United States, from 1750-1812, and watching documentaries on the Revolutionary War and in that time I have seen and read many things that are not that accurate.

Most of the history is whitewashed or sanitized, if you will…..

If instance take the participation of France in the American Revolution…..

It’s the goddamn American Revolution. Sure, the French stepped in late in the game, but by the time they bothered to put down their baguettes and wine, the colonists had already proven they were a solid bet. Even after the Americans won at Saratoga, French assistance was, well, French: underwhelming and plagued by indecision.

The Reality

In the centuries since the Revolutionary War, French contributions have been criminally downplayed. Somewhere between the real Yorktown and Mel Gibson’s rather less accurate version, The Patriot, the monumental French war effort during the birth of America got forgotten, buried in the sand, and pissed on.

The truth is, the 13 colonies would never have earned their freedom without French intervention — the whole battle for American independence was essentially a proxy war between Britain and France. To the French, America was nothing but another theater in their grand blood feud against Britain. They were all about making the Englishmen eat every last available dick, and since they noticed they could use the colonists’ struggle for independence as a handy feeding pen, that’s exactly what they did.

France began providing arms and ammunition as early as 1776 (the war started in 1775). In early 1777, months before Saratoga, the French sent American colonists 25,000 uniforms and pairs of boots, hundreds of cannons, and thousands of muskets — all stuff that the colonists would’ve had a hard time surviving without, and all stuff they had no access to on their own. And that was just the tip of the iceberg: From supplies to advice to military reinforcements, France exercised all the fiscal restraint of a drunk businessman at a strip club when it came to funding the American war.

France provided a whopping 90 percent of the rebels’ gunpowder. Let that sink in for a second. Without France, the entire American Revolution would have devolved into a bunch of dudes swinging their muskets as clubs within weeks.

Still, the most important French contribution to the revolution (or, if you’re British, their ultimate dick move) was the least visible to Americans. As mentioned, the reason France pampered the Patriots was always selfish. They were out to weaken the British forces — particularly their naval strength — in order to take the fight to them, perhaps even conquer them. That’s why, for much of the Revolutionary War, the British ships tasked with kicking America’s ass had to survive 12 rounds with the French navy before they could even think of crossing the Atlantic. France gleefully fought the British, eventually teaming up with Spain, declaring a war, attacking from all sides, and even setting up an invasion force. In those battles, America’s independence was a fart in the desert.

So, when the Colonial army was fighting for dear freedom, history books tend to conveniently forget that they did so with French money, equipment, and backup forces, while France and its other allies were busy pummeling the empire from every other side.

(cracked.com)

Like I stated whitewashed.

Like so many other things and people the US history tends to sanitize the facts so that the noble Colonialist appear more god-like.

There is such much more and so many myths that need to see the light of day.

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Joy to all and to all a good night.

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