The Havre herald. [volume] (Havre, Mont.) 1904-1908, 1907-04-05
FICTION IN HISTORY
AMERICAN RECORDS IN PARTICul Al
ABOUND IN ERRORS.

For Instance, There Were No Cotfnr
Bales ut the Battle OF New Orleans
and CORVALLIS Did Not Hand rr;
? Sword to Washington ut TorlStaxn
The fact that large proportion q,
all the history of all the world is false
is perhaps known to few people. Tha
American history particularly abounds
In errors, plumbers and stereotypef
falsities is known to even a smaller
number. Walpole. wishing to amuse
his father after an unusually weari
some day, proposed reading to him
from book Of history. Anything but
history said the old man, 'sfor history
must be false
} When it is considered that historians
in every period Of the world have been
narrowed and biased by personal opin-
ion and surrounding circumstances the
wisdom of this remark is perceived.
The worst part of it all is that when
once mistake has been made it has
rarely been rectified, each succeeding
historian being content to accept as
facts the work Of those who Went be-
;, fore him. The ultimate result of this
was that the mistakes were believed
by those who read them, and events in
history that never happened or were
false were accepted by the world and
ever after known as the markers OF
Important epochs.
For instance, the battle Of Lexing-
;nI,
known as the first battle between the
colonists and the British But this
was not so, for the records of Orange
county, N. c., show that on the road
1rom Hillsboro to Salisbury ON May
16, 1771, an engagement between a
squad of British troops and body Of
colonists took place, In which thirty
six men were killed and several wound
ed. The trouble was caused by the re-
sentiment of the colonists over the ille-
gal taxes imposed by the British clerk
OF the county court.
Historians persist in saying and PEG
pie persist in believing that the breast
works thrown up by General Jackson
at New Orleans were made Of cotton
bales covered with earth. AS q matter
Of fact, there was not pound Of cot
ton on the ground, and this fact has
been verified by Major Chotard, Gener-
al Jackson's assistant adjutant gener-
al, who was himself a participant ID
the battle.
A well known engra wing that nearly |
always appears i'll modern school histo-
rles is that Of General CORVALLIS hand
ing his sword to General Washington |
at the surrender Of Yorktown, and this |
In spite of the fact that, to spare Corn
wallis the humiliation, General O'Hara
gave his sword to General Lincoln In
token Of surrender.
Possibly in the course of time the
battle Of Bunker Hill will be rightly
called the battle of Breeds HILL and,
to return to ancient history, the mar
velous chronicles of Herodotus will be |
discredited. 1t is told in history that
Hannibal cut his way across the Alps ;
with iron, fire and vinegar, but the
question still remains as to how he ap-
piled the vinegar. The conflicting &C.
counts of the life Of Napoleon go to H.
lustrate the discrepancies of many his |
torical writer's.
All have heard the words, "All is lost |
but honor" attributed to King Francis |
/. IN letter to a woman, yet when this |
letter was referred to for the phrase it |
was not to be found there.
And, again, when Louis XVI. laid his
head beneath the guillotine his confess
or, Able Edgeworth, dismissed him
from the world, so history tells, with
the beautiful viaticum, "Son Of St.
Louis ascend to heaven" Yet in reali-
ty he said nothing Of the sort.
The brave defiance, 1.-THE guard dies,
but never surrendeTs," attributed to
Cambronne when at Waterloo the i'm
perial guard were ordered to throw
down their arms, has been shown to
have been the fanciful creation Of
some historians mind, and the saying,
providence favors the stronger side,"
or, as it has been corrupted, "God is on
the side with the heaviest artillery"
which has been attributed to Napoleon,
really originated with writers of an
t1Quity. Cicero alludes to it as an "old
proverb."
It would take volumes to contain all
the blunders, small, large and indif
ferent, that historians have made and
the lamentable part Of it is that the
old blunders are constantly being
made over again, SO that, with the
errors that are bound to occur in the
history of the present and the mis-
takes that our forefathers made and
which we are still making, history in
time will become little more than a
long though extremely interesting
work of fiction.-Sunday Magazine.