The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-08-02


 the struggle for American independence are a continuation and enlargement of 'The True History of the American Rev olution, published some years ago by MT. Fisher in one volume. That work, while being a brief general account of the contest, dwelt more particularly on certain phases of the struggle which had been omitted or ignored by the his- 1 torians. The author of that volume soon discovered that it did not go far enough, 1 that the original plan should be extend- | ed and carried out in more detail and 1 that the mass of original evidence in | libraries and historical societies should be made accessible and revealed to the l public in as complete a manner as pos l sible. The author also states In the preface to these two volumes The l Struggle for American Independence. 1 that the American people have little con- | ception of what the Revolution really was: no conception of the nature or the original evidence and the unwililngness of our writers of general history to cite that evidence keeps 1t sealed book to the public. Further, the author says, that our national feeling is bound up in the Revolution and the supreme import anee of such an event which was the foundation of our nationality and of the political and social principles by which we are still guided, seems to deserve all of the light that 1t is possible to obtain. We naturally wish to know the origin of our political existence and ex- aetly why and how we broke away from that great empire which since then has never allowed another dependency to es- cape, which has reduced republics to colonies and brought into subjection in- numerable peoples and races and whose rule, we are told, is an unmixed bless ing, far preferable to independence.
 The author says that although our Revolution is said to have changed the thought of the world, like the epochs of Socrates, of Christ, of the Reformation and of the French Revolution, that as yet no complete history of 1t has been written upon the plan. of dealing frankly with all the contemporary evidence and withholding nothing of importance that is found in the original records. That our histories are really able rhetorical efforts, enlarged Fourth of July orations or pleasing literary essays on selected phases of the contest But that there has been no serious attempt to marshal all the original sources of information and reveal them to the reader as has been done for the history of England, of France and of other countries. Mir Fish CT insists that our historical writers have utterly ignored the position of the loyal ists and their terrible conflict with the patriots. whom they almost equalled in numbers. Those writers have failed so Mir Fisher says, to describe the methods by which the loyalsts were subdued, which amounted. he says, to another war in addition to that carried on by Wash ington against the British army. That those writers ignored the controversy over General Howe's methods of carry ing out his instructions from the British ministry; the investigations of those methods by parliamentary inquiry and Howes defense of himself. That they ig- nored the Clinton-Cornwallis controversy without knowledge of which, MT. Fish CT insists, it is impossible to understand the strategy of the last three years of the Revolutionary war 1t Is impossible to understand the first three years with out knowledge of the Howe contro- versy. MT. Fisher says that there Is no general history of the Revolution from which one can obtain an intelligent un- derstanding of the navigation and trade laws and the part they played in the contest; of the smuggling in defiance of them and the nature of the controversy over the writs of assistance which were issued to stop the smuggling, nor Is there any history that tells us what became of the navigation and trade laws and writs of assistance after the Revolutionary war and whether they were continued in force among Great Britain's remaining
 
 when and what were the reasons for. the repeal
 MT. Fisher states that he has never been able to find any history which even attempts to describe from the original records England's exact position with re- gard to ourselves at the outbreak of the Revolution except the usual assumption that the Tory statesmen who were in power were either ignorantly stupid and blind to their own interests or desperate ly corrupt and wicked, and that the whig minority were angels of light who would have saved the colonies for the British empire. MT. Fisher says that, according to that assumption the contest of the Revolution was one of extreme virtue on one side against extreme vice of every sort on the other; and that if the good Whigs had had their way, we should still be innocent, loyal colonies as Can ada and Australia are supposed to be, happy in their lack of dangerous and tu- multous independence. MT. Fisher wishes to know just why this should be regard ed by our historians as a desirable re- suit of the Revolution, and why their att tempts to show that we wanted to re- main in the British empire should be considered patriotic
 MT. Fisher says that there is no history that gives any adequate description of the 12 or 13 acts of parliament that the
 
 full explanation as to just why they wished these acts repealed. That there IS no account of the full meaning of the patriots requirement that Great Britain should keep no troops and build no for tifications In a colony except by consent of that colony. All of these questions were familiar in the days of the Revo- lution, but for want of adequate descrip- tion, they are now as unknown, MT. Fish, CT says, to modern readers of history as are the conciliatory measures Great Brit ain adopted her gentle and mild efforts to persuade us to remain in the empire, and that we must not obscure or ignore these measures because they do not show the British government to have been stupid and tyrannical. MT. Fisher says that our great masters of historic method and research-Prescott, Motley and Park man-never attempted to write the his tory of the Revolution. That they rather sought a field for their genius in de- scribing the conquest and plunder of the native races of Mexico and Peru, the successful resistance of Protestant thrift and heroism, in The Netherlands, the TO- mantle adventures of Jesuit missionaries and the French and Indian wars of Can ada MT. Fisher does not seem to under stand why those great historians con sidered the Revolution unnteresting or unworthy of their genius. MT. Fisher suggests a few reasons why these men of genius may have felt indisposed to take up this field of work, and adds that it Is possible that they may have in- ferred from the histories published in