History is supposed to be true even at the risk of being boring. Of course, no one expects Hollywood to abide by that constraint. (Mel Gibson's Martin Luther would have a spectacular sword fight with Pope Leo X.) As the Fourth of July approaches, Talk Radio will be taking similar liberties with the American Revolution.
The firecracking patriots of the airwaves will extol the heroic deaths and noble sacrifices of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. According to the script, "Nine fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War....Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died....Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned." This recitation is dramatic and poignant, as well it should be. After all, who wants to hear banal lies and boring exaggerations?
This radio rhetoric is based upon an anonymous essay circulating on the internet. It is a remarkable effort at distortion and fabrication. For example, nine of the signers did die during the Revolutionary War. However, none died in battle. Seven died of natural causes; the 18th century physician was far more dangerous than the British soldier. As for the two deaths by unnatural cause, Button Gwinnett lost a duel to an American officer, while Thomas Lynch drowned in a shipwreck.
The script also fabricates the torture and death of imprisoned signers. Yes, five were captured and all have since died; however, only Richard Stockton suffered any mistreatment. In November 1776, he was captured by American Loyalists, alias the Tories. Stockton was fortunate that he lived to be imprisoned. (Both the Tory and the Continental militias were known to scalp captives.) The Continental Congress negotiated with the British to secure Stockton's release after a few months of imprisonment, but the squalid conditions of his confinement ruined his health. He died four years later.
The other captives merely suffered embarrassment. George Walton surrendered with the hapless garrison of Savannah. Edward Ruttledge, Thomas Heyward and Arthur Middleton were captured when Charleston fell. Rather than torture and death, they enjoyed the benefits of British snobbery. They were esteemed as officers and gentlemen, men of stature and breeding. (Middleton was a graduate of the real Cambridge, not the pretentious upstart in Massachusetts.) While the enlisted men were herded into the holds of prison ships, the celebrity captives were kept in modest comfort waiting to be exchanged for captured British officers.
As the essay asserts, a dozen signers saw their homes ransacked or burned. However, the culprits were not always British. In several cases, the attacks were by the signers' Tory neighbors. The Conservatives of the time vehemently opposed the Revolution. Here is another awkward fact ignored by the essay. The home of James Wilson was pillaged but by the Revolutionaries, who suspected the Pennsylvanian of being a turncoat.
The script goes on with its litany of distortions and evasions. It claims that Carter Braxton and Robert Morris sacrificed their fortunes for the Revolution "and died in rags"; in fact, they went bankrupt decades later in land speculation. The essay reports that Lyman Hall, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and George Wythe suffered the "vandalism and looting" of their plantations. Yes, the British also freed the slaves, an inconvenient fact overlooked in this paean to liberty.
What is the purpose of this travesty of history? Can we justify the American Revolution only by lying about it? There is no need for melodrama or special effects. It does not matter that George Ross died of gout in 1779 rather than British bayonets. The truth itself is fascinating and important. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were audacious visionaries.
They hoped to justify armed rebellion against the world's greatest power and most liberal government. As British subjects, they enjoyed a degree of freedom unknown to any other people at the time. Indeed, when confronted with an unresponsive myopic bureaucracy, these Revolutionaries invoked the English right to resist injustice. The Declaration of Independence takes that principle and boldly expands upon it. Freedom was not just an English idiosyncrasy but the natural right of all mankind. That idea was the American Revolution.