Last week in this space I jumped the gun a bit by celebrating July 4th in advance. Today it’s actually here, which means I’ll continue the celebration. First, though, I’ll go back to Michael Pearson, the English historian with the dim view of some of the heroes of our Revolution. Two of his least favorite people were Samuel Adams, the Boston agitator who kept stirring up the people there against the Redcoats, and John Hancock, the wealthy merchant who bankrolled him. Adams was of course a “demagogue” and Hancock a rich dilettante who was pulling his strings. A proper hiding would do each of these wretches no end of good, God bless my soul, sir.

Another aversion of his was Benjamin Franklin, who proved himself not quite a gentleman when he opened some letters of Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts that came into his hands and sent them back to Boston from London, where he represented Massachusetts pre-war. The letters showed the governor to be demanding harsh punishment for his own state for resisting the King’s taxes, This resulted in a petition to the King for his immediate removal from office. Franklin refused to display any remorse for his naughty actions. Apologies weren’t in his line.

Another British writer from the turn of the century, George Trevelyan, thought otherwise about Franklin. He considered him justified in opening the letters since the British Post Office always opened his. He went on to describe Franklin’s career as America’s envoy to France as a triumph without parallel in diplomatic history. With no money and no assistants available he dazzled the French court and the Paris elite by personality alone and eventually had the satisfaction of seeing France recognize America as a free nation and sign a treaty of alliance in earnest of this. Three years later the presence of a French fleet and French troops at Yorktown enabled Washington and his men to force the surrender of Cornwallis and end the war.

Both the English writers, seventy years apart, came down hard on the French diplomats for their cruel deception of the trusting British in denying that they were shipping guns and ammunition hand over fist to the Americans long before the recognition in 1778. Inexcusable behavior, they called it. They seemed to forget that fifteen years before in the Seven Years’ War Britain had seized Canada, India and other territories from the French, which the latter could hardly be expected to swallow without some attempt at revenge. A century later in 1880 when a British general, Gordon, was killed in the Sudan, the British waited eighteen years before wiping out hordes of Arabs in retribution. Then they made movies about it.

The British writers are also inclined to dwell on the rebels’ alleged propensity to shoot and stab prisoners and remove their scalps as well when successfully ambushing them through “sneak” tactics. They don’t give equal space to the similar behavior of their soldiers, not to mention their wholesale looting. They even did this when running for their lives in ’75 on the road to Boston from Concord. The source for this is English.

There were atrocities on both sides, as in all wars. In particular the irregulars on both sides were guilty of this. The Patriots and the Tories as they were known were usually neighbors so the mutual hatred was intense. The result was a lot of dirty work by both sides when they got the chance to abuse prisoners. On the English side, though, the regular army was also involved in atrocities. The worst was the practice of confining prisoners in ships at their moorings, called hulks, where disease and hunger ran wild and killed large numbers. In 1777 Washington issued an order to his army that its prisoners were on no account to be treated in the British way. Today that would be called taking the high road. Washington was like that and he got the army to listen to him, mostly.

Washington’s policy of humanity proved itself at the end of the war when of the !3,988 Hessian soldiers who survived it, 3,194 (23%) elected to stay in the country rather than return to Germany. A number of those who returned only did so to collect their families and come back to America. Considering that the Hessians were well hated by the Americans as a lot of foreign mercenaries serving for money and loot alone, this speaks pretty well for Washington’s ideas, which originated with his capture of 900 or so Hessians at Trenton in December 1776.

Dwelling on the seamy side of American history is no way to celebrate July 4th. It certainly wasn’t when I got my introduction to history in grammar school way back when. (The school is the one shown from the outside in the movie “Doubt”. The interior scenes were filmed in another school.) We kids then were practically wetbacks, many of our parents having immigrated from Europe. Europe? Where was that? It got mentioned all right, but only in footnotes. History began and ended with America. Two pictures were on the wall in every classroom -- Washington and Lincoln. The Revolution was taught as Holy Writ. The Declaration; a masterpiece. The Hessians; outlaws. King George; a nut job. So it went. We were indoctrinated and we took to it like ducks to water. To tell the truth, I’m still swimming. Happy holiday!