Re: Dr. Jonathan Gove 1746-1818 Loyalist?
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In reply to:
Re: Dr. Jonathan Gove 1746-1818 Loyalist?
James Gove Oborne 1/06/08
James,
Your response is very well written.
I would just like to add a brief story about a recent experience I had in a grammar school level classroom.I was speaking to groups of school children on Career Day on how they might want to consider becoming a historian or genealogist when they grew up.
One of my personal concerns about history is how it has been sanitized (as you say). When queried, the children indicated that during the American Revolution the people who fought on the colonial side were patriots.The term they used for the COLONISTS who fought on the British side was "traitors" and they believed them to be "bad people."
I hope I made my point when I asked them, if the British had won instead, what would those same colonists be called.I believe that when I was done those children realized there were as many good people who found on both sides, and also abstained from fighting on either.
But, as history books are always written by the victors, and with their point of view, the losers are usually the "bad guys."I hail from ancestry which includes patriots, loyalists and Quakers, as do many others.
I prefer Daniel Webster's quote: There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.
Janice