Via John
The following is an excerpt from a 1946 pamphlet dedicated to the
Public Schools of North Carolina by the Anson Chapter, United Daughters
of the Confederacy in honor of its author, Dr. Henry Tucker Graham of
Florence, South Carolina. Dr. Graham was the former president of
Hampden-Sydney College and for twenty years the beloved pastor of the
First Presbyterian Church of Florence, South Carolina. Not noted below
is the initial Stamp Act resistance at Wilmington, North Carolina in
November 1765.
The North Busy Rewriting History
“There is grave danger that our school children are learning much
more about Massachusetts than about the Carolinas, and hearing more
often of northern leaders than of the splendid men who led the Southern
hosts alike in peace and war. Not many years ago the High School in an
important South Carolina town devoted much time to the celebration of
Lincoln’s Birthday — while Lee, Jackson, Hampton and George Washington
received no mention.
You have all heard of Paul Revere’s ride made famous by the skillful
pen of a New England writer. He rode 7 miles out of Boston, ran into a
squadron of British horsemen and was back in a British dungeon before
daybreak. But how many of you have heard of Jack Jouitte’s successful
and daring ride of forty miles from a wayside tavern to Charlottesville
to warn Governor [Thomas] Jefferson and the Legislature of the coming of
a British squadron bent upon their capture?
You have heard of the Boston Tea Party, but how many know of the
Wilmington, North Carolina Tea Party [of 1774]? At Boston they disguised
themselves as Indians and under cover of darkness threw tea overboard.
At Wilmington they did the same thing without disguise and in broad
daylight.
With the utter disregard of the facts they blandly claim that the
republic was founded at Plymouth Rock while all informed persons know
that Plymouth was 13-1/2 years behind the times, and when its colony was
reduced to a handful of half-starved immigrants on the bleak shores of
Massachusetts, there was a prosperous colony of 2,000 people along the
James [River] under the sunlit skies of the South.
The fact is that New England has been so busy writing history that it
hasn’t had time to make it. While the South has been so busy making
history that it hasn’t had time to write it.”
(Some Things For Which The South Did Not Fight, in the War Between
the States.” Dr. Henry Tucker Graham, Pamphlet of Anson County, North
Carolina Chapter UDC, 1946)
