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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-02 > 0919805184


From: Mac McCutchan <>
Subject: Re: Scots-Irish/Appalachia
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 16:26:24 -0500


Linda Lambert-Hamid wrote, in part:

"We never learned all these things about President Jackson in
school. Of course, history is written by white men, so why
would we?"

Hey, Linda! Take it easy! I'm sure your your remark was not intended
to be sexist or racist, but it manages to be both. May I suggest:

"History is written by the victors." or
"History is often written to favor the political power structure".

Both are true; both explain why bad people are very often recorded by
history as good people; and neither writes off entire groups on the
basis of their sex or skin color.

As long as I'm at it, I may as well take on Dick Hudson: I'm not quite
ready to agree that Andy Jackson's mother slept under the porch and
chased cars. I seem to recall he was the first President to open the
White House to "common people". That they turned out to be an unruly
(some say drunken) mob who trashed the place may or may not have been
Andy's fault, although he was blamed for it. It gave the Washington
elite an opportunity to sneer at a populist. I'm wondering if Old
Hickory wasn't a product of his times, and if many, many others in the
same era might not have perpetrated the same crime against humanity (as
the Trail of Tears most assuredly was). In other words, I'm more nearly
ready to indict the entire generation or era than I am to pick out
Andrew jackson as an unusually bad, rude or stupid example.

Mac McCutchan

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