News Literacy: The Keys to Combating Fake News

For this exercise, the text se­lection is key. When ­doing this exercise with students, be sure to select excerpts from texts that discuss the same content but in dif­fer­ent ways. In­ these examples, students ­will compare Edmund Morgan's The Birth of the Republic 1763–89 and Howard Zinn's A­ People's History of the United States. In the selected passages, Morgan and Zinn discuss exactly the same primary sources, yet they arrive at dif­fer­ent interpretations of and conclusions about the events and ­people described in the resources. This comparison compels students to confront their assumptions about historical truth and expand their capacity for understanding disparate points of view.

The American Revolution: Told and Retold

Consider the similarities and differences between ­these paired passages. In each pair, the first is from Zinn, the second from Morgan. They are describing the same event. As you read, consider ­these questions about your thinking pro­cess:

• What do you choose to believe about the American Revolution? Why?
• Where in ­these segments do you find yourself saying, "This is not what I thought"?
• How does your thinking need to change to embrace more than one, conflicting version of the truth?

And ­these questions about the ­people of the Revolutionary era:

• What groups did people join? What motivated membership in and participation in the activities of the associations ­ people joined?
• What notion of liberty did the groups have? How or did group membership influence be­hav­ior and belief? Why or why not?
• What impact can/does class, race, and gender have on the waging of sociopo­liti­cal revolution and the creation of a new nation? On a person's understanding of liberty?

Stamp Act

From Zinn, Howard. A ­People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

When riots against the Stamp Act swept Boston in 1767, they ­were analyzed by the commander of the British forces in North Amer­i­ca, General Thomas Gage, as follows:

The Boston Mob, raised first by the Instigation of Many of the Principal Inhabitants, Allured by Plunder, ­rose shortly ­after of their own Accord, attacked, robbed, and destroyed several Houses, and amongst ­others, that of the Lieutenant Governor. . . . ?­People then began to be terrified at the Spirit they had raised, to perceive that popu­lar Fury was not to be guided, and each individual feared he might be the next Victim to their Rapacity. The same Fears spread thro' the other Provinces, and ­there has been as much Pains taken since, to prevent Insurrections, of the ­People, as before to excite them.

Gage's comment suggests that leaders of the movement against the Stamp Act had instigated crowd action but then became frightened by the thought that it might be directed against their wealth too. At this time, the top 10 ­percent of Bos- ton's taxpayers held about 66 ­ percent of Boston's taxable wealth, while the low- est 30 ­ percent of the taxpaying population had no taxable property at all. The propertyless could not vote and so (like blacks, ­women, Indians) could not participate in town meetings. This included sailors, journeymen, apprentices, servants (p. 65).

From Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic 1763–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Meanwhile, Bostonians found mobbing so effective a weapon that they used it gratuitously on Lieutenant-­Governor Hutchinson, whom they wrongly suspected of advocating the Stamp Act, on the Comptroller of Customs, and on one of the officers of the admiralty court. The other colonies took up the example, and by November 1, 1765, no one in Amer­i­ca was prepared to distribute the stamped paper, which was safely stowed away in forts and warships. When that date arrived, ­there was a pause in business in most colonies as ­people made up their minds which way to nullify the act: by doing nothing that required the use of stamps or by proceeding without them. Once the latter course was chosen by determined groups of citizens, they found it easy, by the mere threat of mob action, to coerce recalcitrant dissenters, including the royally appointed customs officers. Within a few months, the ports ­were open for business as usual with no sign of a stamp (though, ­because of the boycott, cargoes from ­England ­were few). The courts too ­were open, and unstamped newspapers appeared weekly, full of messages encouraging the­ people to stand firm (p. 21).

French Indian (Seven Years') War

From Zinn, Howard. A ­People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

After 1763, with ­England victorious over France in the Seven Years' War (known in Amer­i­ca as the French and Indian War), expelling them from North Amer­i­ca, ambitious colonial leaders were no longer threatened by the French. They now had only two rivals left: the En­glish and the Indians. The British, wooing the Indians, had declared Indian lands beyond the Appalachians out of bounds to whites (the Proclamation of 1763). Perhaps once the British ­were out of the way, the Indians could be dealt with. Again, no conscious forethought strategy by the colonial elite, just a growing awareness as events developed.

With the French defeated, the British government could turn its attention to tightening control over the colonies. It needed revenues to pay for the war, and looked to the colonies for that. Also, the colonial trade had become more and more impor­tant to the British economy, and more profitable: it had amounted to about 500,000 pounds in 1700 but by 1770 was worth 2,800,000 pounds.

So, the American leadership was less in need of En­glish rule, the En­glish more in need of the colonists' wealth. The ele­ments ­were ­there for conflict.

The war had brought glory for the generals, death to the privates, wealth for the merchants, unemployment for the poor. ­There­ were 25,000 ­people living in New York (­there had been 7,000 in 1720) when the French and Indian War ended. A newspaper editor wrote about the growing "Number of Beggars and wandering Poor" in the streets of the city. Letters in the papers questioned the distribution of wealth: "How often have our Streets been covered with Thousands of Barrels of Flour for trade, while our near Neighbors can hardly procure enough to make a Dumplin to satisfy hunger?" (p. 59)

From Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic 1763–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

No one likes to pay taxes, and the En­glish in 1763 thought they had too many. Though they were the most power­ful nation in the world and the most prosperous, their government was costing too much. They had just completed the very expensive Seven Years' War against France, doubling the national debt. The war had also left them with a huge new territory to administer: Canada and the eastern Mississippi valley. Many of them thought the whole of it not worth keeping and when they heard that the government was ­going to assign ten thousand troops to defend and pacify it, they could only think of how much that many men would eat and drink in a year and how many uniforms they would wear out and how much they would have to be paid (p. 14).

As the streets of Boston came alive with scarlet coats and the ­people grew familiar with the rhythm of marching feet, it came to Americans everywhere that a dreadful suspicion had been confirmed. They had thought it strange five years before when they heard that ­England would maintain 10,000 troops among them to protect them from foreign enemies. Hitherto for more than a hundred and fifty years, while hacking out their farms from a hostile wilderness, they had been left to defend themselves, not only against the Indians, but against the French and Spaniards as well. Only in the recent Seven Years' War had they relied heavi­ly on British troops, and ­those troops had succeeded in removing their gravest peril, the French menace in Canada. Why at precisely this moment, when the danger had departed, should ­England decide that they needed a standing army to protect them? (p. 43)

REFERENCES

Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic 1763–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Zinn, Howard. A ­People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.