Saturday, March 16, 2013

Finished a recent book on Paul Revere, (updated with title)

and in the chapter on April 19, it has a piece from an interview done with Captain Levi Preston of Danvers, at 91, on the events that day.
An historian asked him, “Captain Preston, what made you go to the Concord Fight?” 
“What did I go for?” the old man replied, subtly rephrasing the historian’s question to drain away its determinism. 
The interviewer tried again. “... Were you oppressed by the Stamp Act?” he asked. 
 “I never saw any stamps,” Preston ansered, “and I always understood that none were ever sold.” 
“Well, what about the tea tax?” 
“Tea tax, I never drank a drop of the stuff, the boys threw it all overboard.” 
“But I suppose you have been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?” 
“I never heard of these men. The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ psalms and hymns and the almanacs.” 
“Well, then, what was the matter?” 
“Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”
That is a very simple thing, easy to understand.
Makes it even more amazing that so many politicians still cannot or will not understand it.

Update: Paul Revere's Ride
And yes, I should have remembered to stick this in originally



2 comments:

English kanigit said...

Hey Firehand,
If you're going to talk about books you might mention the title.

Ek ;)

Firehand said...

Fixed.
Dammit, yes, i should have remembered