The Early Settlers: Heroes or Cowards?
By Ralph Lynn
Toward Progress in Public Schools (missing)
The Early Settlers: Heroes or Cowards?
By Ralph Lynn
[Dr. Ralph Lynn is a retired professor of history at Baylor University and is a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today.]
The people who settled the United States were running away from their problems.
This is not to say that the early settlers were not admirable people. But it is to say that a good many myths have been concocted about them and sold to millions of unsuspecting people.
One of these myths is that the early settlers were such heroes. Actually, they were running from problems in Europe. They were running from lands where they were denied freedom of worship. They were fleeing lands where taxes were high. They were running from compulsory military service. They were running from lands where opportunities for economic and social advancement were few.
In a word, instead of staying and solving their problems, they ran off and left the problems.
Another of these myths is that the early settlers came to these shores in order to build a free, open society. Actually, many of them–the Puritans in particular–came so that they could have the freedom to expel from their political kingdom anyone they deemed a heretic. They wished to have religious freedom so that they could deny religious freedom to others. You must pick your founding fathers with some care if you wish to credit them with the intention of providing for religious freedom as we now interpret it.
Still another myth is the notion that the founding fathers were supermen of some sort who succeeded, against overwhelming odds, in establishing a free society. Actually, they practically fell into freedom.
In the new world, there was no strong, well-organized, rich, established church to exercise a near totalitarian control. In the new world, there was no established aristocracy with full control of the land, the administration of justice, and many other areas of life. In the new world, the King and the King`s army were thousands of miles and many months away. In a word, the English colonists in North America found freedom relatively unavoidable in a virtually uninhabited wilderness.
In 1776, therefore, when these Englishmen in North American decided to fight for the traditional rights of Englishmen, they could and did get away with it. But the Englishmen still in England, who were no less brave and who loved liberty no less, could not successfully oppose a despot on the throne of England. Unfortunately, the liberty-loving English, the King, and the King`s army were bottled up together on that tight little island.
In sharp contrast with the situation of the early settlers in the United States, we now have no place to run to. We have no place to hide.
But we are discovering that the problems the early settlers thought they had left behind really crossed the ocean with them. There are those among us now who would restrict freedom in religion, freedom in speech, and freedom of the press. Our taxes are high and are getting higher. We have often embraced a form of universal, compulsory military service which when military expediency calls for it, becomes more and more demanding. And automation and the all-pervading sophistication of modern life are making it more and more difficult for the underprivileged to find a satisfying place in society.
If we are able to solve these problems in our time, we shall have to be much more wise, much more resourceful, much more given to calm deliberation, and much braver than the founding fathers were.
We must stick it out right here. It is accurate to say that we are condemned to be both brave and brilliant if we are to succeed, against mounting odds, in maintaining the free life which the early settlers could hardly avoid.
