Barton’s Review Of Social Studies Standards Lacks Much To Be Desired (Including Actual Facts)

David Barton, the pseudo-historian known for simply making up history and founder of WallBuilders and member of the Texas State Board of Education’s Expert Review Panel for Social Studies Curriculum, has a lot of concerns with the current social studies curriculum used in Texas. The problem is that much of what Barton has a concern with is either answered with an inaccuracy or appears to be based solely on prejudice.

Here is Barton’s review. We’ll be quoting from it throughout this post.

The first thing we would call readers’ attention to is the first thing that stood out to us when we gave Barton’s review an initial once-over.

In his review, Barton writes that the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the sacrifices they made must have more focus placed on them in the curriculum standards. He writes:

2. The Signatories of the Declaration and the Sacrifices they Made. Nowhere do the TEKS indicate that the writers of the Declaration should be examined; rather they only vaguely mention that students should “identify the contributions of significant individuals during the revolutionary period, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington” [Grade 5 (b)(2)(A)]. The current modern trend is to present only two or three signers of the Declaration (in the aforementioned case, only one); and almost universally absent is any presentation of the personal sacrifices incurred in honoring their pledge of giving their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Virtually unknown to this generation are their sacrifices – that 7 of the 56 signers died during the Revolution; that 3 were made prisoners of war (and 3 wives of the signers were also made prisoners of war); 3 signers lost their children; 3 lost their wives; 17 lost their fortunes and estates; several lost their health; etc. Students should be asked to identify and study not just the typical two or three signers but several of them, including their character, sacrifices, family, and leadership. Such an historical examination will also inculcate the elements of patriotism and citizenship required by state law. [Emphasis added]

Barton’s statistics about Declaration signers somehow sounded familiar to us. Then, we remembered it sounded similar to an e-mail forward that started making the rounds back in 2000.  That email was collected and debunked at Snopes.com.

Sadly, Barton’s made-up history–even when close to right–is short on facts. Let’s pick it apart.

Barton Claim: 3 signers lost their children

Historical Record Shows: Abraham Clark of New Jersey saw two of his sons captured by the British and incarcerated on the prison ship Jersey. John Witherspoon, also of New Jersey, saw his eldest son, James, killed in the Battle of Germantown in October 1777. If there was a second signer of the Declaration whose son was killed while serving in the Continental Army, we have yet to find him.
DIFFERENCE: Only one signer actually “lost” a child, John Witherspoon. Clark’s sons were made POWs, but were not killed.

Now, how about that POW claim:

Barton Claim: that 3 were made prisoners of war (and 3 wives of the signers were also made prisoners of war)

Historical Record Shows: It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered “traitors” due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the British: George Walton was captured after being wounded while commanding militia at the Battle of Savannah in December 1778, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge (three of the four Declaration of Independence signers from South Carolina) were taken prisoner at the Siege of Charleston in May in 1780. Although they endured the ill treatment typically afforded to prisoners of war during their captivity (prison conditions were quite deplorable at the time), they were not tortured, nor is there evidence that they were treated more harshly than other wartime prisoners who were not also signatories to the Declaration. Moreover, all four men were eventually exchanged or released; had they been considered traitors by the British, they would have been hanged.

Richard Stockton of New Jersey was the only signer taken prisoner specifically because of his status as a signatory to the Declaration, “dragged from his bed by night” by local Tories after he had evacuated his family from New Jersey, and imprisoned in New York City’s infamous Provost Jail like a common criminal. However, Stockton was also the only one of the fifty-six signers who violated the pledge to support the Declaration of Independence and each other with “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor,” securing a pardon and his release from imprisonment by recanting his signature on the Declaration and signing an oath swearing his allegiance to George III.

DIFFERENCES: Barton is off by three POWs. As for the wives, we only find a refrence to one wife being taken as prisioner, in this debunking of the same email Snopes debunks.

And how about that claim about those seven deaths:

Barton Claim: 7 of the 56 signers died during the Revolution.

Historical Record Shows: Nine signers died during the course of the Revolutionary War, but none of them died from wounds or hardships inflicted on them by the British. (Indeed, several of the nine didn’t even take part in the war.) Only one signer, Button Gwinnett of Georgia, died from wounds, and those were received not at the hands of the British, but of a fellow officer with whom he duelled in May 1777.

DIFFERENCES: Many. Number one, Barton’s basic facts are wrong: he says seven, the reality is nine. Number two, Barton intimates, going off the old myth, that the signers actually died as a result of the Revolution and not from old age or some other ailment totally unerlated to the war. Dying as a result of old age or gout during the same years as the American Revolution is far different from “dying during the Revolution,” actually implies.

We’ll have more later this evening; this is just for starters.

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