Grays
Harbor history professor Gary Murrell, in his frequent
misrepresentations of US history, doesn’t appear to like America. If he
were just a private citizen, that’s his right to spout off. But as a
history professor at Grays Harbor College, taxpayers are funding his
erroneous teaching to our children. That shouldn’t be tolerated, and
it’s time the public demanded an end to institutionally sanctioned lies
and distortions.
In his letter response to Schaeffer, Murrell lies by omission. He wrote, “‘One
of the most chilling images in early American history is the deliberate
firing of Fort Mystic during the Pequot War of 1637,’ according to one
historian. ‘Five hundred Indian men, women, and children died that day,
burned alive along with their homes and possessions by a vengeful
Puritan militia intent on doing God’s will.’ Is Murrell ignorant of
facts, or is he purposely omitting details that changes the
interpretation?
Why
does Murrell omit that the colonialists felt their very survival was
threatened when the Pequots had declared a war of annihilation?
According to ‘A Brief History of the Pequot War’ (free at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu then search on the title), the Pequots had pledged a ‘Resolution to Destroy the English’ in
which they also solicited the support of neighboring tribes. Fort
Mystic was the Pequot’s primary staging point. A historical account of
the killing of numerous colonials between 1634-7 gives some of the
colonials’ rationale for the retribution. Do I fault the Pequots from
wanting to drive off the English? No more than I fault the English for
wanting to stay. That’s the way the world has evolved over tens of
thousands of years.
Why does Murrell omit that over
half the attacking colonial force were native Americans who hated the
Pequots? In promoting their war against the colonials, the
Pequots had solicited another tribe, the Narragansetts to kill the
colonists’ cattle, burn the houses, and lie in ambush, while the Pequots
and their depending tribes would do the killing. Some tribes feared the
Pequots even more, and thus the Narragansetts and some of their Niantic
allies sided and ‘marched’ with the colonists.
Yes,
hundreds of men, women, and children died that day, but read the
historical account and realize that many natives just refused to
evacuate the burning fort. Was it unfortunate people died? Of course,
and I’m not claiming either side was entirely wrong or right. But I am
saying Murrell provides a frequently one-sided viewpoint that skews
history towards his negative attitude towards America and organized
religion. If you were threatened with extermination, what would you do?
In another omission, Murrell complains about the men who wrote the Constitution, calling them, “a group
of bourgeois, fallible, wealthy white men — real estate speculators,
merchants, slave owners — the richest men in their states.” He neglects
to mention 23 of 40 were military veterans of the Revolution. Why?
Probably he felt he couldn’t manipulate public sentiment by including
it. He didn’t mention that by being rich but fighting the English in a
war they weren’t sure they’d win, they could lose everything. To these
men, the risk for freedom was everything. And not all the signers were
wealthy. The Secretary of the Constitutional Congress, William Jackson,
was an impoverished law student when he joined the signers. Nor does
Murrell mention that these men were among the best educated in America,
and that by NOT including a nobility system as in England, they actually
were reducing the power of their legacy. Gone were titles they may have
passed to their later generations. That took guts to create a
meritocracy.
Murrell,
in demeaning our Constitution, wrote, “contains some decidedly vile
provisions as well, especially those that protect and promote the
original sin of the United States: slavery.” Anyone who has studied the
Constitution knows it didn’t ‘promote’ slavery – it tolerated it as a
compromise to keep the country together. Slavery was an abhorrent
practice (still practiced in Africa) but America has freed and uplifted
more people around the world than any other nations, and should be so
honored.
Murrell,
no doubt is goading a public response, by using charged phrases, such
as “those interlopers stumbled on to shore”...’”the theocratic
invasion”... “terribly inconvenient to acknowledge the holocaust
perpetuated in the genocide of First Peoples and Africans by the
original Europeans and their descendants”...” deliberately sought to
wipe out the indigenous population”. Like many progressives, Murrell is
an apologist to Europeans setting foot on the Americas – and no doubt
laments anyone from European descent being in Grays Harbor as a
consequence.
It’s
hypocritical that Murrell writes, “Schaeffer would be better off
engaging in some serious study of U. S. history rather than attempting
to mold and distort history to her dogmatic religious beliefs,” when it
is he, as a paid public servant, who is distorting history to our
children.
I
am not unbiased in this debate. I distrust Murrell in anything he
writes, and I’ve begged Grays Harbor College to take responsibility for
his unprofessional lying and deleting academic records during a term.
I’ve published an account of Murrell’s professorial dishonesty at http://graysharborgop.
Regards,
Randy Dutton
CDR, USNR-Retired
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