The Truth About American History And the Wild Wild West

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”- Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)

 

The Truth About American History

And the Wild Wild West

 

By de Andréa

Opinion Editorialist for    

‘THE BOTTOM LINE’

Posted April 9, 2019

If you would like to write me direct with a question or a comment on this or any other article, you can contact me at writedeandrea@hotmail.com

Sorry to burst your bubble my friend, but anti-American ‘Hollywood’ moguls turned an otherwise mild historical west into the “Wild Wild West” in order to make money & promote anti-Constitutional gun confiscation.

Senator Diane Feinstein believes ‘Hollywood’s Fictional History’. She said: “Guns will turn the country into the wild, wild West.” And then she added, “There will be blood in the streets.” This’ while promoting her gun ban legislation.

Read this, then ask yourself if she’s right? How about a little historical truth for a change, moreover you will discover why the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was included in our Constitution and is still relevant today.

If one hates the Constitution, one hates America and everything it stands for. Without Constitutional law we have no America. Moreover without the Second Amendment we have no rights. “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, [is]…necessary to the security of a free State…”  As I said, without it we have no American “FREE STATE”. It is at the very foundation of freedom in this country.

Hollywood had and still has a clever way of distorting our perspective on truth and history, and a great example of this are the Western films – a movie genre we've all come to love. Cattle rustlers, guns blazing, outlaws running loose, and vigilantes dishing out vengeance indiscriminately, and then we can’t forget the singing cowboy coming to rescue the girl in distress. These scenes have become as synonymous with the American Frontier as the Winchester rifle and their "Cartridge That Won the West." But these fictional tales have produced more than entertainment for over a century; they also underwrote an ongoing contribution to fake history and a political push for gun control, as well as the agenda of eventual gun confiscation, all while making Hollywood millions.

The Department of Education’s revisionist history books tell us that the “Wild West” was an anarchic period of time in America that was not conducive to human safety and prosperity. Images of a brutal nightmare – are ingrained in our consciousness thanks to decades of creative fictional history, in our government, in public schooling, and violent images on the Hollywood silver screen, which are extremely light on actual history and ultra-heavy on creative license.

However, individuals who believe in liberty and developing their critical thinking faculties should be skeptical of most mainstream narratives, especially regarding history, and especially American history. After all, these narratives by and large have been created by Hollywood, a legacy institution that has historically advanced politically correct content with the support of the Washington shadow government, today known as the DeepState in order to perpetuate a utopian culture with the chosen elites in control. In a word, tyranny!

When the curtain of political correctness that's been draped over this particular period of American history is pulled back, we see a much more realistic picture of the Western Frontier. In fact, research by historians such as Peter J. Hill, Richard Shenkman, Roger D. McGrath, Terry Anderson, and W. Eugene Holland show that this period was rather indicative of a mild and “not so wild, Wild West.”

So…for the purposes of this article, the so-called Wild West will rather be referred to as the (Old West). This is not meant to be a hairsplitting distinction, but rather as an acknowledgment of the fact that this time period was not “wild” by any stretch of the imagination when compared to other chaotic periods in human history, or even by today statistics. Indeed, the Old West had its fair share of challenges for American settlers. But as we’ll soon see, crafty settlers found ways through ingenuity and mutual cooperation - all done with very limited, or no government interference - to create a stable order for generations to come. And when local governments did interfere, it did not bode well for its intentions. 

So let us delve into the truth of the “not so wild, Old West.”

The Old West was not a paradise by any measure. There existed conflict between groups, such as American settlers and Native Americans once they came in contact in the Great Plains and other parts of the frontier. This was natural due to the cultural differences that existed between these groups and the lack of defined property rights in those regions.

However, in more settled towns on the frontier, there was not near as much violence as the Hollywood indoctrinators would have you to believe. One of the most important texts disrupting this depiction of the Old West was W. Eugene Hollon’s Frontier Violence: Another Look. Hollon argued that “the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today.” Additionally, historian Richard Shenkman makes the case that the popular depictions of the Old West belong more in a movie script rather than a real-life historical account.

Shenkman noted:

“Many more people have died in Hollywood Westerns than ever died on the real Frontier.”

Dodge City has become a landmark for Western movies, but its portrayal is more fiction than reality. Shenkman also dismantled the Dodge City myth:

“In the real Dodge City, for example, there were just five killings in 1878, the most homicidal year in the little town’s Frontier history: scarcely enough to sustain a typical two-hour movie.”

Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton also pointed out that the infamous bank robberies that captivate movie audiences were not very frequent. His research uncovered that there were fewer than a dozen bank robberies in the entire Western frontier in the 40 year period from 1859 to 1900. In essence, Schweikart argues that there are “more bank robberies in modern-day Dayton, Ohio, in a year than there were in the Old West in the entire frontier period.” Moreover, nearly every man between the ages of 17 to 67 were armed prior to 1900. Boys carried small caliber rifles to school so they could shoot small game on the way home from school. 

Arguably, the strongest and most concise text reclaiming the true history of the American West, Terry L. Anderson and Peter J Hill’s The Not So Wild, Wild West has forever changed the way Americans view American history. Anderson and Hill’s research found that the establishment of property rights was one of the keys in taming the American West. Indeed, this process took time, but it was well worth it. The Old West was a demonstration of human ingenuity and long-term planning that avoided the quick fixes of the modern-day politics that we have today.

This manner of peacefully settling property rights disputes carried over into other sectors, such as ranching and farming. There were obviously various roadblocks at the start, but settlers still found free-market ways of getting around these obstacles. In sum, Anderson and Hill’s findings demonstrated that the Old West was not so chaotic:

“In the mining camps and on the open range, the six-gun seldom served as the arbiter of disputes. Instead, miners established rules in camp meetings, and cattlemen used their associations to carve up the range, round up their cattle, and enforce brand registration. Though not all attempts at dispute resolution succeeded, institutional entrepreneurs found ways to define and enforce property rights that created, rather than destroyed, wealth. In short, the West was really not so wild.”

Such scenes of mutual cooperation on a voluntary basis are almost unheard of in today’s political climate. For many busybody politicians, all meaningful economic activity must be conducted under government supervision and control. As a matter of fact, had any of the problems in the Old West surfaced in present times, there would be instant calls for the government to step in and try to fix things. Once the unintended consequences of these interventions set in, the same calls for more government “help” would come back to life.

Thankfully, our governments were much wiser through the 19th century. By maintaining a relatively hands-off approach, the federal government allowed the unsettled American Frontier to naturally tame itself through the voluntary cooperation of settlers. Everything changed after 1913 when the foundation was laid for the American Constitutional Republic to become a true Democracy. We slowly but surely became a country ruled by the majority in government, rather than ruled by law. (More on that later)

Understanding Violence in the American West

The most infamous images of the American Hollywood West always consisted of scenes of extreme violence and vigilante justice. Many history books have implanted in the minds of millions of students that violence was a normal way of life in the early American Frontier. It also does not help that Hollywood’s greatest Western films were laden with epic shootouts and a plethora of cliché conflicts between outlaws and law enforcement.

In Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes, historian Roger McGrath looked at notable western cities in California, such as the town of Bodie and Aurora, to see how they stacked up to modern cities as far as crime rates were concerned. McGrath provided some context to famous scenes of bank robberies in the Old West:

“Next to stagecoach robbery, bank robbery is probably the form of robbery most popularly associated with the frontier West. Yet, although Aurora and Bodie together boasted several banks, no bank robbery was ever attempted, not ever. Most of the bankers were armed, as were their employees, and a robber would have run a considerable risk of being killed.”

Today, in all our ignorance, we hang a sign in our banks and schools that reads GUN FREE ZONE. As a result we have bank robberies and mass school shootings. Which does nothing but advertise the criminals to commit crimes HERE!

In addition there was no FDIC government insured bank accounts at the time so citizens had to defend the banks themselves. If they were successfully robbed the account holders simply lost their money. 

So armed citizens deterred the robbery of individuals, while armed homeowners and merchants discouraged the burglary of homes and businesses. So it’s clear America’s long established gun culture and civic responsibility of providing defense transitioned quite seamlessly to the American frontier.

McGrath provided some interesting statistics on robberies in Aurora and Bodie:

“Between 1877 and 1883, there were only 32 burglaries – 17 of homes and 15 of businesses – in Bodie. Again, Aurora seems to have had fewer still. At least a half dozen attempted burglaries in Bodie were thwarted by the presence of armed citizens.”

The historian then compares these numbers to American cities:

“Bodie’s five-year total of 32 burglaries converts to an average of 6.4 burglaries a year and gives the town a burglary rate of 128 on the FBI scale. In 1980 Miami had a burglary rate of 3,282, New York 2,661, Los Angeles 2,602, San Francisco-Oakland 2,267, Atlanta 2,210 and Chicago 1,241. The Grand Forks, North Dakota, rate of 566, and the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, rate of 587 were lowest among U.S. cities. The rate for the United States as a whole was 1,668, or thirteen times that for Bodie."

McGrath came to several powerful conclusions when observing Aurora and Bodie’s robbery rates:

“Institutions of law enforcement and justice certainly were not responsible for the low rates of robbery, burglary, and theft. Rarely were any of the perpetrators of these types of crime arrested, and even less often were they convicted.”

In McGrath’s view, armed citizens were the key factor behind low burglary rates:

“The citizens themselves, armed with various types of firearms and willing to kill to protect their persons or property, were the most important deterrent to crime.”

This is consistent with findings of John Lott, world renowned economist and statistician, uncovered in his book More Guns Less Crime when he statistically analyzed states that liberalized gun laws during the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these states enjoyed substantial decreases in robberies when citizens were allowed to not only defend their homes, but also carry firearms for self-defense. From 1979 to 1997 the average violent crime rate went down in the entire country. Today with the increase in anti-gun-laws the violent crime rate is on the rise again and going through the roof in cities like Chicago where it is against the law to even buy or sell a gun.

As far as rape was concerned, women were virtually safe from all occurrences of rape in Aurora and Bodie:

“Aurora’s and Bodie’s records of no rapes and thus rape rates of 0.0 were not matched by nineteenth-century Boston or Salem. From 1880 through 1882, Boston had a rape arrest rate of 3.0 and Salem 4.8. A conversion factor of 2.6 – a figure consistent with FBI data in 1980 – gives the town’s rape rates of 7.8 and 12.5. Nor are Aurora’s and Bodie’s rates matched by any U.S. city today, although in 1980 Johnsontown, Pennsylvania, had a rate of only 5.7.”

McGrath did concede that homicide rates were indeed high in the Old West, but there was a caveat – the majority of these cases of homicide were confined to fights between willing combatants, i.e., duels, as was common during this period where “honor culture” prevailed.

McGrath explained:

“While the carrying of guns probably reduced the incidence of robbery, burglary, and theft, it undoubtedly increased the number of overall homicides. Although a couple of homicides resulted from beatings and a few from stabbings, the great majority resulted from self-defense shootings.”

When we think about it, this makes sense. Firearms are very effective tools in dishing out lethal damage. Guns did facilitate homicides, but McGrath argued that there was some nuance to this:

“The citizens of Aurora and Bodie were generally not troubled by the number of killings, nor were they very upset because only one man was ever convicted by the courts of murder or manslaughter. They accepted the killings and the lack of convictions because those killed, with only a very few exceptions, had been willing combatants, and most of them were criminals. The old, the weak, the female, the innocent, and those unwilling to fight were rarely if at all the targets of attacks. But when they were attacked –murdered – the reaction of the citizens was immediate and came in the form of vigilantism."

Even in a relatively anarchic environment like the American Frontier, there was a tendency for society to police itself in some shape or form. When the weak were attacked, citizens in these towns responded in vigilante fashion, but McGrath showed it was not as chaotic as people think:

“Contrary to the popular image of vigilantes as an angry, unruly mob, the vigilantes in both Aurora and Bodie displayed military-like organization and discipline and went about their work in a quiet, orderly, and deliberate manner."

“A well-regulated militia” as depicted in the Second Amendment.

All in all, McGrath concluded that the violence we see in major urban centers today bears very little resemblance to violence in the American West:

“The violence and lawlessness that visited the trans-Sierra frontier most frequently and affected it most deeply, then, took special forms: warfare between Indians and whites, stagecoach robbery, vigilantism, and gunfights. These activities bear little or no relation to the violence and lawlessness that pervade American society today. Serious juvenile offenses, crimes against the elderly and weak, rape, robbery, burglary, and theft were either nonexistent or of little significance on the trans-Sierra frontier. If the trans-Sierra frontier was at all representative of frontiers in general, then there seems to be little justification for blaming contemporary American violence and lawlessness on a fabricated wild frontier heritage."

Because of nearly a century’s worth of historical misinformation spread in popular culture and schools, Hollywood programed Americans have been led to believe that the American Frontier was the most violent period in American history. On the other hand, progressive urban centers like Chicago and Washington, D.C. are held up as enlightened cosmopolitan hubs, when in fact, they have witnessed crime sprees in recent decades that were unheard of in other points of American history. These cities are in political jurisdictions that feature stringent gun control even gun bans and universal background checks and make it nearly impossible for citizens to acquire firearms for self-defense. A prime example of gun laws providing ‘only criminals will have guns’.

Northfield, Minnesota vs. Tombstone, Arizona: A True Tale of Gun Rights vs. Gun Control

Any proud gun owner should celebrate when an armed citizen steps up to defend himself and/or others against criminals. Researchers like Gary Kleck point to over 2 million cases of individuals using firearms in self-defense. This is no recent phenomenon my friend.

Law-abiding citizens standing up to criminals actually occurred on numerous occasions during the Old West. The most notable case was the failed bank robbery attempt conducted by the James-Younger Gang in Northfield, Minnesota.

The James-Younger Gang gained national notoriety for waltzing into towns and coming out with all the loot through well-orchestrated robberies. With so many robberies under their belts, their next robbery attempt in the sleepy town of Northfield, Minnesota seemed to them, like a walk in the park. On the fateful day of September 7, 1876, the gang of outlaws would be in for a rude awakening once they entered Northfield.

The last thing these criminals expected was an armed citizenry that was willing to stand up against their devious schemes. As the outlaws proceeded to carry out their robbery, Northfield’s citizens quickly realized what was going on. Instead of waiting for ineffective law enforcement, they took matters into their own hands.

The armed citizens of Northfield fired back at the outlaws and successfully killed several members of the James-Younger Gang. This incident had its fair share of tragedy when members of the James-Younger Gang killed the First National Bank’s cashier Joseph Lee Heywood and Swedish immigrant Nicholas Gustafson. However, these deaths were not in vain.

After the smoke cleared, the rest of the James-Younger Gang bolted out of Northfield, which marked one of the biggest reversals in Jesse James’ criminal career. From there, James lost considerable prestige as a criminal and would later be murdered by one of his own partners in crime, Robert Ford, in 1882.

Despite the chaotic nature of the Northfield incident, armed civilians made a positive difference to thwart this criminal act. Had these citizens been disarmed, Jesse James and company would have made their way out of town with a cool wad of cash. This is definitely one story American students won’t find in their revisionist politically correct history textbooks.

Gun Control Could Not Save Tombstone

Although the Old West was marked by high degrees of freedom, especially when compared to present times, it still had pockets of local despotic gun control throughout certain regions.

Take the example of the infamous O.K. Corral standoff. This shooting has become legend throughout American folklore and an integral part of Hollywood Western movies. However, as usual, there is much more to this story than is being told. When we look past the dramatic effects and scruffy gunslingers, we see a much more nuanced picture of this event.

What Hollywood didn’t tell you about the shootout at OK Corral.

What many people don’t realize is that the O.K. Corral shootout actually took place because of a dispute over local gun control legislation in Tombstone Arizona. According to an 1881 law, it was “unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing.”

This law, however, did not deter the outlaw gang of Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. For them, criminal behavior like cattle smuggling and horse thievery was a way of life. No law was going to stop them – above all, any Tombstone’s gun control ordinance.

Laws don’t stop crime, they can actually promote it

The gang of outlaws were ready to up the ante with their criminal behavior once they set foot in Tombstone. From the get go, they encountered resistance from the Earp brothers – Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt, as well as Doc Holliday, who were ready to stop these outlaws in their tracks. The law enforcers even demanded that the bandits hand over their guns. But much to the law enforcers’ dismay, the outlaws could not have cared less about Tombstone’s gun control laws and continued to disobey them like any seasoned band of criminals would do. Today’s legislators still don’t understand that criminals just don’t obey laws, that’s what makes them criminals. So any gun control law is only going to affect the law abiding citizen who already is not a threat to society.

Eventually, this conflict escalated when both sides drew their firearms and engaged in an explosive shootout. Once the smoke cleared, three of the outlaws died during this confrontation. Thankfully for the citizens of Tombstone, there was an armed law enforcement presence to push back against the outlaws. However, this just goes to show that laws are not enough to prevent criminals from committing heinous acts. Armed citizens are ultimately the best first responder’s against criminals.

Gun control laws like those in Tombstone were not the norm in the American Frontier. That being said, there is still a valuable lesson behind this experience – gun control legislation will not magically make criminal activity nor gun violence go away. As a matter of fact it encourages it.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The Old West has not received a proper historical assessment that is free of Hollywood dramatization and pro-government bias. Advocates of gun rights and other facets of limited government would be wise to closely examine the real and true history of the American Frontier and restore it to its proper place. The United States is currently in a Democratic narrative war of sorts, where advocates of Progressivism/Communism will distort historical events or even eliminate them to advance their agenda.

The misleading depiction of the Old West is a historical sleight of hand that not only advocates false history, but also associates fundamental freedoms, such as gun rights and the right of self-defense, with sprees of violence that never even existed. That’s why it’s so important to think critically and do your own historical research. Gun rights have historically served Americans well, providing them a means of defense against violent criminals while checking the state from embracing all-out tyranny as witnessed in present-day Venezuela.

Note: 6 years ago Venezuelans were deceived by the Communists into giving up their guns for the sake of fighting crime. Today they are helpless against the tyranny of Nicolás Maduro. That, my friend, is the future of America if gun control continues.

We must remember that it’s not those who have the right ideas who necessarily win. It’s those who create the most compelling narratives to an ignorant citizenry who come out on top. Political outcomes are ultimately value neutral. The forces of good and truth, are not always a guaranteed victory.

Americans have been misled about capitalism, about the New Deal, as well as the Green New Deal, and it’s become clear they’ve also been subjected to many falsehoods about the Old West. Government school history departments across America by and large have failed in providing their students with the right material to understand our country’s most cherished political practices. When institutions of higher learning drop the ball, it’s incumbent upon us to defend our history and culture by stepping up to ensure America has "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" as President Eisenhower famously remarked.

Learning the truth about American history is one step in that direction.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

Constitutional Law says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  So I hope you now understand why the Constitutional architects, included the Second Amendment as part of Constitutional law. Just as happened in Venezuela, without it, you will lose your freedom.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned the date of 1913 as being the end of our Constitutional Republic and the establishment of the foundation of tyranny.  You see in a Constitutional Republic, we are first ruled by Constitutional law. And if that law is violated by elected officials or bureaucrats, they are held accountable and punished accordingly. But the foundation of tyranny is democracy. Where we are ruled, not by law, but by the whim of the majority in government.

Today our U.S. Congress and State governments don’t even consider the Constitution anymore, because we are not ruled by it.

Article 4 Section 4 Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution says: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion…” Yes according to law, we are guaranteed a Republic not a Democracy. Not only that my friend, the Congress must protect us from the invasion at our border. It’s the law! But you see that doesn’t matter in a democracy, the majority of Congress said “NO WALL, NO PROTECTION FROM INVASION.” And in a democracy the majority rules. Not the law.

Because of ignorance…Tyranny is just around the corner my friend.

Thanks for listening. Now go do the right thing, pray and fight for truth and freedom.  - de Andréa

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