A few that irk me (some of which I’ve heard recently)-
“Jefferson Davis was captured wearing a dress in order to avoid arrest.”
Fact: Jefferson Davis was over six feet tall and at the time of his capture had a full beard; nobody would have been fooled by him in drag. He may (accounts vary) have been wearing a shawl (that may have been his wife’s, though men also wore shawls) over his head due to a cold, but he made no attempt to disguise his identity when Federal troops surrounded his party. (A similar legend had spread 29 years earlier about Santa Anna when he was captured by Sam Houston’s soldiers; there was a tiny kernel more truth in Santa Anna’s in that he was wearing a disguise, but it was not a dress- it was a private’s uniform.)
“The Americans won the Revolution by fighting with guerrilla tactics (firing from behind rocks and trees) while the British marched in a straight line and in bright red coats and were thus easy pickings.”
Fact: Absolute BS. The Americans did use guerrilla tactics at times, but so did the British, whose army was one of if not the greatest fighting force in the western world at the time and which had fought skirmishes and wars with the French, Indians, and even occasionally the colonists (e.g. the Battle of Alamance) for a century by this time. The British did have some incompetent generals (as did the Americans) though they also had some competent and some gifted ones. The reasons for the American victory are many but major reasons include the French Alliance (which did not secure American victory in and of itself but without it there’s no way we would have won), the unpopularity of the Revolution by many prominent members of the British Parliament, the fact that the British crown was hemorrhaging money due to wars and building infrastructure in colonies all around the globe, and of course a lot of sacrifice and good fighting by many American soldiers. The practice of marching in a long wide line neither stupid nor uniquely British but was in fact an almost universal military tactic of the day that had its roots in ancient times; it was also not employed in all battles. One use of this formation was the “firing line” by which the British could keep missiles continually firing for several minutes as the front line fired and retreated to the rear to reload.
They were indeed born in log cabins, but neither the Lincoln family nor the Jackson family nor several other famous Americans born in similar situations can truly be said to have been born in “poverty”. Log cabins were a simple but durable and comfortable structure constantly used on the frontiers and did not in and of themselves indicate poverty, just expedience. Compared to the mansions in cities on the Atlantic seaboard from Savannah to NYC they were certainly humble structures, but compared to most of the people living within 20 miles of the Lincolns in Kentucky or the Jacksons on the border of the Carolinas (far west of “civilization”) they were about average. As with most frontier cabins, they were replaced or renovated once the family had the time, funds, and indication they were remaining where they were long enough to warrant building nicer quarters. (The Lincolns were certainly not wealthy, but they did own their own land and that alone separated them from real poverty; Jackson was not wealthy either, but as a young man he inherited over $1,000 in cash and property from his grandfather in Ireland which was a considerable sum at the time and formed the basis of his fortune.)
The Mayflower technically brought the Pilgrims, who though very similar in their Calvinist beliefs were actually distinct from the Puritans who came a few years later. The Pilgrims truly were seeking a place to practice their religion in peace and without being subject to the British crown, but things that apparently most Americans don’t know:
1- the Pilgrims were neither the only nor the majority of the passengers on the Mayflower; about 2/3 of the other passengers were unaffiliated with the Pilgrim beliefs but came for pretty much the same reasons people came to Jamestown (where the ship had been headed)- mainly, profit
2- many of the Pilgrims and later the Puritans were English by birth and culture but actually came from the Netherlands, where they in fact had enjoyed religious freedom, so much so that they were worried their children would become too assimilated into the largely secular Dutch culture. (They weren’t being rounded up and slaughtered in England, in other words.)
3- by sailing on the Mayflower and settling in Massachusetts Bay, the Pilgrims were actually ensuring they would be subjects of the British crown; those who came from the Netherlands were actually out of his jurisdiction.
As for sex, most Dopers already know that the Puritans and Pilgrims really weren’t that puritanical on the matter. They certainly frowned on premarital and especially extramarital sex, but they quite enjoyed sex inside of marriage and even are believed to have had fairly explicit sex manuals (no copies survive, but they are referenced and are known to have existed in Europe at the time). They had a fairly high illegitimacy rate and an even higher rate of women who gave birth within the first 7 months of marriage. (Most of the stern and humorless depiction of them comes from Nathaniel Hawthorne, the descendant of several of their number, and particularly from his book The Scarlet Letter which is generally considered not an accurate depiction of their culture; even in that book, however, it should be remembered that Hester was not shunned for having an illegitimate baby but for being an adulteress.)
Leaving America
There were many reasons they failed at Stalingrad and the Russian winter certainly didn’t help matters, but lack of preparation is greatly overstated. They were in fact far better provisioned and wardrobed than the Soviet army that was there to defend the city; the Soviets were so inadequately supplied that many literally pretended to fire their weapons at the Nazis in order to make them think they were better equipped when in fact they had no ammo, and many more Soviets died of exposure and starvation than their invaders. Stupid decisions in Berlin and the fact that the Soviets fought like hell (and were as terrified of their own commanders should the city fall as they were of the Nazis taking it) were more major than the winter itself.
