Part I

Why is the Left in a violent-mob frenzy to rewrite American history transforming its heroes, traditions, and founding principles into villains and ideas to be reviled? Why would conservatives pursue the strategy of conceding an adversary’s lie as the starting point to win a broader argument? They do this all the time. Radio conservatives from Sean Hannity to Chris Stigall,¹ sling around the term “McCarthyism” attempting to pin this practice on Democrats. The problem is, McCarthyism isn’t “McCarthyism”. Like using “racist” to silence opposition, the Left invented it to dissuade anyone from looking into what they were up to in the 1930’s and 40’s. I did for my Master’s thesis and I know what they’re hiding. Conservatives who use this term are accomplices of the Left in doing a Jimmy Hoffa on the greatest spy and treason scandal in America’s history. In an attempt to paint modern Democrats as racists, Mark Levin and Chris Plante relish in pointing out Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy were Democrats. Their hands are on the same shovel liberals use to bury reasons, beyond slavery, why the South seceded; state’s rights, federalism, and government in unconstitutional service to northern business interests. One researching this history might discover the U.S. government functions so far outside the law, the Constitution is dead. Statists in both parties can’t allow this to happen. On Monday 11 September 2023, Mark Levin declared 9/11 was one of the worst attacks on America second only, not to Pearl Habor but the Confederacy’s “attack”.² Utter rubbish. The lot of them are doing the Left’s dirty work.

The Left’s historical revisionism is motivated by a desire to destroy the principles upon which America was founded. Why do conservatives aid and abet them? Perhaps they concede small skirmishes waiting to fight the large battles. If they fought the small skirmishes, there might be no large battles. The following is an example of this blunder.

In his book Killing England, political commentator and pop-history co-author Bill O’Reilly besmirches two heroes of the American Revolution. The first in vicarious service to the Homosexual movement. O’Reilly determines as true, the slander Baron von Steuben, a Prussian military officer credited with whipping the Continental Army into shape, was homosexual. The second supports the Left’s war to destroy America. He reprises the long-debunked smear Thomas Jefferson sired six children by house slave, Sally Hemings, writing she “will share master Jefferson’s bed as his lover”.³

And what is O’Reilly’s proof? The “consensus” of modern historians. Historians that are overwhelmingly liberal. Consensus is not scholarship. It is opinion based on a vote. Truth cannot be determined by a majority vote. It can only be determined by hard evidence, solid irrefutable facts, and serious scholarship. O’Reilly insists he is correct about von Steuben and Jefferson. Why? He claims to be an historian. Is this true?

O’Reilly graduated college with an undergraduate degree in history as did I. He taught history for two years in a Catholic high school. I taught history for over two decades in a public high school. That makes us historians, right? Not so fast. O’Reilly holds a Masters’ degree in Broadcast Journalism and Public Administration, mine is actually in history. They are not interchangeable. Basing truth in consensus was the first red flag. Claiming expertise in a professional discipline in which he is untrained is number two. The third is the indefensible absence of end/footnotes, a tactic used by Communist history writer, Howard Zinn.

O’Reilly is not an historian. Instead, he churns out derivative digests synthesizing previously published works of real historians. His book offers nothing new, original, or novel. Why are they popular? Written at the high school level, they appeal to those possessing a shallow knowledge of history. Such readers are ill-equipped to evaluate the historicity of his books. What of O’Reilly’s historical knowledge? It might be prodigious but memorizing a medical library does not make one a doctor.

Every discipline, from astronomy, engineering, geometry, martial arts, medicine, music, to crime lab forensics follow standardized rules, methodologies, protocols, and practices. Individuals are not pronounced black belts, biologists, lawyers, nurses, and so forth until an accredited governing body trained in their discipline, determines they satisfy all requirements. It is no different in the field of history.

Historians do more than take classes. They must be trained and this is done in graduate school. When I started, the director showed me two filing cabinet drawers. The top one was packed full with folders of those accepted into the program. The bottom drawer contained one lonely folder, those few who survived to the end. After years of foundational courses, history students move to methodology classes. They are essential to becoming a trained historian. Students learn how to find and use primary sources, how to sift secondary ones for validity, and how to separate necessary from unnecessary information to support their work. They will write many sourced research papers. At the end of course work, they face the graduate exam. In my case, three professors submitted four essay questions. It took me six hours to answer them. But this is just the beginning. Next is the thesis, the part of the program that kills off so many applicants.

To be declared an historian, the candidate must write and defend a thesis before experts in their field. It is an original work and must either 1) Present a new interpretation of an historical event based on new evidence heretofore not seen, or 2) present an entirely new and possibly novel reinterpretation of an historical event challenging existing ones. O’Reilly has done none of the above. He has not written or defended a thesis in history, an absolute requirement for one to claim the status of historian.

A thesis requires students be detectives, anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists, and forensic scientists. Like crime scene and automobile collision investigators, they collect as much physical evidence as possible, establish chronologies, interview witnesses, and consider prior writing on the subject. This will take one to two years or more. They analyze and draw conclusions, then organize it into a coherent integrated explanation. It must address contrary interpretations and opinions explaining why the student’s is the superior one. O’Reilly ignored information contrary to his consensus conclusion, red flag number four. Writing the thesis will take another year… as long as one can live on little sleep. Thesis advisers will demand students rewrite major portions, scrap the whole affair and start over from scratch, rewrite major portions of the rewrite, scrap them, start over again, and so on. Finally, when their adviser concludes the student has produced a proper thesis, the real fun begins. The student must defend his or her work before a panel of professors all authorities in the thesis’ subject matter. They will attack it from every angle and try to tear it down forcing candidates to demonstrate they know their subject. It is no fun. As a policeman, I faced aggressive and hostile attorneys on the stand trying to pick apart my testimony. The thesis defense is worse. This is why those who survive to the end, bristle when people like O’Reilly claim to be historians. He is a journalist, not an historian. It explains why he botched stories of two men so badly.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben was born into a military family following his father’s footsteps into the Prussian Army rising to the rank of captain. A local prince in Baden inducted him into the Order of Fidelity conferring upon him the title of baron. Steuben became part of the royal court. Soon thereafter, an anonymous enemy circulated rumors Steuben sodomized young men, a charge he denied. Unfounded or not, a rumor of such dreadful nature was enough to cause expulsion from the court and military. His accuser was never known, no victims identified, and no evidence surfaced that Steuben was homosexual. Nevertheless, liberal historians conclude he was guilty. Steuben relocated to France hoping to repair his military career. It was there he met Benjamin Franklin on a mission to obtain financial aid for America’s war with Britain. Franklin recommended Steuben to the Continental Army. He sailed to North America and joined General George Washington at Valley Forge and was instrumental in fashioning his army into an effective fighting force.⁴

Historian and Steuben expert John McCauley Palmer writes accusations von Steuben was homosexual were most likely driven by personal jealousies and religious hatred. He was a Protestant in the Catholic royal court of Hohenzollern-Hechingen Prince Josef Wilhelm. After conducting an investigation, Wilhelm concluded the charges were baseless. The unknown enemy continued circulating rumors forcing Steuben to leave the royal court.⁵

Professor of history Michael Lynch notes the LGBT movement is attempting to rewrite history falsely claiming Founding Fathers welcomed open homosexuals because of their contributions to the founding. Their websites trumpet Steuben was homosexual.⁶ They feverishly scour historical records looking for tell-tale signs only they can see, important personages were homosexuals. The dead cannot defend their reputations from such horrid smears. They denounce defenders of the accused as “homophobes” trying to destroy anyone standing on Biblical truth with respect to homosexuality.

The liberal History Channel claims Steuben was homosexual. Fancy that, a homosexual serving on the staff of an army for which the Continental Congress drafted rules governing the conduct of soldiers forbidding homosexuals to serve. Moreover, General Washington court martialed Lieutenant Enslin for attempting to sodomize enlisted man John Monhort. Enslin was found guilty of violating Article 5, Section 18, of the Articles of War. Washington ordered Enslin drummed from the Army “with infamy”. He considered sodomy abhorrent and detestable.⁷ Yet the History Channel would have us believe he had no problem with this Prussian chap who desired to bugger young soldiers in his tent. Laws against sodomy were extant throughout pre and postwar America. Notions the Army would countenance let alone welcome homosexuals is preposterous.

Does O’Reilly address exculpatory evidence with respect to Steuben? No. Palmer’s book was written in 1937, are there newer books with new evidence? Newer books yes, new evidence, no. How can O’Reilly ignore the homosexual movement’s frenzy to claim everyone from the apostle Paul, George Patton, to Bugs Bunny were homosexuals? They are desperate to find masculine homosexual heroes to counter their image as effeminate males with an affinity for buttless chaps and marching divest of clothing in depraved parades. Next, O’Reilly resuscitates one of the most reprehensible libels ever promoted serving in the process as a handmaiden to Left. He writes the Jefferson Foundation proved through DNA Thomas Jefferson fathered six children by his slave mistress Sally Hemings.⁸ His proof? Its that consensus thing, again. What about the DNA test? Jefferson hasn’t been around to provide a sample for quite some time but I’ll address that soon.

Dumas Mallone’s six-volume biography is perhaps the most thorough published on Jefferson. He writes this lie, about Jefferson “emanated from a single poisoned spring”, James Thomson Callander whom the president “unwisely befriended”.⁹ Callander was a Scottish pamphleteer who wrote tracks attacking the Crown and Parliament and was indicted for sedition. He fled to North America picking up where he left off writing pamphlets attacking the Federalist Party and the Adam’s administration. Jefferson considered him useful to the Republican Party, strong opponents of the Federalists. In economic straits, Callander appealed to Jefferson. He provided him irregular monetary gifts including funds to write a book on American history. Callander authored an unsigned document exposing Alexander Hamilton’s affair with the wife of James Reynolds who used it to blackmail Hamilton.¹⁰

In giving Callander monetary gifts, Jefferson unwittingly left himself vulnerable to blackmail as well. Callander’s pamphlets attacking Adams on behalf of Republicans led to his arrest for sedition. He was fined $200 dollars and sent to prison. Jefferson promised to pay the fine but didn’t follow through for which Callander never forgave him. He was able to raise the funds, pay the fine, and was released from prison. James Monroe later pardoned Callander and the court remitted the fine.¹¹ He then asked for a meeting with President Jefferson in Washington, D.C. He met with the president’s representative demanding appointment as Postmaster for Richmond, Virginia. He threatened to blackmail Jefferson by making public damaging letters and documents. He did not receive the appointment.¹² In March 1801, Callander began attacking Jefferson in Federalist controlled newspapers. He revealed Jefferson paid him to attack Adams. This was “fully exploited by Federalist Papers including the best of them, Hamilton’s organ, the New York Evening Post”. At the end of 1802, Callander published his sensational claim Jefferson sired five children by black slave, Sally Hemings. He had never been to Monticello nor spoken with anyone who lived there including Sally Hemings.¹³ He claimed ambassador Jefferson took Hemings, as his concubine, along with his two cherished daughters to France. He described Hemings’ alleged children by Jefferson as very black when, in fact, Hemings was light complected to the point, children sired by Jefferson might have passed for white. Callander invented children that did not exist.¹⁴

So-called Federalists were anything but. They were Nationalists advocating consolidating all and unlimited power into a strong national government, rendering states merely its appendages. Republicans supported a federal government of limited powers and preservation of state’s reserved rights. The Constitution accomplished the latter but faux-Federalists worked to transform a federal into a national system necessitating Jefferson’s destruction. Callander’s calumny proved most useful in that endeavor.¹⁵

Then and now, there is no evidence or corroboration for Callander’s claim. It would have been “virtually unthinkable” for a “man of Jefferson’s moral standards and habitual conduct”. He was “fastidious” and devoted to his “dead wife’s memory and to the happiness of his daughters and grandchildren” which “bordered on the excessive”. None visiting or living at Monticello at that time noticed an affair. As was customary then, Jefferson did not comment on the accusations. He believed his moral life and standards spoke for themselves.¹⁶

Jefferson’s contemporaries and subsequent historians rejected Callander’s story. It lay dormant until 1974 when Fawn A. Brodie published a book using Freudian psychoanalysis to insist it was true. Barbara Riboud picked up the theme writing a novel depicting Jefferson having the affair. Suppressed memory hypnosis and a fictional novel were not enough to wave CBS off. Instead, the liberal network, practicing fake history, turned the books into a television miniseries. After historians “denounced the project as a preposterous lie”, CBS canceled it.¹⁷ “In 1998, retired pathologists Dr. Eugene Foster performed a DNA test on the Y chromosomes” of Sally Hemings’ male descendants. It revealed Tom, “Hemings first born son” who Callander claimed was Jefferson’s, “was not related to any Jefferson male”. However, Easton, Hemings last child, was descended from a male Jefferson but there was no way to say Thomas was the father. Why? Twenty-five Jefferson males lived in Virginia at the time, eight at or near Monticello. Moreover, Easton was born five years after Callander published his story when Jefferson was president. If Jefferson denied Tom was his son, why would he father Easton five years later when having a slave concubine would destroy him?¹⁸

Liberal newspapers rushed Foster’s work to press falsely claiming it proved the story about Jefferson and Hemings was true. I was a teacher at the time when a liberal biology instructor burst into the copy room gleefully and mockingly announcing the story about Jefferson had been proven by DNA. I had read the rebuttal debunking this claim and began to explain it. He said because I was not a biology teacher, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I placed a copy of the rebuttal in his mailbox. There was no apology.

DNA tests revealed all but one Jefferson male had a 15% chance of fathering Easton. It dropped to 4% for Thomas meaning the chances he was not Easton’s father is 96%. No letters, diaries, documents, or records among the large Jefferson and Hemings families mention an affair. Evidence points to Thomas’ brother Randolph. Easton was born in 1808 when Thomas was 64 and serving his second term as president. Randolph was 52 and his five sons ranged from ages 17 to 24. A