Dr. Bancroft's The Strange Death Of Silas Deane

In chapter 8 “Speaking Smartly about the Salem Witchcrafts” thesis is Samuel Sewall 's family life during the crisis of the Salem witch trials. Samuel Sewall 's brother Stephen who was the director of the court throughout the trials, had fallen ill putting stress onto Sewall himself. In spite of this Sewall was facing issues in his home life. For example, Samuel had to give his son corporal punishment because Joseph had thrown a brass knob at his sister Betty causing her head to start bleeding. In addition, Joseph acted up again by throwing a tantrum, later he swallowed a bullet but later excreted it in the orchard.

At the end it is said “the Writ and Warrant to justify the Arrest were read, whereby upon the Return it was found, that they had returned a Rescous by the Party that was killed, which the Court told Watson was a great Evidence against him.” Also it is said that because there was no provocation, the law states that it implies the charge to be murder. Nathaniel Russell was found guilty and John Watson was found not

The trail on the true identity of Martin Guerre has drawn the interests of scholars and historians for centuries, allowing for details of the case to be preserved right up to the present. Popular interest was rekindled in the tale of Martin Guerre through the work of historian Natalie Zemon Davis’ book The Return of Martin Guerre, which interpreted the primary source literature in a new and original light. This interpretation has drawn sharp criticism from fellow historians such as Robert Finlay, who sees Davis’s work as misinterpreting and manipulating the evidence to allow for her original interpretation of the events. It is my opinion that Davis’s account of the case of Martin Guerre is unfounded and fabricated, and that Finlay’s criticism

This work guides the reader along a path of history that is often misconstrued

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, written by James Loewen, the author addresses his concerns about how history is taught in American schools. He presents many arguments as to why some information found in textbooks is not accurate as well as how it hurts students in the long run. Loewen also states that these textbooks participate in the sugar coating of gruesome details and try to paint awful people in a heroic light. The twisting of history often leads to either having to relearn real history or the mistrust of all history. Both are lousy outcomes of what the fake history courses could do.

In Walker Percy’s essay “The Loss of the Creature”, Percy uses examples such as the Grand Canyon, Mexican tourists, and dogfish to identify “creatures” and explain how they are lost. He highlights the fact that the first people to see something are the ones who see it as the most beautiful (Percy 298). Percy uses the Grand Canyon to demonstrate this example as the first person to see the Grand Canyon had no expectations and wasn’t even specifically looking for what he would soon lay eyes on. This creates an authentic experience in which there were no previous expectations or as Percy calls them, “symbolic complex”. I, personally, have never been to the Grand Canyon, but I can certainly describe what it looks like, especially in today’s society where the internet has photographs of everything imaginable for the world to see without actually seeing it.

History is made from stories, stories that have been passed from generation to generation, eventually written down and recorded as a record. Most often History is written by the powerful, the victorious, and so facts can become twisted and history can grow to not truly reflect reality. In context, the winners of a game may justly say they won but intentionally leave out the penalties they took or the goals the other team scored. Similarly, this happens in history and so history must be revised upon the discovery of new facts and evidence to be able to do justice to the reality of events.

The authors present another theory of the cause of Deane 's death, stating that prehaps his friend Bancroft had poisened him. He had a clear motive being that Bancroft had grown relient of his pension from his years as a spy, as well as the hope of him recived a monopoly for creating color dyes, and with his old friend, Silas Deane, going back to America to clear up his past, one that Bancroft was a large part of, he was at the very least uncomfortable with the situation. Bancroft was not sure of how Deane was going to clear his reputation, but he could not risk his secrets being revealed, as they included the sneaky business that they both participated in in France, Bancroft being a double agent and Bancroft 's role in the affair of John

The Grand Canyon is a remarkably interesting and beautiful place, as Walker Percy refers to in his essay “The Loss of Creature”. How can sightseers hold the same “value P” if they possess “the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind” (Percy1)? In his essay, Percy discusses his theory that humans aren’t getting the full value of life because they live off of preconceptions and expectations. Percy provides the reader with a number of examples to help illustrate his point in which he believes to be “The Loss of Creature”. The descriptions of the couple on vacation in Mexico and the difference between the Falkland Islander and the student at Scarsdale High School are two of his more interesting examples.

The authors studied primary sources including church records, town history, and many undocumented local sources. Through the study of these sources, Boyer and Nissenbaum focus their attention of the people of Salem and how they interacted with one another. This demonstrates how the factions came to hate one another and how the class difference may have led to a more gruesome witch hunt. Ginzburg took a social history approach as well and studied mostly court documents from benandanti cases. These primary sources allowed Ginzburg to see the social differences between the inquisitors and the accused within the trial.

Chaffin delves into an analysis of Polk’s relationship with Bancroft that ultimately leads the reader to believe that Bancroft was somewhat obsessed with his commander in chief. He then discovered several sources in which Bancroft changes his story about not only whether or not Polk ever said the “four great measures” but also when they were said. Chaffin appropriately comments that “Bancroft’s cageyness about the source of the anecdote, forty years after the fact, seems odd” (58). Chaffin is indefinitely right about that. One of the clearest ways to tell someone is lying, such as in a court of law, is when their story keeps changing.

I think the best way to look at history is to try understanding both sides of an issue. Of course doing this isn 't a way to justify truly sickening behavior, and it shouldn 't be. However staying in the middle of this debate is the most reasonable stance because it is fairly easy to see the pros and cons on each side. There is no side that is one hundred percent correct rather they both have plausible answers to an open ended question.

By placing the two cherished books into his personal briefcase, Henry Drummond exhibits the importance of both books’ existence. One must be able to question their environment to reach true conclusions for themselves, “The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool… it takes a very smart fella to say “I don’t know the answer”(1 2 414-417). Laying side by side the literature symbolizes the necessity of the contradicting volumes; because the subjects persist debatability and can equally support the argument and remain

History does not always convey the absolute truth. It offers only one side of the story. The strong and powerful voices always drown out the sounds of the weak and beaten. The winner’s word will always be taken over the loser’s. The content that lies within the textbooks was not written by the defeated.

Short stories tend to cover a plot, a setting, and a small quantity of characters in such a limited amount of time. Two examples of a short story would include “Cons” by Jess Walter and “Killings” by Andres Dubus. Even though these stories contain their own unique storyline with different personas, they both can relate to one another by looking at them from multiple perspectives. “Cons” and “Killings” are very much alike as they are told from a third person narration, both men learn that they are capable of doing terrible things, and two individuals view death as problem solver.