A serious historian must carefully consider his or her subject. Hours of diligent research and conscientious, consuming deliberation go into the presentation for accuracy of an individual’s reputation as well as historical fact and circumstances. In his book Bunker Hill, Nathaniel Philbrick states in his notes, pages 319-320, that with the encouragement of Samuel Forman, author of Dr. Joseph Warren, they created the fictitious narrative of a thirteen-year-old child being sexually victimized by a thirty-three-year-old man. There is no documentation to support this fiction. To present this lecherous account, Philbrick and Forman claimed omniscient power. Seemingly these grown, highly educated men in their back-and-forth banter mentally and emotionally digressed to the likeness of unstable, hormone raging adolescents in their creation of a narrative which negated the personhood of a sexually victimized pregnant child and debased the character of the doctor who was trying to help her. This child and the doctor, long dead, cannot defend themselves.
Philbrick continued to push an imagined, victimless perversion of this child being raped when he referred to her in a Smithsonian Magazine article as a “mistress.” It seemingly did not occur to Philbrick that a child should never be considered as a willing and eager sexual partner. Nor, it seems, did it occur to the journalist who wrote the article or editors who let the callous comment to be printed in said article.
Thankfully there is a new executive editor at the Smithsonian Magazine – Debra Rosenberg. She removed Philbrick’s egregious remark of comparing a victimized child to a mistress and inserted an editor’s note to explain why. Kudos to Debra Rosenberg!
Were Joseph Warren alive today, he could confront the charge of pedophile rape made by Philbrick and Forman in a court of law. Because he cannot speak for himself is the destruction of his reputation — or that of any historical figure — fair game?
My next post will be my exhaustive, cited essay encouraged and supported by three notable history professors representing Boston College, Harvard, Suffolk, and Brigham Young Universities, which refutes the baseless, debasing claims against the character of Dr. Joseph Warren. Warren cannot take proof of libel and slander to a court of law – but proof of libel and slander can be presented to the court of public opinion. What might be the reasons of those purposefully defaming a historical individual’s character? Perhaps to exalt their credibility as historians by claiming to find “new” information (their trusting readers would have no way of knowing if the information was indeed accurate). Or maybe to add a bit of lewdness to sell more books? Or possibly it is a means of safely presenting the reflection of the inner thoughts and even reprehensible desires of the author as being acceptable if consigned to an extraordinary hero? Let the reader be the judge.
(Photos of Nathaniel Philbrick and Samuel Forman)
