Question for the Americans

[james_davis_nicoll]

When Irish-Americans go off on rants about the evils of demographic change do you think they are in any way aware that a century ago people making that speech would have been complaining about the Irish?

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I don't remember that Ben was into genocide.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he complained about it. (http://www.historycarper.com/1764/03/01/a-narrative-of-the-late-massacres/)

[peter-erwin.livejournal.com]

Not only did he complain about it[*], he helped raise a temporary militia to prevent the perpetrators of the massacre from marching on Philadelphia and killing more Indians living there.

[*] And "complain" is putting it a bit mildly -- it's a pretty stirring rant, in which Franklin is quite happy to hold up various pagans, Muslims, and Catholics as exemplars of honorable behavior, far more civilized than the local "white Christian savages".

(Given Cromwell's treatment of Catholics, the idea that he was more open-minded than Franklin is ... pretty bizarre. Granted that Cromwell was, in some respects, more tolerant and liberal than a lot of mid-17th Century Europeans.)