236 A Magnificent Memory: The Underground History of Amercian Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

236 A Magnificent Memory: The Underground History of Amercian Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

A Magnificent Memory

     When I get most gloomy about this I summon up a picture of a noble British general with  powdered hair and pipe-clay leggings sitting astride a white stallion directing troop  movements across the green river Monongahela, his brilliant columns all in red stretching  far behind him. "The most magnificent

sight I ever saw," said George Washington many  years later when he remembered it. Who could blame all those ordinary men for betting  their lives on an invincible military machine, all glittering and disciplined? All they had  to do was to ride down naked American savages from the Stone Age; all they had to do  was take their orders and obey them.  

     General Braddock and British tradition dictated common soldiers should be treated like  dumb children, as a tough, unsentimental shepherd treats sheep. It isn't even very hard to  imagine these lowly soldiers, so well gotten up, feeling proud to submerge their little  destinies in the awesome collective will of the British empire. 

      But as things turned out, a day of reckoning was at hand for the empire. Exposed in full  pretension, the collapse of the British expedition under Braddock sent a shock of wild  surmise through the minds of other common men in the colonies and their leaders. If  Braddock didn't know what he was doing, was it possible German King George back in  London could be taken, too?   Prince Charles Visits Steel Valley High