Rewriting the Pig War
Colonel Granville O. Haller disputes a revisionist history of the 1859 San Juan Island standoff.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Colonel Granville O. Haller has written an open letter correcting Colonel Thomas M. Anderson’s recent review of the San Juan 'Pig War.' Haller, a participant in the events of 1859, challenges the narrative that British vessels were intimidated by a battery of 32-pounders. He characterizes such claims as myths unsupported by the reality of naval armament at the time, noting that British ships could easily have stood out of range and devastated the American position. Haller insists that the relative peace during the crisis was maintained by social civility between officers, not military threats, and calls out the tendency of oral tradition to crystallize into false history.
“Errors about matters of oral tradition are to be dealt with leniently, but they ought to be pointed out before they crystallize into 'lies agreed upon.'”
Haller’s frustration with 'oral tradition' and 'official falsehoods' acting as history highlights the enduring difficulty of documenting the truth of border conflicts and colonial occupations in the Pacific Northwest.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.