History Research does not stop with reading past records!  American Colonial History gives us many facts that can be assembled to help us understand our past and the people who played substantial roles in the events of their day.

Historians are fond of saying that we cannot know exactly everything that happened in the Gaspee Affair.  While it is true that we cannot know exactly everything that happened, historians generally agree with certainty on some events.  There are historians who then go on to state that we should reject any other additional detail that is not recorded in an unblemished manner.  They do a disservice to our present day understanding of the American Revolution.

Other eminent historians believe in using the existing evidence to the fullest, to help our present understanding of past events. This is rather like the work of a cultural anthropologist.  I hold to this latter view.  Every instance of historical research is an undertaking partly of cataloging items and partly of analysis.  In dealing with the Gaspee Affair, the recorded data is limited. From 1772 until the end of the Revolution, almost ten years later,  the utmost skill and caution was used by the Americans in hiding the true actors and events.  When the war ended, few persons saw any need to record for the future the names and actions of the Gaspee raiding force.  Thus, I find it good to adopt a statement of Marcus J. Borg, made during his historical reconstruction of Jesus, as being appropriate to answer the question of exactly what happened in the events of the Gaspee Affair.

Mark Twain expressed the same thought, although in his usual style.

"One of the most admirable things about history is, that almost as a rule we get as much information out of what it does not say as we get out of what it does say. And so, one may truly and axiomatically aver this, to-wit: that history consists of two equal parts; one of these halves is statements of fact, the other half is inference, drawn from the facts. . . . . . . When the practiced eye of the simple peasant sees the half of a frog projecting above the water, he unerringly infers the half of the frog which he does not see. To the expert student in our great science, history is a frog; half of it is submerged, but he knows it is there, and he knows the shape of it." --- Mark Twain, "The Secret History of Eddypus"

Mark Twain is right on target when he refers to history as a science. When drawing historical conclusions from records, it's important that you approach it in scientific way, considering all the possibilities and variables, and cite the reasons for your conclusion. By making sure your research is sound, you can be reasonably sure you're tracing a past event's frog.

Anthropology, history, and the trial of a civil lawsuit have one thing in common -- each involves the process of deciding historical facts based on often inadequate information.   Therefore, I would add my own viewpoint, that of a civil trial advocate.  The process of historical reconstruction is much like a civil trial in the English or American tradition: after the evidence has been viewed, the judge or jury has to determine whether the evidence taken as a whole makes it more likely than not that a particular event occurred.  Our English and American societies have said that in general it is sufficient that men's lives and fortunes depend upon the jury's historical reconstruction of events, even if all the jury can say is that it is "more probable than not" that an event happened in a particular way.  We as a culture think it proper that the property and livelihood of individuals and the very existences of businesses can be determined on such a basis, because the alternative is lack of forward movement.  In like manner, to move forward where it seems reasonable to do so, it is reasonable and sufficient to use forensic recreation as a part of historical investigation.  The results of such a method helps us make sense of past events in history.  Those judgments become useful theses for later investigators it helps us narrow the field of theses for future investigation.

And so in the process of historical reconstruction of events, I believe it proper and useful to our understanding of history to use the question: Does the evidence taken as a whole makes it more likely than not that a particular event occurred?  This question method is a forensic reconstruction of history.

The important point in the use of forensic reconstruction of history is that those events which are not taken from primary sources (but rather have  been "judged" more likely to have occurred than not), must be labeled as judgments on facts.  

The dangers of using careful forensic evidence-based evaluations in writing an historical narrative are:

Those dangers are far outweighed by the benefits in using the evaluations for our understanding of history.

Therefore, in my discussions of the events in the Gaspee Affair, I will be using the method of gathering evidence, and then determining whether the evidence taken as a whole makes it more likely than not that a particular event occurred.  This is "Forensic Reconstruction".  I am mindful of Occam's razor in my determinations.

My determinations of course are viewed through the lenses of my own experience and values.  My values determine what I view as "normal" for human actions and speech.  My experience is as a trial lawyer, where with each witness, as I prepared a cross-examination, I had to do a semantic analysis involving three questions.  Those same questions are applicable to historical reconstruction.

1. How does the witness know what he is telling? Many times a witness really was not able to have a good vantage point to see the event, and his/her brain is merely filling in the blanks with what seems normal to the person's brain as what happened. 

As I write this the major news networks are explaining their eight hour long error of reporting 12 men found alive (when the men were actually found dead) The monumental error was built on one reporter hearing a police person with no direct view of the scene state within hearing of a reporter that "They're bringing 12 men out now.; the reporter asking: "Are they all alive?; and the response being "As far as I know." On that an erroneous report by all major networks and newspapers was built.  The semantic investigation of "how does he know what he is telling?" is the bedrock of understanding what others say.

2. Exactly what does the witness mean? (Pull the exact meaning out to eliminate the shades of meaning that might have entire other meanings inside them) If the witness says, “It was a long time before he called,” does it mean three days or three hours or thirty minutes? 

On this aspect of semantic investigation, each investigator tends to inject his/her own values of "normal". Because the Gaspee events occurred in a four centuries ago, in a specialized local culture, a historian doing forensic reconstruction of history must have an immersion into the social, literary, humanistic, economic, and political cultures of the 18th century.  Especially must he/she know something about the evolution of English words and values, and have read the literature of the 18th century.  First: words change, not only in shades of meaning, but also in actual meaning.  The 18th century "stink" means what we in our 21st century call a "pleasant aroma".  Second: who uses the words is important: e.g., an Oxford don of the 18th century might tell you that this discourse by me is "Esquire Bucklin's apology. You would in this century would normally think the Oxford don was saying I was asking for forgiveness for an action open to blame.  Instead the 18th century don would be using the term apology as it came from the Greek word apologia (Ἀπολογία), meaning the formal explanation and defense of a stated research position against an attack by critics.  Third, the definition of the word may not have changed but the connotations attached to the word now vary.  For example, the first, 18th century, biographer of Shakespeare, Nicholas Rowe, proclaimed the wording of Shakespeare's verse as "manly and proper" and objective.  Today we look at the same words and proclaim them feminine, homosexual and empathetic. The words are the same, but social connotations of the word have changed.  Indeed, one of the values to a historian of examining the literature of earlier ages is to cause him to reflect on his reliance on his own modern use of words and his own connotations of the words used by the writer of earlier centuries.

3. Does the mere telling distort the way it happened ? For example, events may happen slower or quicker than the witness is able to relate them, and thus the mere telling suggests an untrue time period involved in the events.  In the Gaspee events, many of the documents or oral reports state as complete story what can only have been a partial story, and thus the telling distorts the broad-picture, wide-screen, investigative-reporting picture. Moreover, during the Revolutionary War there was a Rhode Island conspiracy of silence and intentional suppression or unintentional distortion of facts by the American participants.  On the English side, we have to realize that stories  by the participants to suit their own advantage may well have occurred, such as in the testimony of witnesses who were defendants or additional potential defendants in the English court-martial proceedings.

The semantic problems do not prevent forensic reconstruction of history; they only complicate the process and warn us of the always tentative conclusions we are making.

I should note that working historians are fond of working with the larger units of social action -- a class, a religion, or an ethnic group.   My particular fondness is working with the most intimate of groups, the family. My particular passion is understanding the law of the time and place, which in England and American has been an expression of the morals of the governing community and which so profoundly affected English and American social action.  Therefore, in my forensic reconstruction of events,  my analysis of the Gaspee Affair often is influenced both by my research that begins with the family and interfamily relationships that shaped events and also by my research on the law of the time and place involved.

Leonard Bucklin