History is a mix of legend, distortions told by either side but usually favoring the powerful, if not the victor, and a representation of actual events by those who observed them.
A fine exploration of this can be seen in the classic film
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) and the quote:
Ransom Stoddard: You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Above from:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056217/quotesThere are always many perspectives. One man's patriotic rebel is another person's terrorist. That said not all perspectives are equally and objectively true, and worse still, not all assertions are representations of actual perspectives. People often say and write things for reasons of propaganda and sophistry where the point isn't to state historic facts but to present a mind play in an attempt to shift the perspective of the intended audience.
The more accurate perspective is not always the most commonly presented one and it may not be, for various reasons, the one might want to present.
The "Boston tea Party" was blow for freedom against tyranny. But it was also a temper tantrum by smugglers of tea, Hamilton and others, who resented that the stamp tax would open the market for less expensive English tea that would undercut the profits made off smuggling.
On the one hand the founding fathers were fighting the English aristocracy and class system and, according to their rhetoric, standing for the 'common man'. On the other the founding fathers were almost all wealthy businessmen, landholders, and slave owners who had little interest in common men as anything but pawns in a power struggle to create their own continental aristocracy who would rule over what they saw as lesser men.
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