BY WARREN BOROSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SPECIAL COMMENTARY

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia written and edited by the public, is an admirable and frequently helpful enterprise. But it has a serious flaw: that fanatics can take over an entry and distort it to conform it into their eccentric views.

A glaring example is the entry on Richard Stockton of New Jersey, the signer of the Declaration of Independence who later swore loyalty to the British.

He is the only signer to have recanted. But he was imprisoned at the time, ill, and treated abominably, and his property had been destroyed. Today we have nothing for him but sympathy; in 1969, a state college in New Jersey was even named after him.

But some people who contribute to Wikipedia are unhappy even with the claim that Stockton recanted. New Jersey Newsroom has reported on this in the past. (http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/style/the-only-signer-of-the-declaration-of-independence-who-recanted-was-from-new-jersey)

The Wikipedia article reports that the British offered a pardon to any prisoner who recanted, but then states flatly that “though many took the pardon, Stockton never did.” (The British General Howe had written — mistakenly, it appears — that no leading rebel had taken the pardon.)

Another website, sponsored by the Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, states that “Lately Stockton has been maligned by a few writers claiming that Stockton took a pardon from General Howe and swore allegiance to the king. This claim is based on a private letter quoting a rumor spread by an enemy of Stockton. There is absolutely no proof this occurred.”

The article goes on to castigate “these revisionist writers using rumors and innuendo to spread this false claim against a founding father.”

Who are “these revisionist writers”? Here are two of them:

1. David Hackett Fischer, university professor at Brandeis University. In his book, “Washington’s Crossing,” he writes that Stockton “decided after a short stay in prison to accept the Howe’s’ offer of amnesty. This signer of the Declaration of Independence now signed a declaration of allegiance to the king and gave ‘his word of honor that he would not meddle in the least in American affairs.’ He was the only signer of the Declaration to turn his coat and came to be ‘much spoken against.’”

“Washington’s Crossing” won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Fischer himself in 2006 won the Irving Kristol award from the American Enterprise Institute.

2. Frederick Bernays Wiener, a lawyer for more than 40 years and a retired colonel, wrote an article about Stockton for American Heritage magazine, published in June 1975. The title: “The Signer Who Recanted.” In the article, which fully sympathizes with Stockton, Wiener writes: “The proof of Richard Stockton’s defection comes from reliable sources: two of his colleagues in the Continental Congress, both of them fellow signers of the Declaration of Independence.”

Wiener was awarded the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in recognition of “a lifetime of outstanding public service to the United States Army and the legal profession.”

The American Heritage article is hard to find — even if you search online. It is listed in the notes at the end of the Wikipedia article, with a link, but the link does not work. (I own a copy of that issue.)

Other websites are reticent on the subject of Stockton’s defection — including Snopes and FindaGrave.

But for Wikipedia, supposedly a comprehensive encyclopedia, to present biased, one-sided information about Stockton is nothing short of disgraceful.