Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Since there seems to be 2 versions of the CW from start to finish, I was wondering how one judges the truth of their version of history?
For example, Ft. Sumter: the North says the South started the war, they fired the first shots, South says they were basically 'tricked', 'misled', etc. into firing, etc. How does a novice judge if McPherson, Potter, etc. are truthful historians, and not giving a spin?
I think it's fair to say that many universities have a fairly 'liberal' bias in many of their departments. How do we tell that that bias has not affected their scholarship? How do we differentiate DiLorenzo as a faulty historian/economist from a Freehling as an accurate historian? How can we tell that sometimes bias or personal perspective doesn't necessarily affect the scholarship of a work (perhaps e.g., Daniel Walker Howe's, What Hath God Wrought), but may add a corrective dimension to the period?
Essentially, why do you trust McPherson, et. al., and not the folks at lewrockwell.com?
Herein lies the hard work for the typical student of the Civil War.
Run down the sources listed in any book you buy or read concerning the history of the Civil War. Check them out and see if the sources listed are accurate and factual.
This is a real pain and requires effort and time.
It is because I did the above that I do NOT trust DiLorenzo or lewrockwell.com. I read the book, The Real Lincoln, by DiLorenzo and frankly, got mad at its content. Then I checked the sources he listed in his book and got angry. They simply did not say what he said they did, or they were out-and-out missquotes.
I also read the book, The South Was Right!, by the Kennedy Brothers. Another series of bad history and missquotes or deliberate twisting of historical sources.
I could go on, but I think my point is made. Source material is what counts with me when it comes to seeing if an author is "biased" or not. This goes for books that I find enjoyable or I think supports my own personal views of what caused the war or the political motivation of those who espoused one cause or another.
Does this mean every book I have read is without mistake or has its own agenda? No, of course not. There are some who support the Northern view that I am not comfortable with nor will I use in discussion or debate as I simply cannot check out their sources or when I do they are wrong or have taken source material out of context.
One thing I will ask of you is that you read books, sources, articles that you may NOT agree with or find objectionable. You can in no way discuss a source or other viewpoint without doing so. Don't just stick to one viewpoint you find comfortable or that agrees with your own views. You will shortchange yourself and stunt your learning of the period.
But in the final analysis, you are going to decide what you like and what you are comfortable with and what point-of-view to have when discussing the Civil War. It can be a very fantastic and very rewarding adventure if you take the time to do a bit of work and research your views and your sources.
Good luck on your journey.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
by Clara
Essentially, why do you trust McPherson, et. al., and not the folks at lewrockwell.com?
UBlue pretty much gave the whole process for someone who is unfamiliar with sources and is trying to vet them. An author like McPherson, Gary Gallagher, Larry Daniels, Gordon Rhea, Freehling etc. usually use many sources for their info, and their books are heavily footnoted. You can then check those footnotes they used for veracity and credibility, and make up your own mind. As UB said, it's a pain.
You sound like a pretty sharp, intelligent person (and refreshingly honest, by the way, about your lack of knowledge of the subject and your earnest desire to learn.) It won't take you long I suspect to weed out the unreliable,and questionable, from the truly knowledgeable, educated, informed authors who use sources such as government docs, court cases/rulings, and data from other unimpeachable sources etc. to get to the truth. But as you said, each side thinks their side is the true side.Each side can read the very same material and produce amazingly different conclusions. So....yer werk be cut out for ye.
Read DiLorenzo and lewrockwell.com, look at their sources,(footnotes) and determine if they are credible, thus making the authors themselves credible. You get to make the final call for yourself.
Terry
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
It's a very difficult task to decide if an author is objective. As an example I'm a huge fan of Wiley Sword. I like his books imensely. That said he has a tendency to treat Hood a bit unfairly, to be polite about it. I'd always known he didn't care for Hood but I was unaware just how much it may have slanted his work until recently, last week or two actually. I'm in the process of rereading a couple of his works to see if I can note anything else out of the norm. I tend to stick w/ authors who I feel have been vetted by critical peer review. Footnotes and a bibliography are very important to me; they mean the difference between proven research and fiction.
The point is you might find an author who you believe is all but the second coming when it comes to the CW then discover you were wrong to believe so. The trick is not to let it embitter you and most importantly know that you must put it aside as flawed if you do. I know people who took DiLorenzo to heart and were furious when they discovered his deceptions and outright lies... heck two of them are some of the most ferverent anti DiLorenzo people I've ever dealt with. I also know a woman who approached his work w/ "an open mind" and thinks the man walks on water even after his inaccuracies and distortions have been pointed out. She will accept nothing to the contrary of her first opinion of the man's work because it fits w/ what she wants to believe.
In short it is a learning experiance, anyone who tells you they know everything about the CW or know the "real facts" is either a naive fool or a liar.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
Since there seems to be 2 versions of the CW from start to finish, I was wondering how one judges the truth of their version of history?
For example, Ft. Sumter: the North says the South started the war, they fired the first shots, South says they were basically 'tricked', 'misled', etc. into firing, etc. How does a novice judge if McPherson, Potter, etc. are truthful historians, and not giving a spin?
I think it's fair to say that many universities have a fairly 'liberal' bias in many of their departments. How do we tell that that bias has not affected their scholarship? How do we differentiate DiLorenzo as a faulty historian/economist from a Freehling as an accurate historian? How can we tell that sometimes bias or personal perspective doesn't necessarily affect the scholarship of a work (perhaps e.g., Daniel Walker Howe's, What Hath God Wrought), but may add a corrective dimension to the period?
Essentially, why do you trust McPherson, et. al., and not the folks at lewrockwell.com?
Gee, Clara. That's hard.
A lot of what passes for REAL HISTORY is HEARSAY, whether then or now! . While I have taken neither DiLorenzo nor McPherson to the mat as far as their sources are concerned (have not spent all that long in it, compared to a lot of these guys) I am carefully watching what goes on, and what passes for FACTS. I am on one side, but that does not mean I don't consider everything that is said. When I hear McPherson and Company bleating about SLAVERY THIS or TREASON THAT, and then see what actually happened (they didn't hang Jeff Davis! Amnesty for all Confederates under Johnson???!!)
I wonder, then. A lot.
As a former cop, with a lot of courtroom experience, I can tell you that what passes for 'law' and even 'case law' can a lot of times be boiled down to HEARSAY and OPINION. This fight about Texas VS White is just such an after-the-fact bit of effluvium.
The problem is this; even the people making the history were ON A SIDE. Lincoln was a YANKEE, on their side, and no one ever talks about this on the history channel! He is just a Noble hand-ringing Emancipator who was 'tragically' caught up 'in all this'... as a completely innocent bystander.
I think the benefit that Dilorenzo and others serve, even if they are as DEAD WRONG and OFF TRACK as these pro-yankee posters want us to believe... is that they show us the failings of all historians, and their own jaded-nesses to their own opinions. One way or the other. I trust their boys as much as they trust Greg Loren Durand, Frank Conner,
DiLorenzo, Cisco, or anyone else I have read.
There is no THIRD LINE, no MIDDLE GROUND. (I knew that, all along, when I came here...).
But when an historian starts in with this slave-driving traitors to the Union rhetoric, I'd grab my hip-boots!
It will get deep in here pretty quickly!
I will bring another view to the table. We are told Universities are places of learning and where open discussion and thought take place. This is not as true as Universities would like for you to think.
I call it group think or paradigms within each college of thought and if you go against this group think or paradigm, you become an outcast and Quack within that college of study. If you want to be a professor at a college and go against this group think or paradigm, you will not have a job.
It is said, "University politics are rougher then anything that happens in Washington D.C. politics."
I have many questions that go against many paradigms of the civil war. I have always wonder how the gods of the civil war would receive my questions that go against their official story or paradigm of the civil war. I figure they call me a quack and lump me with all the other's who question their version of the civil war.
It not just footnotes but you have to toe the official line as well.
I do try to read more then one version of a historical event so I can get a better understanding of what was happening at that event or moment in history. always read multiple versions of an event or moment in history that to me is the best way. A note if the two versions do not match then read about it in an encyclopedia because that is the official version of the event or moment told by the gods or gatekeepers to history.
Toe the official line if you want to win awards and get a job but think outside the box if you want to push for the truth.
__________________
"States Rights are about States Wrongs" - Jesse Jackson
To add my humble $.02 (that being about all its worth)...
I used to read history uncritically and simply accept what the author wrote. One failing of my undergraduate history education is that they did not teach me to question what an author wrote and to look to the sources cited by the author to test his veracity.
Once I went through law school, my perspective changed. I began to look at everything more critically (perhaps too critically, an occupational hazard). While I agree with UnionBlue (as usual) that looking to the primary sources is a way to test the author, I find that if one simply reads the work with a healthy skepticism to start with, and an open mind, it goes a long way.
Working on lawsuits which have been reported in the press (and barely recognizing it) gave me a healthy skepticism for press reports. Newspapers of the period were even less reliable than today (and I find reporting today to be often less than credible). Then when writing legal briefs and seeing quote lifted from cases with cleverly concealing elipses which completely changed the meaning of the decision (a skill often practiced in movie ads when quoting reviews) made me more skeptical of "direct quotes."
It is not confined to law. When studying theology and seeing Biblical quotes taken out of context or selectively edited, I realized that pretty much everyone - historians, reporters, lawyers, theologians - writes with a particular perspective in mind and one must realize that any writing is meant to sway the reader to a particular perspective.
Unfortunately, modern academics sometimes makes this even more of a problem in history. When a topic has been written on ad nauseum, the temptation is to try to find a "new" perspective in order to get published, and sometimes the more outrageous the better. Thus, the modern tend toward "deconstructive history" in which the author tries to show you that everything you have ever known or been taught about a particular subject or person is wrong... Lee was a tactical blunderer, not a genius; Lincoln was a meglomanical dictator who did not care one whit for the slaves; Thomas Jefferson was a lying philanderer who would do anything to advance his own political career (wait - that last is true).
Every author writes from a personal perspective - historian, reporter, lawyer, theologian, what have you. Even one who is trying to be unbiased cannot help but letting their own bias creep in. It's human nature. Simply reading with an eye toward this fact is half the battle in analyzing historical works. The very fact that you are asking the question shows that you are well on your way.
As a final note, the more outrageous the claim, the more more skeptical to be. After all, the conventional wisdom, while not always correct, became the conventional wisdom for a reason.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
I'll guess you still don't have your answer. I don't have one for you either. You can find some big names who have a bent -- Castel for one. And if you look by rigid standards, you will miss some of the really good little guys.
You don't get to be a Freehling, or McPhearson, or Sears, or Rhea, or Gallagher by publishing dung. For one thing, there are about a thousand other historians out there waiting for you to misquote or place a biased opinion on given sources. Hence, big names are good.
With an unfamiliar name, I look at the publisher. Some go to great lengths to avoid questionable works. If UNCP, LSUP, or Savas-Beatie published it, it's a bearer bond. Second is most any university press. They can't afford to get caught out publishing something questionable. Next in believability is the lineup of bigtime names -- Simon & Schuster, Harcourt, Oxford, etc. They have reputations to protect.
Caveat. Small time publishers like White Mane and Stackpole can produce some blockbusters. And one of the best books available on Spring Hill and Franklin was published by a college of interior design. So you can see that judging by publisher can guarantee you a level of scholarship, it will lead you to miss some of the really good little guys.
Way back when I first started and buying and reading books on the USCW, I'd slip through a good one in a few days. Now the guys and gals on this board have brought footnotes to my attention. Now it takes weeks to get through a book. It requires two bookmarks (one at the page I'm on and one in the footnote section -- I especially appreciate those publishers who put the footnotes on the same page). As I usually use at least a dollar as a bookmark, I must have at least $10 drawing little interest scattered about the house. And it costs a fortune to pepper the margins with those sticky colored pointers.
Realistically, you'll read some clinkers. You can't avoid it. But even the clinker is revealing. And isn't that the whole point?
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I am going to hazard a guess that there are a fair number of history majors here in this forum; men and women with degrees in the field. I am a recent grad (probably giving away my youth, but oh well) and still remember many of the lessons that I was taught as a history student.
One must always understand that there will never be any work on a historical event that is completely objective. This is not to say that every work is biased and totally slanted, but the author always has his take and his slant on the issue he is discussing. However, we were taught to be as objective as possible in our research, and even if we had made an assumption on a topic, if we found we were wrong from the evidence we dug up, admit it. It is something too few people do these days.
We were also taught to look closely at the sources, and to not take anything out of context, for context is key when it comes to historical debate. Union brought up DiLorenzo. He is notorious for taking quotes and ripping them out of context, or just planting a quote somewhere to make it sound like it proves his point, when in actuality, it doesn't. I did not like reading his work at all, because I am familiar with much of the speeches and works he quoted, and know for a fact they didn't justify his conclusions. When a person writes history this way, it isn't history. DiLorenzo is a revisionist, along with Charles Adams. Both are economists, and whereas I feel no animosity towards a person who has an expertise in another field and delves into history, it is wholly wrong to try and revise it to prove your own point.
Study the source documents, and most importantly, come to your own conclusion. Sometimes you will come to one that agrees with your previous thesis. But sometimes, you may refute yourself. Learn from it, and use it to better your knowledge on the subject. And with the Civil War, there is plenty to study and plenty to research. Dig for the truth....it is out there!
__________________ "The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize." George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
Unionblue, Timewalker, and a few others have already hit the nail on the head. I can add very little to what they said except to say that scholarship shows. When you look closely at the writings of James McPherson, Gary Gallagher, Brooks Simpson, and other professional historians you can see great scholarship in action. If you look at their footnotes and compare the works cited to the work in question you see honest handling, accurate quotations, and interpretation based on the primary sources, with secondary or tertiary sources brought in to provide supporting detail. You see a vast understanding of the historical context.
On the other hand, when you read hacks like DiLiarenzo, the Kartoonish Kennedy Klowns, and their ilk, you see fabrications, attempts to deceive, inaccurate quotations, inaccurate history, dishonest twisting of words, dishonest handling of evidence, and interpretation based on a preconceived conclusion that supports an agenda with little or no understanding of the historical context.
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