Biased Historians Rewriting History?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Apparently it is my point is failing to be understood.

When Republicans cherry pick the witnesses it is not hard for Republican interrogators to get the witness to contradict, or revoke, statements that fail to conform to the Republican Party agenda.

Irrelevant. The point is that Anderson picked the source and posted it, and it contradicted him.
 
Just to throw this out there, but just because you don't like what a historian (or reporter) has to say does not mean they are biased.

Indeed it might be possible that the assumption of bias is in the mind of the reader.

Which is again why multiple sources are valuable

But sometimes, the weight of evidence should be the final verdict.

So for example... it is fact that after 1876 and the end of Reconstruction that African Americans were completely disenfranchised in the former Confederacy, losing nearly all significant political offices, the ability to vote in most places, and that lynching and anti Black riots that resulted in significant loss of life occurred.

None of those things happened because African Americans decided that they liked being powerless. They happened because of force and threats of force, which one could call terrorism for political purposes

You don't have be a biased Radical Republican historian to point that simple truth out now do you? The overwhelming evidence makes it plain.
 
When Republicans cherry pick the witnesses it is not hard for Republican interrogators to get the witness to contradict, or revoke, statements that fail to conform to the Republican Party agenda.

Irrelevant. The point is that Anderson picked the source and posted it, and it contradicted him.

Cherry picking of witnesses to a Senate investigating committee may be irrelevant to some, but not everyone. Your judgment that it is irrelevant, however, helps me understand your perspective.
 
Last edited:
Historians can be just as biased as newspaper reporters I imagine, that is why as students or just fans of history it's our duty (IMO) to seek new sources.

It is the best way.

Before I began seriously researching and reading about the Civil War, I maintained the war could not have been caused by slavery, but was all about the States seeking their rights.

Reading source documents and actual history was a real eye opener for me.
 
It is the best way.

Before I began seriously researching and reading about the Civil War, I maintained the war could not have been caused by slavery, but was all about the States seeking their rights.

Reading source documents and actual history was a real eye opener for me.

yeah some of those prewar speeches and writings are pretty awful coming out of just about every slave state
 
Cherry picking of witnesses to a Senate investigating committee may be irrelevant to some, but not everyone. Your judgment that it is irrelevant, however, helps me understand your perspective.

Apparently it's too difficult to understand. All I was doing there was pointing out that the source he chose specifically contradicted him. Anything else is irrelevant to that.
 
Shouldn't it read, "The books I agree with are written by unbiased historians and the ones I don't like written by biased historians?"


No, I think it is possible to disagree with a book without thinking it's biased.

Likewise, just because the author agrees with me doesn’t mean they aren't biased.
Edmund Morris wrote a great trilogy about Theodore Roosevelt, but I don't disagree with the reviews I have read that think Morrison got a little too enamored with his subject, even though I think TR was swell.
 

No, I think it is possible to disagree with a book without thinking it's biased.

Likewise, just because the author agrees with me doesn’t mean they aren't biased.
Edmund Morris wrote a great trilogy about Theodore Roosevelt, but I don't disagree with the reviews I have read that think Morrison got a little too enamored with his subject, even though I think TR was swell.

I can see your point.

My post was a bit in jest vice totally serious. :smile:
 
True.

It is also true that a majority of Alabama's registered voters in the 1868 presidential election were African-Americans who voted overwhelmingly as a Republican block.

One Union League member explained that he always voted Republican because “I can’t read and I can’t write…We go by instructions. We don’t know nothing much.”*

*Francis Simkins & Charles Roland A History of the South, 266

I think your point had something to do with the effect of militias on Grant's success in the 1868 election. Now it is blacks voting as a bloc just as most whites did. Please cite your source for blacks having the majority of registered voters. And while you are at it, help us understand why in the world blacks would vote for Democrat candidates whose party was hostile to their voting rights.
 
It is the best way.

Before I began seriously researching and reading about the Civil War, I maintained the war could not have been caused by slavery, but was all about the States seeking their rights.

Reading source documents and actual history was a real eye opener for me.
I followed the same path.
 
Cherry picking of witnesses to a Senate investigating committee may be irrelevant to some, but not everyone. Your judgment that it is irrelevant, however, helps me understand your perspective.

I think the argument might be that Anderson chose that source and used it, upon deeper investigation it seems that source actually supports a counter argument to what Anderson was saying.

If it was a valid enough source for Anderson to use why is it now an invalid source since it disagrees with such viewpoints.
 
I think your point had something to do with the effect of militias on Grant's success in the 1868 election. Now it is blacks voting as a bloc just as most whites did. Please cite your source for blacks having the majority of registered voters. And while you are at it, help us understand why in the world blacks would vote for Democrat candidates whose party was hostile to their voting rights.
Seems like party line voting to me.
 
yeah some of those prewar speeches and writings are pretty awful coming out of just about every slave state
Good compilation
of those quotes.
June 2012 Book Review: Charles B. Dew. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. Jim Dick American Public University System
Hi
Historians have debated the cause of the American Civil War since before the guns fell silent at the end of that conflict. They proposed and examined multiple theories and hypotheses, but regardless of the theory, historians cannot ignore the issue of slavery. Advances in historiography in that era’s history have emphasized examinations of the primary sources from that period. Charles Dew, a Southerner who described his background as one that embraced the notion of state’s rights as the primary cause of the Civil War, explained how his research involving primary documents in Confederate records brought up sources that challenged what he had been told about the war and its cause. This inspired him to look at the subject to determine the answer for himself.
The result of his analysis was a study into the letters and speeches of the secession commissioners from the first states that seceded to the remaining slaveowning states and their attempt to form a new nation. Dew’s analysis of these documents revealed what the leading figures of the South and the secession commissioners said were the reasons for secession in the speeches they gave at every secession convention. The study served as the reason he wrote Apostles of Disunion, wherein he presents both the primary documents he examined and his conclusions. The result is a concise assessment of the secession commissioners and their beliefs; what they wrote and said concerning the issue of secession both privately and publically; the reactions to their words by their audiences; and the conclusions Dew drew from his research.
Instead of trying to speak for the commissioners, Dew chose to let their words and actions speak for themselves. He detailed the personal history of each commissioner as well as the context of the situation in the various states the commissioners spoke. This gave the words of these commissioners a setting in which they could be understood for what they were instead of just words on paper. Dew drew attention to the rhetoric of slavery and race that the commissioners prominently mentioned multiple times in each address to the secession conventions. This was a sharp contrast to the views long held by some historians and interested others that the war was not about slavery or race, but instead about states’ rights, economic differences, or constitutional arguments. Dew pointed out that when the commissioners brought up these political and economic points, they did so fleetingly while they spoke at length about slavery and race.
 
It is the best way.

Before I began seriously researching and reading about the Civil War, I maintained the war could not have been caused by slavery, but was all about the States seeking their rights.

Reading source documents and actual history was a real eye opener for me.

I followed the same path.

I followed a similar path too. I never had a clue of what the real contemporary views of the time was until I started reading them. Being raised in the West I didn't really have a pro-North or pro-South view, kind of an overly (to a fault) centrist view that heavily de-emphasized slavery in a lot of ways (in history in general).

The full history of the time really explained a lot of things though.
 
I think the argument might be that Anderson chose that source and used it, upon deeper investigation it seems that source actually supports a counter argument to what Anderson was saying.

If it was a valid enough source for Anderson to use why is it now an invalid source since it disagrees with such viewpoints.

Some of the witnesses support my assertions, some do not. It's a long hearing with a lot of testimony, and I wasn't surprised to hear different stories from different witnesses. Nevertheless, some of the testimony does indeed support what I have read in other places and posted here, and I only shared some tiny snippets out of hundreds of pages.
 
Last edited:
I followed a similar path too. I never had a clue of what the real contemporary views of the time was until I started reading them. Being raised in the West I didn't really have a pro-North or pro-South view, kind of an overly (to a fault) centrist view that heavily de-emphasized slavery in a lot of ways (in history in general).

The full history of the time really explained a lot of things though.

It's pretty much the opposite for me, and I'm a lifelong Southerner. We learned in school that it was all about slavery, and Abraham Lincoln was our greatest President because he saved the Union. I learned a lot when I started reading source documents and learned that there was a lot more going on. I was disabused of the notion that it was all about nothing but slavery.
 
It's pretty much the opposite for me, and I'm a lifelong Southerner. We learned in school that it was all about slavery, and Abraham Lincoln was our greatest President because he saved the Union. I learned a lot when I started reading source documents and learned that there was a lot more going on. I was disabused of the notion that it was all about nothing but slavery.
What percentage in your opinion is not directly or indirectly related to slavery.
 
I'm not surprised that he doesn't adhere to the **** baloney of "black militias" being on par with the KKK.

As to corruption, the index of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution lists these pages under Corruption and the Republican Party: 384-90; 486-87; 493, 498; 523; 566; and 603. There are a number of other entries under corruption as well.

I don't know what you mean about wagging his finger, since I've never seen him do that in any of the videos I've seen of him. Perhaps you have some specific examples to back up your statement that he wags his finger in disapproval?

I agree the KKK were not on par with the black militias, had they been, the majority whites (in all but two states) would have voted the mostly white carpetbaggers and scalawags out of office forthwith.

In over 600 pages, Foner rarely mentioned corruption and when he does it is only in passing and rarely in depth. You mention roughly 52 pages, most of those pages don't mention corruption in the South at all.
 
I think one of the best examples, if not the best example, of bias and group think among historians is the dominant portrait of George McClellan as a timid, cowardly, incompetent, and arrogant commander, when in fact McClellan was arguably the best military strategist in the Union army and the most effective general when it came to getting the most results with the smallest number of casualties reasonably possible. There was a reason that Robert E. Lee said that the best general he faced in the war was "McClellan, by all odds."

Most of the standard attacks on McClellan are either erroneous or selective. The charge that McClellan was pro-slavery is obscenely false. The problem is that McClellan was a conservative Democrat, that he opposed total war, that he said some unflattering things about Lincoln in letters never intended to be made public (but he also grew to respect Lincoln as a person), and that he ran against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. Therefore, many people think that if you're pro-McClellan you must be anti-Lincoln, which is not true.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top