History has an agenda. Ask who benefits from how it’s told.
School districts in Pennsylvania and around the United States are mired in arguments about what kind of “history” to teach.
Florida has legislated teachers must teach a restrictive and manufactured view of American history or be held accountable by the state. Americans are asking whether we should teach a taming-ofthe-frontier version of American history, centered on American exceptionalism, or should we teach a globally connected version of American history centered on America as one of many countries.
Historians always ask, whose history is it and who benefits from telling it this way? The plain fact is that what we call “history” is owned by the person who wrote it.
There are no histories that are entirely neutral nor are there any histories that present all the facts. History is always a compression and organization of facts to present a particular view of people and events. There are no exceptions.
Scottish historian Jenny MacLeod described it as “history is a selection of facts and events from the past with a pattern of meaning and significance imposed upon them.” American historian Francis Fukuyama metaphorically noted, “History is a hand maiden who you may clothe as you wish.”
I tell students that historians are the curators of facts, and there are always too many facts to put into the story, so one must choose carefully. Writing history requires the selection of facts to support the historian’s decision of what and how to tell the story — similar to how a museum director curates a few of many objects to present an exhibit with a particular theme.
The most compelling recent exposition of this appeared in Ty Seidule’s 2020 book, “Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.” After the Civil War, a myth known as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy arose, advancing the idea that southerners fought the war for honor, state’s rights and in defense of their homeland, which was invaded by the northerners. The Lost Cause was manufactured to overlook the fact that the war had been fought to preserve slavery.
As the United States moved into the 20th century, the Lost Cause mythology became deeply embedded in American culture through music, literature, books, monuments in public spaces and
By the time of World War II, most Americans came to believe in the Lost Cause without reservation and without critical thinking. It is only in the post-war struggle for civil rights that Americans examined closely and discarded the deliberately constructed mythology about the benign nature of a regional slave-based institution. Sadly, a residual belief in the Lost Cause remains in the United States today, as demonstrated by recent white supremacist activities. It has taken America 150 years to come to an accurate understanding of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the struggle of Black Americans to take their rightful place in American life.
public commemorations. Even movies contributed to the Lost Cause mythology by portraying slavery as a benign institution in which slaves were happy and well cared for.
Indeed, the opening prologue of “Gone with the Wind” manufactured a false history and replaced it with nostalgia and myth: “There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here, in this pretty world, gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind.” Arguably, Margaret Mitchell was writing fiction but her words represented the beliefs of a broad segment of American society.
By the time of World War II, most Americans came to believe in the Lost Cause without reservation and without critical thinking. It is only in the postwar struggle for civil rights that Americans examined closely and discarded the deliberately constructed mythology about the benign nature of a regional slave based institution. Sadly, a residual belief in the Lost Cause remains in the United States today, as demonstrated by recent white supremacist activities. It has taken America 150 years to come to an accurate understanding of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the struggle of Black Americans to take their rightful place in American life.
Who benefitted from this particularly deformed manufactured history? Seidule, a native Virginian, retired Army brigadier general and former head of the history department at West Point,
answered the question: Large numbers of white Americans benefitted economically, educationally and socially from the construction of a system of structural racism designed to oppress Black Americans.
What’s happening in Florida at the macro level and in Pennsylvania at the micro level — where Pennridge School District adopted standards based on Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum — is troubling to any trained historian. Manufacturing history to support an ideology of American exceptionalism is profoundly at odds with how historians are trained as well as profoundly at odds with the concept that an educated citizenry is necessary for democracy to flourish.
When Americans confront their history, they must ask who benefits from this particular version of the telling. To do otherwise is dangerous to our democracy and to American society.