History is a potentially powerful weapon in political debate. It can be used by powerbrokers to justify all types of interventions designed to “correct” historical injustices. Court historians often treat history as a repository of reasons to dismantle institutions, redistribute wealth, and transfer power to those deemed to be historically vulnerable or historically marginalized.
But those who mine history for weapons that can be used to amass power necessarily keep tight control over this useful resource. Free and open inquiry might expose many of their historical interpretations as false. Their arguments would run the risk of being challenged or even debunked. Most concerning for them, there would be nothing to stop their opponents doing exactly the same thing—raiding the annals of history in search of counter-attack weapons.
Restrictions on “correct” history are therefore important for court historians. Having begun by erasing any inconvenient history for being “racist,” they follow up by dismissing any attacks on their new history as mere “revisionism.” Of course, when they erase history themselves that does not count as revisionism—they are just “correcting” racist history.
Academic freedom, they now say, does not include freedom to cause harm by teaching the “incorrect” history written by white supremacists. By “incorrect” they mean politically incorrect.
Meanwhile, they have taken the precaution of classifying all history which does not suit their goals as “white supremacist.” For example, you can teach that General Grant was benevolent to his slaves. That does not reflect white supremacy because Grant was on “the right side of history.” But if you teach that Stonewall Jackson was benevolent to his slaves that is white supremacy and must be shut down.
And thus, a new definition of free speech is derived to enable court historians to gatekeep historical truth and “cancel” any dissenters. As Ludwig von Mises explains in Theory and History to such people,
Freedom means only the right to say the correct things, not also the right to say the wrong things…
A new notion of truth was established. Truth is what those in power declare to be true. The dissenting minority is undemocratic because it refuses to accept as true the opinion of the majority. All means to “liquidate” such rebellious scoundrels are “democratic” and therefore morally good.
Free speech now means freedom to promote the establishment view of history. To count as “correct” history it must align with the liberal ideology of antiracism. The older history books, including those often referred to as the Dunning School, are no longer studied as they failed to reflect the correct racial interpretations.
Writing in 1961, the historian David M. Potter criticized the older history books for reflecting a “cultural lag” in reporting the history of the Reconstruction Era. Those historians had failed to keep up with enlightened views of racial equality. In order to count as correct history, we now expect history books to reflect the prevailing consensus on racial equality.
For at least two or three decades, the available histories of the Reconstruction period, following the Civil War, have presented a conspicuous case of cultural lag. While American thought in general was rejecting racist ideas of the inferiority of the Negro, with their corollaries of segregation, disfranchisement and discrimination, our histories continued to treat the attempt to establish Negro equality during Reconstruction as a mistake, a crime, or even an absurdity and to cast the champions of equality in the role of villains.
Let us consider what this “conspicuous case of cultural lag” looked like, and what is meant by the claim that “champions of equality” were being cast as villains. Taking the example of South Carolina, John. S. Reynolds described the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Confederate government. Writing in 1910, he observed that after governor Andrew Magrath was arrested and imprisoned in Fort Pulaski, “There was no organized State government, no central civil authority, no militia, to which people might look for the protection of life or property.”
The problem with Reynolds’s account can immediately be spotted. The war is designated by the establishment as a good thing because it heralded the end of slavery. Modern readers expect celebratory language, not language bemoaning the collapse of law and order. We should be happy that the Confederate governor was jailed, and if that led to the collapse of civil society, so be it.
In our rejoicing over emancipation, it is not deemed correct to be concerned about such mundane issues as the protection of life, liberty, and property.
After the federal government sent in troops to man the garrisons, Reynolds observed: “The garrisons were at first of white troops only. Soon, however, came negro soldiers – the use of which, essentially cruel, was likewise reckless in the extreme.” He added that “The negro soldiers were commonly arrogant, frequently impertinent, sometimes insulting.”
After giving many examples of the conduct that was deemed insulting—such as home invasions by soldiers demanding to be fed, and women getting knocked to the floor or worse—he commented that “the original purpose in thus using these troops was clearly to harry and insult the white people among whom they were sent.”
That type of commentary is deemed by modern historians to be intolerably racist. It criticized the conduct of the black troops instead of praising them for the role they were playing in advancing racial equality and fulfilling the American dream.
The Marxist historian Eric Foner criticized the Dunning School historians for depicting black people as “childlike” and “incapable of properly exercising the political rights Northerners had thrust upon them.” Instead of praise for their attempts, they got criticism for their insolent behavior. Isn’t that racist? Potter certainly thought it did not align with how we should treat the post-war “champions of racial equality.”
Potter saw the Reconstruction era as “on the whole, marked by moderation rather than by excesses.” That conclusion can only be drawn if one first cancels the excesses that must not be reported for fear of depicting federal troops as “absurd” or even “criminal.”
For example, Reynolds discussed the shocking murder of Matt Stevens—a Confederate veteran—who was shot dead by federal militia in what is now carefully referred to by establishment historians as a “struggle.” This prompted the Kuklux to ride out in numbers to avenge the murder of Stevens, in a case that rocked South Carolina. Regardless of who was “to blame” for these eruptions of violence, it is difficult to see how anyone can view this era as “on the whole, marked by moderation.”
The argument for seeing Reconstruction as a time of moderation is circular—you must not report excesses because that would be racist, and when you report history without the excesses it can then be seen as “on the whole, marked by moderation rather than excesses”—which, in turn, makes it unnecessary and racist to report any excesses.
The trouble with this reasoning—in addition to the fact that it is illogical—is that it sidesteps the question of truth. Establishment historians do not contest the truth of the reported facts, but take umbrage with how those facts are reported. The old history books offend our sensibilities. Failure to show due respect to disadvantaged racial groups is then seen as justification for cancelling huge swathes of that history altogether.
The only pertinent question in evaluating history books should be whether the events reported were true or not. Political correctness is nothing more than tone policing and ideological gate-keeping. Trying to bury history because it was reported in language that we would now deem “racist” is an attempt to bury the truth—an impossible task, because the truth will eventually emerge, as truth always does.
