Fake History — A Historian Who Lies
I am not an expert in any area of history. My interest stems from wanting to know what life was like for average people in the past. In the last few years, I have noticed historians saying and writing things that I could not believe. Much of it sounded too convenient and supported a modern political narrative. I did some research and found that so-called historians will lie.
Ty Seidule is one of several examples of historians who will lie to make a political point. He is a retired Brigadier General who headed the history department at the United States Military Academy. While he was on active duty, he produced a video in 2015 with Praeger U titled, Was the Civil War About Slavery? In his dress uniform, he tried to make the case that “Slavery was, by a wide margin, the single most important cause of the Civil War — for both sides”. He said the “evidence is clear and overwhelming”.
It would not be fair to classify these first two quotes as lies, but they are ahistorical. There is little evidence that the North fought because of slavery. Read President Lincoln and anyone in his cabinet and you will see it was not about slavery. Here are the lies.
“The secession documents of every Southern state made clear, crystal clear, that they were leaving the Union in order to protect their ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery.” This is an outright lie. Read the Virginia and North Carolina secession ordinances and you will see they make no such claim.
“In no Southern state was the vote close.” He is referring to the secession votes. This is another outright lie. In North Carolina it took two different votes to even agree to have a secession convention and in Virginia the first vote to secede failed.
“Many have argued that President Abraham Lincoln fought the war to keep the Union together, not to end slavery. That was true at the outset of the war.” How then could it be the single most important cause if a chief protagonist, President Lincoln, began the war to keep the Union united?
“Some argue that the cause of the war was economic.” He then discusses agriculture and industrialization and said the North produced more food than the South. He never mentioned the impact of Federal Tariffs or the free trade South. There is evidence of politicians on all sides of the issue talking about Federal revenue, free trade, and tariffs as it relates to secession and war. This is a lie by omission. He is a historian and knows better.
“In its finest hour, soldiers wearing this blue uniform — almost two hundred thousand of them former slaves themselves — destroyed chattel slavery…”. 179,000 blacks served in the Union Army and many of them, like Fredrick Douglass’ sons, had never been slaves. This outright lie bolstered by hyperbolic language and imagery shows he is not a historian but a polemist who will lie to make his point.
History presented in nice little understandable boxes with clear good guys and bad guys is likely a lie. History is full of complexity and nuance. Don’t fall for lies.
