The Lies They Tell

We all know that some historians and academics lie. As I read and study Southern history it is becoming apparent that it is not just the few well-known liars either. I am not talking about differences of opinion based on evidence. These academic deceivers make claims without evidence while appearing to point to evidence. It is very slick. Their credentials and writing ability encourage the reader to go along. They also leave out evidence to the contrary that an academic or historian must know is there. Even respected historians get caught in the web of deceit. James McPherson is a case in point.

McPherson signed a letter written by fellow academics to President Obama asking him not to send a wreath to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. This 2009 letter was signed by more than 30 fellow academics.

The letter refers to Hilary A. Herbert the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Arlington Confederate Monument Association who wrote a history of the monument in 1914. After quoting part of Mr. Herbert’s essay, they write:

“Herbert goes on to refer to the Confederate soldiers who joined the Ku Klux Klan and Red Shirts as being heroes for restoring white supremacy and overthrowing Reconstruction…”

This is a brilliant deception. First quote something innocuous and then lay in your interpretation without mentioning that Herbert never references the KKK or Red Shirts in his entire essay. He does state his negative view of Reconstruction which was the same view of historians of the day. WEB DuBois’ Black Reconstruction was not published until 1935.

The “historians” also leave out that the KKK of Reconstruction was a very different organization from the 20th century version and they know better. Reconstruction was a disaster for blacks and whites in the South. Real historians like John Hope Franklin make it clear that there is plenty of blame to go around.

Like it or not Herbert expressed a mainstream American view when he wrote in 1914:

James Ford Rhodes has denominated Congressional Reconstruction as “a crime against civilization,” and public opinion seems to have approved the verdict.

The academics-cum-polemicists could not abide it, so they lied.