The Truth Hurts

“No, she doesn’t. She just doesn’t have time for your traitorous shit. Neither do the rest of us.”

I find it odd that people will defend someone on Twitter without knowing the details. This person came to the defense of Erin L. Thompson after I said that she used dishonest tactics when writing about the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. I responded by saying he was verifiably wrong. This did not sit well with my Twitter friend.

Here is a part of what Ms. Thompson wrote in her Nation essay.

As Hilary A. Herbert, the congressman from Alabama who was the cheerleader behind the memorial, put it in the account he wrote of its creation, the monument’s “leading purpose” was “to correct history” by showing how “the astonishing fidelity of the slaves everywhere during the war…was convincing proof of the kindly relations between master and slave in the old South.”

Herbert was not “the” congressman from Alabama. He was a former congressman and Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland, both after the war. Ms. Thompson is either sloppy with the facts or meant to create an impression that was not true.

Herbert did not say the “monument’s leading purpose was to correct history”. This is what he wrote: “One leading purpose of the U. D. C. is to correct history.” This is a typical trick of the modern academic. Change the meaning of what someone wrote and make it seem authentic with strategically placed quotation marks. The height of dishonesty.

Herbert’s quote about “the astonishing fidelity of the slaves” was after this: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin survives and is still manufacturing false ideas as to the South and slavery in the fifties.”

He is making an argument for a competing narrative that is as true as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. You may not believe that many slaves were treated well, and that some were loyal during the war, but that does not make it a myth. There are too many historians, including some of the first black PhDs, who accept that this was the case.

The way she quoted Herbert’s claims of “astonishing fidelity” and “kindly relations” leaves out his evidence for the claims. Many slaves stayed with “the wives and children of those who were absent.” Those three little dots make a difference.