We all have an unconscious.  What separates historians from other people
interested in history is not the absence of an unconscious, but the
constant criticism our work has to undergo.  This is the only forum
where I try to write about history, that isn't checked and critiqued
before it is ever read by a public.  The Virginia Magazine and
Virginia Cavalcade, for example, send proposed articles out to be
blind refereed, have the facts checked, and even the footnotes gone
over with a fine tooth comb.
  But I must return to a point I made earlier.  The consciousness
(not unconscious) of many white southerners over several
generations, was shaped by a particular legend about the 1861-
1865 war.  We can talk about elements of that legend and I am
very willing to do so, particularly as it touches on Virginia history.
But it is important to remember that it was to a great extent legend
and not history as that art is practiced professionally.  Look at any
of the old southern journals from before 1940.  They are as
sanitized of any controversy that would have made southern history
from about 1830 intelligible and interesting as any publication from
the old Soviet Union.  The "party line" was that the Confederacy
was about states rights, the negroes were happy, and the South
consisted chiefly of the plantocracy.  Long before great historians
came along to question that orthodoxy, great sociologists like
DuBois, Owsley, etc., began to knock holes in that legend.
  What, ultimately, we are discussing here is the intellectual
history of the South.  This is a very complex subject.

Harold


Date sent:              Fri, 31 Aug 2001 13:24:47 -0700
From:                   Richard <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:                idealogy, objectivity
To:                     [log in to unmask]
Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

> A lot of what we hear from historians and others, from very knowledgeable
> and sincere people, is selected--probably unconsciously--for the support
> of their own idealogy.  Unfortunately, we can usually identify the
> idealogy very quickly.  They're entitled to have a position, of course,
> but many would do well to treat the opposing positions fully and in terms
> the opposition would approve.
>
> The problem that many Southerners have re the Civil War, is that Sherman &
> Co. brought war to civilians.  The large amount of looting, rape,
> destruction, theft and murder seems rather unnecessary and excessive; it's
> hard to justify.  One can understand that some people resent those things,
> and they're entitled to have that resentment.  (By the way, I include
> murder because Sherman himself [in US, War of the Rebellion I/32/176]
> admits to having destroyed hospitals in Meridian, Miss. during his ten-day
> destruction of the city in 1864]) and I don't know how a hospital can be
> destroyed without causing people to die.
>
> Any proper approach to history, especially a topic as sensitive as the
> American Civil War, requires a real scholar to be sensitive to contrary
> feelings, to defects, to skewed teaching (hence also skewed popular
> beliefs), etc.  It is very difficult to do this when idealogy controls,
> but it is possible and one must always struggle to raise objectivity above
> it.  We all must be on guard that the "facts" are presented in a context
> that allows interpretation, not that an interpretation selects the facts.
> Richard Dunn
>
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Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director:  Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000  x2379

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