Fake Histories

A major factor holding a nation together is a set of stories, a shared history, even if that history is largely fiction. Three crucial war narratives help define us today.

We have a shared vision of the American Revolution. That story is partly fiction, omitting, among other things, how vicious the fighting and murders were on both sides. But, unless we’re historians or history buffs, we’re proud of the Revolution, and it unites us. I suppose the same can be said of our often fictional story of World War Two, in which we deliberately and relentlessly bombed helpless  civilians, a war crime. 

Unfortunately we have two competing histories of the Civil War, and we haven’t been able to unite on matters of race. In one version, the North started the war by invading the South, the South fought for states rights, black people loved their masters and Robert E. Lee was an American hero and a military genius. Sheridan’s army raped its way through Georgia. Grant was a drunken butcher. None of that is true. 

In the other version the South started the war by firing on Fort Sumpter, Lee killed hundreds of thousands of our American troops, every state that seceded stated in writing that it did so to defend slavery, Grant lost a lower percentage of his troops than Lee did, etc. And Grant was the most innovative and successful general in our history. All of that is true. (It is not true that, at the start of the war, the Union forces set out to free the slaves. That resolve came later, when the North realized how much the South depended on black labor and how effectively the North could use 200,000 black soldiers.)

Those competing views will keep the nation divided until we have a story everyone agrees to.