Six Ways to Rewrite History VI
Just make it up...
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
The last riff on Nicole James’ article from 2023.
Rewriting (or just making up) history is reminiscent of the Stalinist bureaucracy that erased leading figures or demonized them, such as Leon Trotsky. This bureaucracy usually pronounced black as white. For a generation, many institutions have trained “historians” in the Stalinist school of falsification, where they may “recast” facts to fit current “narratives,” also known as “social causes.”
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray
John Wilkes Booth and the Civil War
Different parts of the United States portray the 1861-65 Civil War differently. Textbooks, once evenly distributed throughout the land, can have subtly or radically different views on the conflict. For example, starting in the 1880s, Southern textbooks ignored or minimized the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. At the same time, textbooks in the North showed Booth was part of a broad conspiracy plot that implicated many Southerners in the assassination. Starting in the 1930s, some textbooks in the North ignored this conspiracy and dismissed Booth as insane. Today, “educators” reduce the assassination to a mere footnote to the end of the war.
The FDR Conspiracy
This one started almost before the smoke cleared on 7 December 1941. It involves a rather convoluted logical leap between what President Roseveldt “knew” before the Japanese attack and what he did to “stop” or “prevent” it. FDR “knew” that Japan was planning an attack against the US somewhere because General George Marshall told him there would be. Marshall and most others expected Japan’s major effort would be in the Philippines. However, the authorities in Washington expected sabotage elsewhere, including Hawaii. These are the facts…
But…
After seeing the smoldering wreck of the battlewagons in the harbor, and studying the audacious attack by six Japanese aircraft carriers, “smarter” minds saw only traitors. While the Army and Navy shelved the commanders and hearings held, the “smarter” minds “knew” (and many still “know”) that FDR had to have been in on it. He had to have wanted war because, well, otherwise, how could the Japanese have done it? How could they have executed those two airstrikes on an American territory without someone being asleep at the switch…intentionally? This is still kicking around, and often, without explanation of the many holes in the theory because, well, it’s obvious, ain’t it?
The Third Strike on Pearl Harbor
This is less a conspiracy theory than it is just a misconception of Japanese capabilities. We still see “scholars” touting the idea in print and, sometimes, on TV, especially the History Channel, in between alien autopsies and JFK conspiracies. The fact is that Japanese planners dismissed the idea of a third strike on Pearl Harbor long before they drew the eventual plan up. The facts were that the fleet could only carry so much fuel, and it did not allow for more than a day loitering around Hawaii. Moreover, the timing of the attacks was such that the first strike launched at sunrise and recovered just after the second launched, and the second strike would recover in mid-afternoon. Turning the first strike aircraft around before the second landed was possible, but those aircraft would recover after sunset. Only the British had experimented with night carrier landings, and risking those precious aircraft and pilots without extensive doctrine or training was impractical. Let’s all remember that the planning for the Pearl Harbor attack only began six months before.
But…
Regrets about a lack of a third strike surfaced in the Japanese Navy in late 1943, but nothing much came of them because…why? But after the war, some commentators wondered if there wasn’t something to it. In 1969, Tora! Tora! Tora! depicted Japanese junior officers pleading with Nagumo to launch a second strike. And films, books, TV shows, and social media posts have stuck on it ever since, ignoring the facts.
The Civil War Was About Slavery
This one’s tricky, and I’ll get in trouble for it, but…the facts are that, while the southern states seceded to preserve their peculiar institution. Yes, yes, they mentioned “slavery” in their articles of secession, but that term was very loaded in the 1860s. It meant not just the buying and selling of human beings, it had to mean the whole of their peculiar institution, which meant the entire structure of Southern society, limited social mobility for whites and all.
So…
The “rebellion” (or war) started when South Carolina fired on Ft. Sumter in Hothead (read Charleston) Harbor. Ya see, the Union was supposed to give up that position just like they had all those others all over the seceded states, when Buchanan was in office. But Lincoln said no. He then declared the seceded states to be in rebellion. No slaves, no peculiar institution involved. Now, yes, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the war, freeing the slaves wherever Federal power did not reach, but…it did nothing for the escaped slaves already within the reach of Federal power. That took Amendment XIV to the Constitution. Thus, the American Civil War had only a peripheral involvement with slavery, though it enabled the passage of Amendment XIV.
The Persistent Past: The Steele Diaries
Imagine this: A scholar finds stacks of diaries in an old steamer trunk. It turns out that they’re soldier diaries from World War One, a period when such things are unheard of.
This is the story of how Steele’s Battalion is written, and how Steele’s Hammer will be written. Available in 2025, I hope, from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Bigger Than History: Grant and Lee in Context
Second Phase Offensive Reconsidered
And Finally...
On 23 November:
1889: The Paris Royale Saloon in San Francisco, California installs the first jukebox. Called a Nickle-in-the-slot-phonograph, the device ran off a 25-pound sulphuric acid battery, sported four listening tubes (no amplifiers yet) and played wax cylinder records that had to be changed manually. It was a big hit, one gathers.
1943: Marines declare Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll secure after about 90 hours, 2,600 Marine and Navy and 4,600 Japanese and Korean casualties. It was at Tarawa that we learned about maximum and minimum low tides, because, four days before, a minimum low tide trapped the American landing craft on coral reefs hundreds of yards from the beach, making them easy targets.
And today is NATIONAL ESPRESSO DAY. In Italian, expresso means quick in time. Before Luigi Bezzera invented the first successful expresso machine in 1901, espresso was simply a coffee made with recently roasted and freshly ground beans expressly for the person ordering it. Now, you want it, knock yourself out. Always tastes burned to me…
Lincoln was a lawyer. Apart from whatever his motives ere, he took every action based on law and the constitution. He could not legally or constitutionally ban slavery within states that were still loyal to the Union. It was constitutionally debatable whether states had a right to secede from the Union. But it was unquestionably an act of war for southern forces to fire on Ft Sumpter. So that is what Lincoln acted against.
It seems apparent that neither side had a clear vision of the future. How could they? Do we have a clear vision of the future of the Mideast or of Ukraine? Wars are as much a battle of wills as of the military. Neither side knew what Ft Sumpter would lead to. But slavery was a primary, perhaps THE primary issue from the beginning of the Constitution. We can't seriously suggest it wasn't an essential issue that resulted in civil war.