In his article, “Why the War Was Not About Slavery,” Clyde Wilson distinguishes between history and political ideology, arguing that: “Conventional wisdom tells us that the great war of 1861-1865 was ‘about’ slavery or was ‘caused by’ slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan.” Wilson argues that, while history aims to tell stories about the past, to help us understand the course of human events, political slogans are “accusations and instruments of conflict and domination.” The battle against political ideology, masquerading as history, peddled by ideologues popularly referred to as “faux historians,” is not a battle for historians to defend on their own. It is a battle that should engage all who understand the importance of distinguishing between historical truth and political ideology.
Political sloganeering about the cause of the war of 1861-1865 results from a desire to simplify history, to find a single cause for complex historical events that may seem inexplicable from a modern vantage point. For example, many people attempt to ascertain the “primary” cause of the war from a single document. The “Cornerstone Speech” of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens is often treated as evidence that the war was “about” slavery. True, Stephens spoke about slavery in that speech, but he also spoke about many other things besides, including individual rights to life, liberty, and property, and the importance of economic freedom. His speech was as much “about” tariffs as it was “about” racial inequality or anything else of which he spoke.
The well-known words of L.P. Hartley capture the sense many people have of being mystified by the past: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Even for those who accept that there were numerous causal factors giving rise to the war, the desire to identify the “primary” cause remains fraught with difficulty, because value judgments inevitably intrude upon what one considers to be the “primary” cause or “primary” outcome of any historical event.
Ludwig von Mises, in his book Human Action, highlights some of these difficulties, and the particular pitfalls that beset theorists who try to derive an understanding of human nature by studying history. Mises points out that understanding history is not just about ascertaining the relevant historical facts, nor even just about ensuring that historical events are accurately depicted. The facts are, of course, important, and facts must be comprehensive and accurate, but the reason why history is contested goes beyond debates about accurate documentation of historical facts. In most cases, the reason why people look to history for enlightenment is not simply because they want to understand history for its own sake, nor even that they want to ensure that their grasp of the facts is as comprehensive and accurate as possible, but more because they seek to derive lessons from studying what other people have previously done. They look to history for insight into contemporary problems, with a view to making informed and wise decisions and plans. In that context Mises describes history as follows:
History is the collection and systematic arrangement of all data of experience concerning human action. It deals with the concrete content of human action. It studies all human endeavors in their infinite multiplicity and variety and all individual actions with all their accidental, special, and particular implications. It scrutinizes the ideas guiding acting men and the outcome of the actions performed. It embraces every aspect of human activities. It is on the one hand general history and on the other hand the history of various narrower fields.
Mises also addresses why people study history, observing that, “The study of history makes a man wise and judicious. But it does not by itself provide any knowledge and skill which could be utilized for handling concrete tasks.” In order to derive any useful lessons from history, further analysis, interpretation, and identification of the historical facts and events are required. The implications of historical events for understanding modern society are not self-evident and, therefore, cannot be ascertained simply by examining the facts. As Mises explains, “Every historical experience is open to various interpretations, and is in fact interpreted in different ways.”
Those who displace history with political ideology surely understand this. Historians like Eric Foner have had great success in framing historical events around a desired political goal—in his case, the politics of racial conflict—and interpreting historical facts through that interpretative lens. He depicts the reconstruction of the South as “a very important historical process” whose purpose was “the destruction of slavery.” Framed in that way, his observations about the importance of the Radical Republican schemes and wiles seem to be nothing more than what was needed to destroy slavery. When he adds that, “In some ways, we’re still trying to work out the consequences of the destruction of slavery in our society, 150 years after it happened,” and that, “the first widespread terrorism in American history was not Osama bin Laden or 9/11, but was the Ku Klux Klan and kindred groups like that during reconstruction,” he is making a political argument about the central role he considers to be played by the history of slavery in contemporary America—he is not merely stating historical facts that can be countered by “correcting” the facts. This is the politics by reference to which the Ku Klux Klan is always cited whenever anyone objects to war memorials being destroyed. The activists currently campaigning to destroy the statue of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis at Stone Mountain always ensure that they slip in a reference to the KKK when journalists inquire into their reasons. This is what masquerades as “history.”
Through such political interpretation, historians seek to meet the demand for wisdom and insight with pre-packed, simple historical lessons that people can use to decide the best course of action. Students of history are invited to understand America as a country forged in racial conflict, and therefore, to see the war as “about slavery,” from which it follows that contemporary decisions should seek to resolve historical racial conflicts by addressing the history of slavery. This is the “history” that recommends the destruction of Confederate monuments, the erasure of black Confederates, and many other contemporary courses of action that are said to be based on “history.” The political sloganeers cannot be countered by correcting historical facts, but only by showing their sloganeering for what it is: political ideology.
The implication for the history debates is that political ideology cannot be “disproved” by the expedient of amassing more historical facts. A political ideology cannot be “proved” to be false simply by pointing out important facts which the ideology fails to consider. If that were possible, nobody would be a socialist—we would simply point out all the facts about capitalism and that would suffice to persuade them of the error of their ways. Alas, political debate is not that simple. Here we can draw upon Mises’ discussion of the role of history in understanding human action. Mises cautions that historical analysis cannot be “corrected” in the way that scientific theories are corrected:
History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the manner in which the natural sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the ground of laboratory experiments. Neither experimental verification nor experimental falsification of a general proposition are possible in this field.
Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains are interlaced cannot test any theory. Such phenomena, on the contrary, become intelligible only through an interpretation in terms of theories previously developed from other sources.
Sound theory is required in the battle against political ideology masquerading as history, in particular the Neo-Marxist theories that are relied on by Court Intellectuals to explain historical events. Many of their explanations are patently illogical. For example, we are expected to believe that Northern states like Illinois enacted Black Codes banning black people from settling in their states, but at the same time believed that racism was wrong and waged a war to emancipate black people.
The facts on which these political interpretations of history rely may themselves be correct—for example, it is correct to state that the secession declaration of Mississippi depicted slavery as a causal factor in choosing to secede—but the explanatory theory may nevertheless be entirely false especially given the natural tendency to select for analysis only those facts that support the theory one wishes to advance. As Mises says, while illogical theories in the natural sciences are ultimately falsifiable by reference to “theories satisfactorily verified by experiments,” that is not the case with explanatory theories about history. Mises explains that,
In the case of historical events there is no such restriction. Commentators would be free to resort to quite arbitrary explanations. Where there is something to explain, the human mind has never been at a loss to invent ad hoc some imaginary theories, lacking any logical justification.
Hence Mises cautions that, without a sound theory that is “both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts,” we cannot ascertain any truth from studying history. Sound theories “are a necessary requirement of any grasp of historical events. Without them we should not be able to see in the course of events anything else than kaleidoscopic change and chaotic muddle.” Without sound theories we cannot answer the Neo-Marxists who claim that all history is one epic race war in which “white supremacists” seek to crush innocent and helpless black “victims.”
Wilson’s argument about the distinction between history and political ideology should be understood in that light. He points out that,
What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action.
Wilson also echoes Mises in observing that, “History is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned.”
