History is more than a mere litany of facts. It also involves a story, or a narrative, which provides the organizing framework or unifying idea for the particular facts selected. No single historical account can report all known facts—each account selects the facts most relevant to the argument being presented. It attempts to explain why specific events occurred, and the causal factors that gave rise to those events. John V. Denson in A Century of War explains why we study history: “If we can read history by looking at past events to determine what ideas were being followed, we can see how those ideas worked out in practice and learn lessons from the experience of others and avoid the same mistakes.”
Robert Higgs, in his book Competition and Coercion, begins by explaining the importance of making one’s organizing framework explicit:
In black history, as in any history, the facts do not speak for themselves. They require selection, classification, and interpretation, and for these purposes the investigator must employ a model. That any attempt at causal analysis must make use of a model, either explicitly or implicitly, is generally admitted. That explicit models are preferable to implicit ones is a long-standing precept of economists and a principle increasingly affirmed by historians.
Making one’s model explicit is essential to intellectual honesty. Academic freedom entails the analysis of history from whichever theoretical perspective the writer may deem valuable. As Denson explains, “It is almost impossible for history to be written without the writer’s judgement or bias being expressed in the form of an interpretation. Therefore, history is always evolving and it is always subject to revision by better and more reliable evidence.” Problems only begin to arise where the writer’s theoretical standpoint is hidden, or—as is more often the case—where the author simply remains silent as to his ideological standpoint. By keeping his theoretical framework hidden or unstated, the writer is able to promote “history by theory” to the unwitting reader—or theory presented in the guise of objective historical facts.
History by theory involves presenting theories as if they were bare historical facts. A compilation of bare facts can certainly play an important role even without interpretation. This is the approach taken, for example, in compiling historic documents without commentary. Similarly, Paul C. Graham has compiled slave narratives in their own words in his book When the Yankees Come, which presents the opinions of slaves, without spinning them into any particular theoretical framework. The people who experienced General Sherman’s “march to the sea” are allowed to speak, in their own words, without the author attempting to interpret their meaning. His explicitly stated goal is to avoid history by theory, instead “seeing what the people who were there have to say about it.” The historical fact being presented, in that context, is the bare fact that people at the time held the stated opinions.
Unlike a presentation of bare historical facts, most history books include more than just the facts. The writer also offers his opinions and advances his own argument or analysis, making value judgments concerning the significance and implications of the facts discussed. If the writer is honest, it will be reasonably clear what the facts are and what is merely a statement of opinion, analysis, or evaluation. However, distinguishing between an opinion or value judgment and a “fact” is not always easy, as shown by legal debates on this point:
In attempting to solve problems in a variety of areas lawyers continuously make use of a distinction between statements of “fact” on the one hand and those of “opinion” on the other. So versatile is this distinction that it has been used to solve problems raised in such diverse areas of the law as evidence and defamation.
For example, to state that “roses are beautiful” is to state an opinion, even though it is framed in the same form as would be used to state a bare fact. Someone who happens to agree with that opinion might frame the same sentiment as “everyone agrees that roses are beautiful,” or “it is true that roses are beautiful,” or even “it is definitely a fact that roses are beautiful.” Regardless of how the statement is framed, whether roses are beautiful or not is still nothing but an opinion, although the fact that many (perhaps most) people agree with that opinion could itself be stated as a fact: it is a fact that many people do consider roses to be beautiful, though googling “I hate roses” will reveal that people do not, in fact, all agree on this. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The difficulty in distinguishing between opinion and fact has important implications, not only for understanding history and politics, but also for understanding contemporary news reports. In 2018 the Pew Research Center conducted research on people’s ability to distinguish between fact and opinion:
And so we studied a basic step in that process: differentiating factual statements – ones that can be proved or disproved with objective evidence – from opinion statements, which are expressions of beliefs or values.
The Pew study also included statements that are mixed fact and opinion:
Borderline statements live in a murky space between factual and opinion statements. The borderline statements we included in the study have both factual and opinion elements: They’re factual in that they’re at least somewhat based on objective evidence, but they may also be expressions of values or beliefs, or use vague language that makes them difficult to prove or disprove definitively.
History of the Reconstruction Era: Historical Fact or Marxist Theory?
The main challenge in reading history today is distinguishing between theory—typically today some form of Neo-Marxist theory—and historical fact. The statement “the Negro was the central figure and the most effective in Reconstruction,” found in the Editors’ Introduction to Eric Foner’s book Reconstruction is not a statement of fact, but a theory or an argument. As the editors themselves state, it is a thesis. As David Gordon observes, in reading historical accounts, the distinction between theory and fact “is a difficult question which has aroused much discussion in the philosophical literature.” Gordon suggests the following distinction:
A fact is something that is “bottom level.” Someone who claims that there were many Negroes in the South during Reconstruction, for example, isn’t making a claim that is based on further claims. If, by contrast, Foner were asked, “What is your basis for claiming that the Negro was the central figure in Reconstruction?” he would cite things to support his claim.
Therefore, a statement declaring who is “the central figure” or “the most effective” in Reconstruction, cannot be objectively proved or disproved because it involves value judgments concerning the factors that different people consider most important about the war. Objective evidence proves or disproves the specific events that occurred, but does not prove or disprove which of those events was “the most effective.” That depends on value judgments. Disagreement over who was “the central figure” in Reconstruction reflects our subjective evaluation of what we consider to be the most important outcomes of the war.
Thomas Fleming, in his book A Disease in the Public Mind, is therefore justified in highlighting some of the narratives and “distortions of reality” that influenced the main characters in this war to take the decisions they did—he offers a “character driven history” that sheds important light on the era. One could also—consistently with the historical facts—run an alternative argument that the New England Puritans were “the central figures and the most effective in Reconstruction.” There would be plenty of evidence to support that theory, too, and if one were to choose any other single aspect that was central to the war, ample evidence could be amassed in support of it. Thus, some historians have argued that the main issue in the war was empire building and federal power centralization, while others have argued that the main issue was the economic and financial dispute between North and South.
Foner’s theory-as-history is developed within a subjective preference for revolution. He describes the “change in consciousness” that followed from “our understanding of race relations, politics, and economic change during Reconstruction.” Implicit value judgements color his language. For example, he explains that the South claimed they had “genuinely accepted the reality of military defeat”—the word “genuinely,” as used here, is very telling, as in this context it implies that there is reason to doubt whether the South “genuinely accepted” defeat.
Military defeat is a historical fact, but debate over whether that defeat was “genuinely accepted” is a value judgment. As William Dunning observes in his book Reconstruction, one of the post-war political arguments of the victorious Radical Republicans was that the South had not “genuinely accepted” defeat and that they were, therefore, trying to reintroduce slavery in all but name by refusing to allow black people to vote in a time when white Southerners were disenfranchised. As Dunning explains, this was one of the most politically-contested issues at the time.
Therefore, while Foner’s theories about the Reconstruction Era may be considered persuasive by those who share his view of this “change in consciousness” in America, that does not turn any of his theories into statements of historical fact. The change in consciousness to which he refers, one which transforms race relations, is not a historical fact but a controversial interpretation of history. Hence, David Gordon has observed that:
What Foner is doing is to disguise a controversial judgment as a non-controversial claim. What he means is not simply, “The place of Negroes in Southern society was an important issue during Reconstruction.” That is fairly obviously true. What he actually means is, “The aim of Reconstruction was to help Southern Negroes.” But the evidence in fact shows that the aim of Reconstruction was to degrade Southern whites.
