Rewriting history get a lot of attention and press. What most people don’t realize is, that is, what is supposed to happen. As our knowledge evolves on a certain subject in history so will how it is written. I once told a friend at breakfast that no matter how hard you try to spin history, history will eventually get it right. It may take time but eventually the politicians must give way to the actual historians. 

Let’s take the Civil War as one example. In many ways past history has tried to paint the Southern cause as a noble cause. The South wanted to preserve their way of life. The South wanted to preserve their economic system. It makes it seem like the war was fought for very noble causes by very noble men. We are not about 160 years away from that war and there have been many arguments on what the war was actually fought over. Yes, the Civil War was fought to persevere the South’s economic system that unfortunately was based on one crop, cotton. It was a very labor intensive crop that took a lot of slaves to harvest. When you say it was fought to preserve their economic system and not include the phrase based on slavery you are omitting a very important part of history. The “heroes of the South” were slave owners. So are people that enslave a race really heroes? I really do not think that this is a list that you want to be on. Some of the names will surprise you, they did me. It was interesting to see that some slave owners freed their slaves and became abolitionist. During the Civil War it even effected the economies of other countries. In Manchester England the textile workers would not touch a bale of American slaved picked cotton even though it led to may financial hardships. The so called “heroes of the South” should be remembered in history as they really were and history is actually catching up with them.

Most every morning I start my day reading what Heather Cox Richardson has to say on Facebook.  She is a history professor from Boston College and posts an article pretty much every day. She has about a million and a half followers and if you haven’t read something from her I can only encourage you to do so. Yesterday’s posting was the letter that Mitch McConnell and 36 other Republicans sent to the Education Secretary accusing him of advancing a politicized and divisive agenda in the teaching of American History. Now history has always been tried to be written by politicians. When politicians try to write history all they are really doing is writing propaganda. Just look at Hitler  They seem to be more interested in hiding the truth than they are of learning from it. Trump formed a commission of right-wing activists to write The 1776 Report. There were not historians.  History should not be something for us to create national pride. History is something we must learn from. There was a politician that actually wanted the schools to teach the good part of slavery.  Like there is a good part of slavery?  It is an embarrassing moment in American History and by white washing can do nothing but divide us more. We should not be hiding from our past. We should be learning from our past and taking pride in our accomplishments. The more diverse we become and the more inclusive we become the prouder everyone can be in this country.

As we move forward history will be harder and harder to rewrite. In today’s digital age a person does not even have to leave their easy chair to find the answers too many of histories questions. Ron Johnson form Wisconsin tries to spin the events of Jan 6^th. Ron there is way too much digital evidence. There were just too many people watching it live on TV. To try to spin it differently just makes you look like an idiot. In today’s digital everything will be there for generations to see and study. All the lies, all the insults, all the violence. It will all be there. This blog could even survive and be studied. Who knows?  I wish that I could come back 150 years from now and see what the real historians will have to say about the early 2100’s.