History is changing... quite literally. I don't mean that the way we view history is changing or the way historians do research is changing, I mean that history itself is changing, and it's because of the internet. The internet is changing the way that historians work, the availability of resources, who can do really good history, and... consequently... it's changing history itself.
A very wise man used to tell me that there is no such thing as objective history. Being the naive and intellectually arrogant teenager that I was, I vehemently disagreed with him. Surely there was an objective series of events that happened in the past and if we just looked hard enough, we could figure out exactly what those events were and capture forever a perfect, and objective, view of exactly what happened at a certain time or a certain place. I had a Newtonian view of history. If we could account for all of the people and sequences, we could state, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exactly what happened. Objective history, right?
Unfortunately for my teenage worldview, the reality is that we don't... and can't... know everything perfectly. Heck, we don't even know exactly what words Lincoln spoke in his Gettysburg Address and the Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in American history! (There are five known manuscripts that vary from version to version and there are additional versions from contemporary accounts, including an AP reporter's account who wrote it down in shorthand as he listened.) How can we hope to know what happened in a conversation between two generals at some obscure battle or what was said between two congressmen as they struck a back room deal? Beyond the events themselves, trying to determine an individual's emotional state, motivations, fears, or other deeply personal feelings is effectively impossible. What happened here or there and, more importantly, why it happened, is sometimes not much more than guesswork. That's where historians and the tools of their trade come into play and that's where the internet is fundamentally changing everything.
I recently read "John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General" by Stephen Hood. I had seen "Sam" Hood speak at several Civil War conferences (thank you, C-SPAN) and I found his talks fascinating. Sam Hood is a indirect descendant of General John Bell Hood and isn't a "professional" historian. He's just a smart guy with a love of history who happens to be a meticulous researcher and a pretty good writer. He's produced a well-researched book about General Hood that's as much an exercise in historiography (the study of historical writings) as it is a history of the life of John Bell Hood. General Hood had been widely trashed by historians for the last 50 years (to the point where he got trashed in Ken Burns' "Civil War"). Sam Hood thought it seemed a bit unfair and when he started digging, it turned out that it was.
Sam Hood took General Hood's biographers to task and rightly so. Sam Hood went back through the footnotes in these scholarly biographies, dug back to original sources, and tried to ferret out what really happened in certain situations. It turned out that, for whatever reason, mid-20th century historians engaged in hyperbole, speculation, and some flat out making up crap when it came to General Hood. Time and again, Sam Hood was able to cite primary sources that showed biographer bias and how they ignored source material counter to their conclusions. Sam Hood also turned a harsh light on the intellectual laziness of later 20th century historian who simply repeated, and in some cases, embellished, the unfair or untrue earlier stories about General Hood. To some extent, the internet made this renewed examination of General Hood possible.
One advantage Sam Hood had was the internet and the vast sources that have been digitized and put online by numerous libraries and projects. That doesn't excuse earlier historians for not checking primary sources or picking and choosing only only primary sources that suited their story line. The biographies cited by Sam Hood were largely written by professional historians, history professors at prestigious universities, and at least part of their job was to check their sources vigorously. It certainly didn't excuse the second wave of historians who simply repeated the stories from the first without doing the additional research of verifying claims. It reminds me of one brand of false news cycle where a fringe web site states something as fact, two other fringe web sites quote the first, then a mainstream site posts it, claiming that they have an original source and two additional sources that have verified whatever ridiculous claim was originally made.
I was still brooding over Sam Hood's book when I searched YouTube for lectures on General Hood. Sure enough, there was a recent lecture by one of the Hood biographers that Sam Hood had taken to task. Sam Hood hadn't ripped him too badly except on the question of repeating fairly serious charges against General Hood without going back to original sources. The lecture was recent enough that it would have been after Sam Hood's book was generally available. So I watched it.
At first, the lecturer (and I don't want to name names) avoided the more controversial parts of Hood's military career, which were mostly towards the end of the Civil War. When he got to that point in General Hood's career, the speaker alluded briefly, and I thought somewhat rudely, to Sam Hood's book. Referring to Sam Hood somewhat insultingly as a "shirt tail historian", the lecturer defended his practice of using stories from previous biographers as essentially something that everyone does so it was okay. The speaker did certainly calm some of his rhetoric towards the events around the fall of Atlanta and take a more neutral position so at least in that sense, Sam Hood's book had had some success.
I was still thinking about the Hood lecture and the "everybody does it" excuse, when I saw that there was an upcoming lecture about the Grant presidency (thank you again, C-SPAN). I decided to watch it.
The lecture was by Charles Calhoun and was in conjunction with the release of his book "The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant". It turned out to be fascinating to watch and, in part, addressed the same kinds of issues that were raised by Sam Hood. Dr. Calhoun addressed both the history of the Grant administration as well as the historiography around it. And, it turns out, the opinion of biographers regarding the Grant administration has changed considerably over time. Early in the 20th century, Grant was ranked as one of the worst presidents (even below James Buchanan) although over the century rose to be somewhere in the middle. Dr. Calhoun was just as fascinated with this change in perception as he was in the Grant administration itself.
Dr. Calhoun went on to talk about how it took eight years to write the book. Among the reasons that he cited for taking so long, he spoke about going back to primary sources to make sure he got the story as correct as possible. He mentioned letters, diaries, newspapers, and other contemporary sources. There was no "I copied from this guy because that's good enough". It was, in a way, a remarkable presentation, especially set against the lecture about General Hood that I had watched only a few days before. Was easier access to primary sources a factor in Dr. Calhoun's decision? He didn't answer that question specifically but I have to wonder if it was. Regardless, Dr. Calhoun made it clear that not going back to primary sources does a disservice to future readers and, if an author truly wants accuracy, they have to do that work.
There is no objective history but there's certainly no excuse for sloppy history. More and more archives are being digitized. More and more archival material is being translated and being made available in multiple languages. The past never changes but our lens into it, and the history we see through that lens, is clearer than ever.
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