Two Views

In Samuel Eliot Morison's "The Oxford History of the American People," there is a single sentence about Harriet Tubman.

"An illiterate field hand, (Tubman) not only escaped herself but returned repeatedly and guided more than 300 slaves to freedom."

Morison, however, devotes most of five chapters to the greatest soldier-statesman in American history, save Washington, that pivotal figure between the Founding Fathers and the Civil War — Andrew Jackson.--PB

Poor scholarship as justification for racist ideology and the mind-numbing hubris of exceptionalism. Just what we need more of, evidently, as Buchanan hauls his "facts" out of the dustbin of history.

Alt-history guru Howard Zinn would not approve of such dimness, nor do I.  Nor should you.

Here is another, more educated perspective.

One of the academic myths I repeatedly confronted in my study of history early on--let's call it the pre-Zinnian view--is the worn-out trope of the "Great Man" theory of history, or something I refer to as the "great man in his own time" perspective of historical "Great Events."

The great man in his own time is central to the great events we call history because of the unalterable nature of the reality of his time.

You learned the events by heart as a kid, and unless you've taken it upon yourself to go deeper into the record, the course of events started and stopped with the Great Men, their entourages, and the realities of their time.

That was "History" for far too many when I was growing up, and it remains so for far too many today.  It's short sighted and lacks nuance and detail.

Dissent did not happen in Jackson's time says the shallow reading (and writing) of history. A slave revolt here or there was simply recklessness on the part of unknown people--well, with the exception of Harriet Tubman and a few ordinary others, who failed obviously until the great Abe Lincoln's proclamation.

She failed so profoundly she must be reduced to one sentence in the "factual" story.  The story that counts because it recognizes and extols the virtues of greatness.

What in fact the rabbles' dissonance amounted to was a minor obstruction of the Great Man's destiny.

Race did not count for anything because subjugation was the normative reality, thus individual struggle was discounted, ignored, and violently lost.  Fortunately for some, Abe came along then, right? He fixed everything, and now freedom for all reigns.

But such a view is not historical; it is pablum, and all too common. Witness the multitude who cannot wrap their brains around the idea that the U.S. was built on organized terror and remains today the greatest threat to peace and equality in the world.

However, to demonstrate that I am "unbiased" in my historicism, here is a counterpoint.  It speaks for itself.


TS