“... for it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future.”
Cervantes, Don Quixote.
PART II
THE ACTIVITIES OF PROPAGANDIST AGENCIES
CHAPTER VI
Attempts to Control Textbooks
The public school deals with that period of life in which strong impressions find easy lodgment in the child’s memory. Altruism, glorification of national achievements, hero worship, and other emotions are excited by contacts with teachers and books. It is the age in which the child’s ideals can be fired by the sayings of famous men and in which the story of valorous deeds stirs a responsive enthusiasm. Indeed, it is a common belief that the influences of these early associations and impressions persist far into maturity, for “as the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.” With a keen appreciation of the possibilities of this plastic period of child life, authors of textbooks in history and the other social studies, obedient to the spirit of their times, have exalted and condemned as the prevailing temper has dictated.
History for the sake of propaganda is not a unique possession of any one country. It has been employed in the name of “patriotism” by many nations. Livy extolled Rome, Green exalted England, Bancroft eulogized the exploits of the founders of America, and Treitschke and Nietzsche pictured the glories of an imperialist régime in Germany. As a result, there has developed an overweening pride in national and racial attributes and achievements. From such a source has sprung much of the hereditary enmity between France and Germany. Indeed, it has been said that an analogous situation exists in the United States, and a well-known writer recently declared that, through the study of American history, “Americans are taught to hate Britishers, ... and not only descendants of the men who made the Revolution, but every newly arrived immigrant child imbibes the hatred of Great Britain of today from the patriotic ceremonies of the public schools.”[411]
Propagandist history, however, is not merely an instrument of the ultra-nationalist. By the pacifist it may be employed to depict with a vivid gruesomeness the horrors of war; by it the militarist may demonstrate the advantages of preparedness; the racially conscious may narrate, in their history, achievements of their heroes to the exclusion or derogation of those of other groups; the religious enthusiasts may commend the contributions of their sect to the neglect of others; and economic and social organizations may seek to serve their particular purposes. Demands for revised history textbooks, such as emanated during the World War, to teach the point of view then current, are but a recent instance of a practice as old as the teaching of history.
HISTORY TEXTBOOKS IN THE SOUTH
In the United States, as well as elsewhere, propagandist influences have played their part in shaping the content of history textbooks. The South, in particular, has shown such tendencies, attempting in the ante-bellum days to propagate a history favorable to the slave-holding interests, and since that time endeavoring to justify the past in the eyes of posterity. The desire to depict events from a sectional point of view was especially apparent in the decade preceding the Civil War when a concerted effort to prescribe the content of history textbooks expressed itself in frequent agitations against the use of Northern textbooks. By the Southerner was raised the same query which has been raised in our own time—whether the author of a textbook has a right “to step aside from his proper course to drag in his own private views on vexed questions of national import” about which a writer should “maintain an impartial stand.”[412] Such criticisms were directed against Northern textbook writers; for Southerners were agreed that an author would not be guilty of a heinous offense if he should “step aside ... to drag in” views favorable to the institution of slavery. Indeed, a sectional presentation of history was deemed a necessity; and a movement for “home education” to combat the teachings of the “abolitionist North” attained considerable vigor in the ’fifties. To the Southerner, “home education” meant Southern trained teachers and textbooks filled with the convictions of the slave-holding South. Through such agencies it was hoped to expel from their midst “the wandering incendiary Yankee school-master” with “his incendiary school books”[413] parading under “the black piratical ensign of abolitionism.”[414]
Even prior to the ’fifties, the South had realized the value of a propagandist literature, for Duff Green, a relative of John C. Calhoun, had secured a charter from South Carolina for a Southern Literary Company for the purpose of publishing school books adapted to his section.[415] Green’s efforts must have proved unsuccessful, for it was followed by much newspaper discussion of the situation, which gained in asperity as the South became more belligerent in the assertion of her rights.