Public opinion and the teaching of history in the United States

by Bessie Louise Pierce

“These Southern histories do not fail to make known their side of this question. They are full of it,” concluded the Committee. “What we deem treason is there made respectable. While our histories on the same subject are comparatively silent, indeed are so lamentably deficient upon this question that it were far better to discard all history of our country during the epoch of 1860-5 than to admit them to our schools as now compiled. It is indeed time to cease toying with treason for policy, and to cease illustrating rebels as heroes, as in the case of some of our school histories.”[513]

The Report of 1888 inaugurated a practice extending over a period of more than twenty years. The Report of 1892 laid its emphasis upon the fact that the textbooks in history “slandered the North and the cause of the Union, ... depreciated the value of our troops, and represented that the South was in the right, and that the army which saved the Union was a wicked aggressor....”[514]

In 1895 the Encampment, meeting at Louisville, had its attention called by the Department of Indiana to the character of history textbooks used in Northern schools. In that state alarm had been excited by Montgomery’s Leading Facts of American History, “the authorized history” for the public schools of the state. Under the auspices of the local G. A. R. an investigation of this book had been conducted. As a result, seven charges were presented against it, the indictment stating that Ellis’ Eclectic Primary History and Barnes’ History were believed to be “equally objectionable.”[515]

The objections of the Indiana G. A. R. received the endorsement of the national encampment, and Montgomery’s history was found guilty on the following counts: first, it contained “no suggestion or intimation that the men who fought for the preservation of the Union were right”; second, there was “a general unfairness of treatment of the people of the North, of the officers and soldiers of the Union armies and the battles fought by them”; third, it was “calculated to give the student false impressions as to the relative courage, heroism and achievements of the contending armies, and of the endurance, devotion and sacrifices of the people of the two sections of the country engaged in the conflict”; fourth, “the accounts of the victories of the Confederates” were “exaggerated, while those of the Union armies” were “dwarfed and made insignificant by comparison”; in the fifth place, “all statements of a commendatory and eulogistic character” were “reserved for the Confederates, while nothing of like character” was said “in favor of the Union soldiers or people”; sixth, that it was “unpatriotic and partisan in statement, tone and sentiment”; and seventh, that it was “unreliable in its statement of facts.”[516]

Among objectionable history textbooks “written by Southern authors, for the avowed purpose of giving a history of the War of the Rebellion from a Southern standpoint,” was that of “Reverend Dr. D. W. Jones, published in 1896.”[517] This book was taken “as a fair sample of its class” by the Committee on School Histories reporting in 1897. The Veterans rested their case upon such a statement as: “The seceding states not only had a perfect right to withdraw from the Union but they had amply sufficient cause for doing so.”[518]

In the “careful examination” to which the school histories of the North were subjected by the Committee of 1897 no book was found which deserved “unqualified endorsement.”[519] This was due to the “one vital defect” common to all the histories—that all of them treated the War “as a contest between the sections of the country ... and not as a war waged by the Government for the suppression of rebellion against National authority and meant to destroy National existence.”[520] Indeed, the Committee had reached their conclusions regarding the “histories in general use in all sections” after “two days of examination.”[521] During this time they had found in “many of these works extravagant expressions as ‘this crushing defeat’” in speaking of the Northern army, and such a statement as “‘the Confederates could not be conquered until they were destroyed,’”—all equally obnoxious and uncomplimentary to the North.[522] Such a condition, the Committee felt, arose from “a commercial spirit” which “largely controls and inspires these publications.”[523]

In view of the situation as it then existed, the Committee asked that the “Encampment record a solemn and emphatic protest against the further use of any history of the Civil War in the public schools of this country which does not teach that this war was a war waged by the National Government for the suppression of rebellion and the preservation of National existence; that there was a right side and a wrong side, ... that in the decision of this question the victors were right and the vanquished wrong.”[524] They further recommended that the agitation for “improved text-books” be continued, that a permanent committee on the teaching of patriotism in the schools be appointed, and that the Grand Army of the Republic and its allied organizations “give direct and persistent attention to the removal and exclusion of improper histories ... in use.”[525]

The results of the agitation for “unbiased” histories which the Confederate Veterans felt had been achieved by 1896 in the South, the G. A. R. through their activities failed to accomplish in the North before 1898. However, at that time they felt “justified to report substantial improvement in the tone and sentiment” of textbooks, particularly in “the more recent publications.”[526] Yet they urged “a continuance of effort ... to place before the children of the Republic truthful and patriotic histories” of the Civil War, and registered a “solemn and emphatic protest” against the proposal that the struggle of 1861 to 1865 be called “the Civil War between the States.”[527]

The following year the Committee report rang with a spirit of optimism because of the changed character of history writing and instruction brought about by “our organization.” As proof for their gratification they pointed out that “in one of the leading works in use more than fifty substantial changes of the text have been made in that portion presenting the history of the rebellion.”[528] Yet regret was expressed that no history known to them made “it clear in statement that the war for the preservation of the Union was prosecuted on the one side by the National Government and on the other by those in armed rebellion against its authority.”[529] To insure continued vigilance the Encampment approved the appointment of an “aide” to each department to keep in touch with the school histories in his state, and to “confer with school authorities and endeavor through them to secure the best obtainable school histories in the schools and the exclusion of such as are unfit.”[530]

The satisfaction expressed by the Committee of 1900 was reiterated at the encampment the following year. But the Committee were robbed of much of their gratification when they considered the “avowedly sectional standpoint” of histories in the South, where it was still taught that the Confederate States were “a lawful government.”[531]