Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Reevaluating Historical Figures

Historical revisionism – the process by which we re-evaluate our heroes and cultural avatars according to modern norms – is a particular bête noire of the American Right, with the American Spectator proving the case nicely.

Actually, though, the Spectator makes a good point, for once – revisionism run amok is not scholarly, and frustrates our understanding and respect for the past. However, the Spectator’s argument goes off half-cocked. Namely, the Spectator author is right, but she’s arguing against a straw man.

If we were to judge everything against contemporary moral standards, we would no longer have a history. Since much of our morality is progressive – that is, over time, we come to realize new injustices – almost all historical figures fail to live up to modern standards.  As the Spectator author points out, to make a historical figure’s remembrance based wholly on moral failings viewed from a modern perspective is to deny a commandment of the historian – namely, that individuals and events should be looked at in context.

Further, if we’re to demand that our historical role models be perfect to retain their iconic status, we will quickly be bereft of history. Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owner, so he’s out; John Adams was an abolitionist, but probably a homophobe, and the list goes on. When looking at the past, a good historian ought to be able to engage in a conceptual severance, to be able to look at the individual’s positive accomplishments on their own. Where an individual’s failings are really the failings of the era in which she lived, this rule is especially true. Our heroes ought to be good in some way; they need not be perfect.  Let them be praised for their goodness, and condemned, but not in the same breath, for their failings.

A common example where these points come into play is in criticism of high school teachers who teach Huckleberry Finn.  The book, the argument goes, is racist; Huck tosses around the n-word fairly regularly.  Well, yes. But we do not read Huck Finn for the truth of the matter asserted; we read it for the historical context it provides, and to perhaps praise Huck for struggling against the stereotypes he lived in, to come closer than others of his era did to realizing their flaws.

Unlike Lisa from the Spectator, I don’t think that anyone actually argues that our heroes ought to be perfect, tossing them aside if they suffer from a failing of their era.  I’ve never met  “revisionist” who would hold the accomplishments of Jefferson hostage to his endorsement of slavery; rather, revisionists are “big picture” types, who insist that faults be acknowledged alongside triumphs, not that one dwarf the other.  Of course, where the faults outweigh the triumphs, or where the only triumphs come from working in the service of an objective moral wrong (as in the case of Lester Maddox, I’ve argued), history can properly condemn that individual.  And that, I think, is what Lisa from the Spectator would actually object to.