Indeed, sometimes what was never recorded or said might be more important than the”fact”. And here is where character and motive must be weighed against the “facts.” When writing on any historical subject, I believe it is critical that one know as well as is humanly possible the character and motivation of the many dozens of player in a given work.

Personally, when I find that facts do not match up to motivation and character, I have serious reservation about the “fact.”

James M. Ridgway, Jr. Author: Little Mac: Demise of an American Hero”

J. R. R. Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings clearly presents that principle in action when Frodo and his servant Sam find themselves in Morder and witness a (fatal) dispute between two orcs (evil servants of the Dark Lord). After an altercation, the smaller one kills the larger with an arrow and then runs away. Sam tells Frodo that the enemies of Morder would only profit if that particular type of behavior were to spread throughout the Dark Lord’s kingdom. Ah, but Frodo replies, that type of behavior is TYPICAL of the people of Morder BUT if they had found the hobbits, they would have stopped their fighting until they had killed those whom they BOTH saw as enemies. In other words, the ‘infighting’ among the orcs was only present when there was no OTHER enemy to fight. And this is what happened in Hitler’s regime as noted in the above example.

History is filled with strange twists and turns of fate, of people betraying causes and embracing what would seem to be diametric points of view for totally unfathomable reasons. That’s one of the problems with trying to do more than ‘list the facts’ in history; all attempts at defining the motives that produced those facts ends up being a matter of the interpretation of the information at hand. To have a guiding principle of simplicity when simplicity is not always the right answer is to risk being, in the end, quite wrong no matter how ‘tidy’ the posited theory appears.

J.D.

You’re absolutely correct. I think that the more interaction between the professional and non-professional historians, the better. As you say, it all makes for a healthier field of history. And I’m glad to have you as a reader.

Eric

Thank you. It has been nearly 20 years since I read Civil War history regularly, but my interest was rekindled recently when I relocated to Washington D.C. I have been pretty impressed with the quality of scholarship in the field these days on the part of both professional and non-professional historians. My belief is that it is the collective responsibility of the community of all historians to continually assess old and new interpretations, and winnow out the bad from the good. Consensus facilitates that process, but civility allows for healthy disagreement that keeps the consensus from becoming an orthodoxy. That’s why I think this emerging net of Civil War blogs is so terrific, because it encourages that process much more effectively than the list-serves and chat boards. It also seems to me that there is much more interaction between professional and non-professional historians in the Civil War field than one finds in other genres. Broadening the diversity of perspectives in the discussions can only be a good thing, in my opinion.

Drew,

I agree that Dimitri is sort of tossing the baby out with the bathwater in dismissing military history because of the failings of individual historians. Certainly military history as a genre has some specific methodological problems, but I think they are no worse than those that challenge historians of other subjects, and the discipline as a whole. By giving up on military history, he is missing out on a lot of really interesting and challenging work.

Cheers,

Shawn

Thanks very much for weighing in. I think you raise a lot of valid and legitimate points.

I think we all agree that bad history is just that–bad. Sadly, bad history by one makes all of us who care look bad, and that’s disturbing.

Thanks for taking the time to post, and I hope you will do so again.

Eric

I hope I am not too late to make a contribution to this thread. Let me start by saying that I have been greatly impressed by the network of Civil War blogs that has popped up on the blogosphere, and especially the level of dialogue that takes place among them. This emerging network is in many ways superior to the list-serve bulletin boards and chat rooms insofar as facilitating thoughtful conversations. It is sort of amusing however, that a discussion about one of Dimitri Rotov’s posts is taking place on someone else’s blog. Too bad he won’t reconsider re-enabling comments in his own.

With regard to the failings of military history, as someone who is an academically-trained military historian, I would point out that these shortcomings are endemic to the practice of history in general. Rather than tar the field of military history with a broad brush, I think it would be more accurate to make clear the distinction between history that is firmly grounded in both primary sources and the existing historiography, clearly and honestly argued, and avoids polemics (i.e. “good” history) and that which is poorly researched, sloppily argued, or intentionally biased to buttress some broader political, social, or emotional argument (i.e. “bad” history).

Dimitri’s allegation that military historians rely too heavily on a handful of sources seem to me to be an indictment of “bad” history, which certainly transcends the military history genre. But, given his clearly advertised antipathy toward what he identifies as the “Centennialist” school of Civil War interpretation, I think he is getting at something else, something that is endemic to the epistemology of history as an intellectual discipline. Historical knowledge is not objective, nor is it static. What is considered to be historical “truth” is socially constructed, in that it represents a general consensus among its practitioners at a particular point in time. As times change, as new evidence is brought to light, as new historians challenges older interpretations, the consensus of historical “truth” changes as well.

The creation and revision of orthodox historical interpretation is fundamental to the process of creating historical knowledge, and isn’t a failing of the discipline or any one of its subgenres. It’s simply the way the process works. I find Dimitri’s intellectual bomb-throwing quite interesting for the very fact that it is advancing the body of knowledge. Perhaps he will force a change in the historical consensus on George McClellan. At the very least he is prompting very stimulating debate. This may be a haphazard and disorderly way of making sense of history, but that is the way all human knowledge advances.

As for Dimitri’s criticism that military historians are overly focused on the role of commanders, hasn’t history in general always been focused on the role of “great men?” This certainly was one of the criticisms leveled at the practice of history by the 1960s revisionists. Taking the focus off leaders and decision-makers is one of the primary motivations of the “new” military history that has been previously discussed in these circles. This seems to me to be simply part of the general process of ongoing revisionism that characterizes the epistemology of history. I, for one, am very curious to see where Dimitri goes with his inquiry into the political backgrounds of McClellan’s corps commanders.

Cheers,

Shawn Woodford

It’s a one-of-a-kind find, like the Kensington Runestone.

David

J.D.