In understanding history, more is required than just a litany of facts. An explanatory framework is needed—a theory or argument concerning the significance and interrelationships between those facts, or a “model” as Robert Higgs put it:
In black history, as in any history, the facts do not speak for themselves. They require selection, classification, and interpretation, and for these purposes the investigator must employ a model. That any attempt at causal analysis must make use of a model, either explicitly or implicitly, is generally admitted. That explicit models are preferable to implicit ones is a long-standing precept of economists and a principle increasingly affirmed by historians.
The argument, or “narrative,” helps to make sense of the facts, but the argument must itself be derived from and based on an honest evaluation of all the relevant facts. It would be wrong to derive an argument without reference to the facts, then subsequently cherry-pick only those facts that fit the argument while discarding any inconvenient facts. An effort must be made to account for, or at least acknowledge, facts that undermine the force of the narrative. As Murray Rothbard explains, “In human affairs, the complex historical event itself needs to be explained by various theories as far as possible; but it can never be completely or precisely determined by any theory.” Theory is a tool to use in acquiring a better understanding of history, but the theory itself is no substitute for historical facts.
There are many reasons why people twist historical facts to fit their preconceived narrative, but of specific interest in this article are the dominant collectivist interpretations of history. Collectivists err in attempting to explain history entirely by reference to the notion that each man must have reacted to historical events in the same way as would be expected of any and all members of his group. The collectivist subsumes all human behavior within the general framework of the group whose history is being discussed, therefore, identifying and classifying groups assumes paramount importance in collectivist theories of history. They streamline history into neat accounts of what everyone in the identified group generally did—and assume that the “very rare exceptions,” which do not affect the truth of the narrative, may safely be ignored. There is no room for what is sometimes described as “nuance.” History by theory instead devolves into a battle between one collectivist interpretation of history and another. This is partly because collectivists are ideologically committed to theories of historical determinism in which the actions of individuals are irrelevant. As David Gordon puts it:
Is history the result of individual, contingent actions, or brought about by impersonal deterministic forces? Let’s look at a couple of examples. If you are studying the origins of World War I, should you mainly be concerned with what particular people—e.g., Wilhelm II, Sir Edward Grey, Raymond Poincaré—did or should your main emphasis be on impersonal forces—e.g., the clash of rival imperialist powers caused by the stage that the economic development of capitalism had reached? Similarly, in studying the origin of the Civil War, should you be looking at Lincoln’s policies or, as Charles and Mary Beard do in The Rise of American Civilization, see the war as an inevitable conflict between the industrial North and the agricultural South?
The debate as to whether all slaves were generally loyal or whether all slaves were generally hostile has devolved into this primitive form. It is not a debate about specific people in a specific place, but a debate about theories of exploitation—how slaves are collectively expected to behave. The discourse is purely concerned with institutions and systems of exploitation. An illustrative case of the confusion that arises when theories replace the stories of real people can be seen in Bell Irvin Wiley’s book, The Plain People of the Confederacy. This was hailed as a book showing that not everyone in the Old South was a planter aristocrat. But why would anyone have assumed that all (or even most) Southerners were planter aristocrats? Such an assumption could only be held by those intent on fitting all groups into a theoretical “type,” from which it followed that the type into which all Southerners were cast was the planter-aristocrat-slaveowner. After all, if the goal is to explain slavery as a system of exploitation, there are only two relevant groups: the planter aristocratic class and the slave. These are the groups of greatest relevance to the exploitation narratives of the American South. Southerners who were not planter aristocrats—the majority of Southerners, as it happens—become irrelevant in the history weaved by collectivists. Almost nothing is ever heard of free black people, of whom there were about 261,000 in the antebellum South.
Another implication of collectivist thinking is that mundane observations acquire the significance of groundbreaking insights. If we assume that all Southerners were planter aristocrats, it is surely newsworthy for anyone to announce that some Southerners were actually what Wiley calls “rustics,” some of whom “had many rough edges. Many could not write”, Wiley adds helpfully. Wiley also reveals that the men of the South were not all West Point graduates: “these rustics were not all exemplary soldiers.” To confound the picture further, he also notes that some Southerners also “had many virtues” and that “for the most part they were sturdy, hardworking, respectable citizens.” It was not only white Southerners who exhibited this stunning human variation (stunning to those who expected uniformity). As concerns “the colored folk” of the South, Wiley reports that “they were not the docile, ‘Old Kentucky Home’ type of subservients that romancers have depicted them to be.” Interestingly, not even the most devoted “romancer” of the Old South claims that all colored folk were “subservients.” Had they all (or even mostly) been subservients, Nat Turner’s revolt would not have happened, and Virginia would not have banned teaching slaves to read in hopes of stemming the growing influence of abolitionist pamphlets encouraging slave revolts. After all, the last thing subservients are interested in is revolt.
What is the significance of such banal commentaries on history? Why would it be instructive to learn that across the South there were many hardworking, respectable citizens? This commentary cannot be intended merely to provide information, as it is common sense that in any group of people in the nineteenth century some would be “rustics” who had no formal schooling, and some would be “respectable citizens.” As for the soldiers, it is common sense that no army exists in which every single soldier in all units over four years is at all times exemplary. If all soldiers were exemplary, military honors would be meaningless—all soldiers would deserve the medal of honor. Yet it does not surprise anyone who understands human nature to learn that even the losing side of any war had some soldiers who fought with honor. After all, out of the worst atrocities of any war always come tales of individual heroism. To observe that some men were bad and most men were good is hardly an astounding historical insight—it only appears to be a stunning revelation to people accustomed to holding a one-size-fits-all view of a people.
To his credit, Wiley makes a conscious effort to be objective, and notes cases that go against his overall narrative. For example, he acknowledges that there were black Rebels in the Confederate army, although he views their contribution as no more than “a few pot shots” in the heat of battle. He at least does not resort to the dishonest argument of court intellectuals that black Confederates did not exist, which would have helped his “narrative” about the paucity of “subservients” among the slaves. He also, to his credit, does not deny that there were genuine bonds of affection between some slaves and their masters, as claimed by Marxists who regard such affection as a form of false consciousness. Wiley acknowledges that,
A genuine affection, deriving from intimate association that sometimes dated back to early childhood, usually existed between soldiers and their servants. This fact, coupled with the impossibility of exercising a close supervision in the hurly-burly of campaigning, caused masters to give a comparatively free rein to the blacks who shared with them the ups and downs of army life.
An honest view of history shows that human behavior does not fit within neat and tidy silos. This should neither surprise nor disconcert anyone who seeks to understand true history as accurately as possible.
