Walter Ney Keener: General Sherman “had his faults, but he was no sissy”
“History is affected by discoveries we will make in the future.” — Karl Popper
As any good historian will tell you, “revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship.” Yet to many people, “revisionist history” is a “consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present” (McPherson, 2003). From Holocaust deniers to the “Lost Cause” narrative of the Southern insurrection over the right to enslave African Americans, there have no doubt been examples of the later. However, as James McPherson explains, “History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable ‘truth’ about past events and their meaning.”
While some people invent crazy conspiracies out of whole cloth in an apparent attempt to create an epistemic crisis, even evidence-based revisions to “traditional” histories can be troubling for some and create a situation in which we’re just not sure what to believe any more. In 1922, Walter Ney Keener (presumably) wrote a seemingly sarcastic and humorous editorial about a trivial and questionable example involving a quote attributed to William Tecumseh Sherman, the “most widely renowned of the Union’s military leaders next to U. S. Grant” who engaged in a “scorched earth” policy of total war against the so-called Confederate States.
“Will somebody blackjack these fellows who are running around trying to ‘keep history straight.’ We had hardly recovered from the statement that George Washington had red hair until along comes a fellow and says that Sherman never said ‘War is hell.’ Enough of a thing is enough, and too much gets our goat. What is the world coming to, anyway? Here we as well as some millions of others have all the time been quoting Sherman’s opinion of war, and dog-gone it! we don’t propose to have it upset by a smart Alec. A fellow by the name of Collins says he was with Sherman on the march to the sea, and that the general said ‘war is cruel.’ Think of that, will you? The idea of Sherman saying ‘cruel.’ We are willing to bet the limit that Sherman never used any such a word. If he said anything at all about war, he said just what we have always heard he said. The north has been for years building monuments to the man who devastated the south, and who cut a wide swath down through Dixieland, leaving behind him a trail of ashes and animal carcasses, but if it should ever be proved that he never said war is hell every monument to him would be torn down, and he would lose his position at the top of the page in history books. Sherman played the war game as he knew it, and from his viewpoint played it the most successful way. He may be accused of many crimes, but don’t accuse him of using ‘cruel’ instead of ‘hell.’ He had his faults, but he was no sissy. The nature of the man and the business he was engaged in both are against his using any other word than he has been credited with. If he didn’t say it, he should have said it, at least that’s the way we are going to believe. Can’t there be something done to protect these fellows from destroying history? If they are permitted to go on breaking down history and tradition, it won’t be long before we won’t believe anything that history says…” — Walter Ney Keener, Durham Morning Herald (May 30, 1922)
If he were alive today, Walter may still be upset to learn that historians apparently continue to believe that George Washington powdered his reddish brown hair to get that white look. But at least he could rest assured in the knowledge that they still credit Sherman with saying “war is hell.” And who among us would be so cruel as to suggest otherwise?
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” — William Tecumseh Sherman
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