JEFFERSON LIES?

I’ve been following with interest the discussion over Thomas Nelson’s decision to pull David Barton’s Jefferson Lies off the shelves and to stop production over ‘factual errors’.  As I’ve studied the errors in question, I find myself scratching my head as to why these things would warrant such a drastic measure.  Mostly, I ask myself, isn’t it really a matter of one opinion over another?

The day the news broke about the Jefferson book,  I happened to be reading the introduction to a book about Christopher Columbus written almost 120 years ago.   Even then, the world was divided over whether Columbus was worthy of admiration or scorn.   The author addressed this very issue of discerning the ‘facts’ of history.  He asked why it was that several well-educated, learned men can look at identical original source material and draw contradicting conclusions.  Washington Irving greatly admired Columbus and Von Humboldt offered nothing but praise while Harrisse had nothing but cold criticism and Winsor gave a ‘sneering invective’.

I believe his response is worth considering:

“Where this amazing difference in judgment?  Why does Mr. Winsor blame where others praise?  Mr. Winsor thinks that it is due to his own superiority as a critical and scientific historian.  Is Mr. Winsor right?  Where does the province of the critical and scientific historian lie?  In the gathering and sifting of historical evidence, in the full command of historical authorities, in the quick eye that sees historical contradictions and impossibilities, in the faculty sympathizing with the age and the feelings of the men he treats, in the power to see what under given environment is possible or impossible, is likely or unlikely.  All this will aid the historian to form a just and a correct idea of a hero’s character, and yet he may have all this, and err completely in his verdict.

“In every day life knowledge, human nature and knowledge of men is not the exclusive privilege of the man of many facts and varied lore.  Often the plain man of common sense, the man who has studied men in the concrete, living among them with open eyes and keen quick wit, knows his fellow men more truly and do them justice more fairly, than the scholar who has conquered ten thousand volumes and swallowed the dust of libraries for a quarter of a century.

“What is there to hinder the man of action, who has seen again and again how men act in real life, amidst difficulties, and struggles and crises and triumphs and failures,–what is to hinder such a man when put in possession of the facts and placed face to face with the innermost thoughts of any great historical character to judge him and judge him correctly?  Why may he not arrive at a fairer and truer verdict, than the scholar who has mastered dates and details, but fails to see flesh and blood, because the man of flesh and blood does not fit in with the imaginary world which the scholar has created in his mind?

“All honor to the critical historian, when he collects, compares and sifts testimony, but if his judgment of the world’s great men is to stand, he must prove himself to be more than a scientist and a critic, he must be a judge not only of books and facts, but of men–of their hearts, of their sympathies, of their feelings, of their passions, of their actions, of their judgments.”

(Taken from The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: The Story of the Discovery of America (1892))

As a storyteller and a sharer-of-stories with children, you will be called upon to make your own judgment and assessment of the great lives of the past.  Relying on the most credentialed scholar for the ‘truth’ may not reveal the truth at all. Sometimes, you just have to follow your heart.

And I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the world, I just made a scholar cringe.