I have been engaged in a considerable amount of disdain inspired eyerolling and amusement whenever I see yet another article about our President attempt to re-write American history to match his doctrinal image of our past. I realize he is a self-proclaimed “very stable genius”, but I am not so convinced that he is an expert on history and how we do it. I’m sure he wants to sanitize any parts or excise persons he does not believe makes a sufficient contribution to his Make America Great Again agenda. It isn’t going to work.
If it wasn’t such a waste of his time and our money, it would almost be amusing. I suspect that he believes if he signs another Executive Order, he can accomplish something that will last for generations to come. Good luck with that because it isn’t going to happen, nor will it last for very long. Every new generation looks to our national and personal past and does its own editing. It may be messy, but I think it is necessary and a good thing.
For decades Americans had this idea that the frontier had always been there and would always exist, and that it was the single greatest influence on American growth. Then, in 1893, the University of Wisconsin historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, announced that the frontier was closed. We had reached the Pacific Ocean; there was no more land to explore. We had a collective gasp of horror.
Turner even revised his own idea and interpretation of history. No sooner had he published his papers on the western frontier than he paused and realized he was wrong. It wasn’t the frontier, but the different regions or as he labeled them, “sections” of the country that was the great influencer. Nor surprisingly, some of the original opponents to the frontier theory had embraced it. When he wrote his theory of sectionalism they were appalled that he was revising history.
For generations, most of what we knew about the Puritan settlers in New England did not come from original sources, but from historians writing during the Victorian era, some two hundred years later. The Victorians re-created the Puritans in their own image, often highly influenced by the morality of their own era. Perry Miller, the great historian of the mid-20th Century at Harvard University, perhaps with a bit of eye-rolling on his own, stated they were wrong. When it came to human sexuality, he wrote, “They probably did it as much as any other group of people; they just didn’t talk about it.”
It came as no surprise that the more religious and socially conservative readers were upset that their long-standing beliefs in the intimacy-lacking Puritans had been challenged. Even some of the conservative Senators agitated for an investigation into the immorality being taught at Harvard.
Whenever I hear or read someone fussing and working themselves into a snit about “revisionist” history and historians, I try not to laugh. At least not out loud, although the occasional slight chortle might slip past my lips. We have been revising history since the beginning, starting with our own story.
For example, there was my dear Aunt Ditzy. She’d been a teacher, enjoyed being a Flapper in the 1920s, complete with a small flask tucked discreetly in her cotton hose garter, Charlestoned and Black Bottomed around the world, and yet always stayed at least one bubble off center. In her later years, when some of her canasta-playing friends were falling off their perch, she re-invented her age. She shaved off about 5 years, and insisted the revised numerals were to be carved into her headstone. She also protested, perhaps too much, about the morals of young people. Someday, someone researching the family tree, will be delightfully confused, and then they will get to the real facts.
When it comes to chiseling historical facts, no one did it better than the Egyptians. Queen Hatshepsut was the royal daughter of Thutmose I and was married to Pharaoh Ahmose, When her father and husband both died in 1479 BC, soon followed by her half-brother Thutmose II, she became the Regent and held the throne until her son, Thutmose III, came of age. He came of age, but mama decided it was good to be queen, so she kept him waiting in the wings, seething the whole time. Meanwhile, Egypt was at peace, prosperity flowed like the Nile, and people were happy with the status quo. Well, all except Thutmose. When Hatshepsut finally died in 1458 BC, he took over.
By then, he had what today we might call mommy issues. One of the first things he did was command the royal chiselers to take up their tools and go to work. Every public record of his mother was removed, and even her coffin and sarcophagus was desecrated, just to make sure she was not going to make it to the afterlife.
He hoped she would soon be forgotten. He was wrong. Thutmose III is the one who is forgotten. Her place in history is secure.
Less than a century later history repeated itself when, in 1353 BC, Amenhotep IV became a national scandal and calamity. He declared all the old Egyptian deities were to be replaced by the sole worship of Aten, his name for the great high god. He changed his name from Amenhotep to Amenaten, named his son Tutukaten and fired all of the priests. The country was in such economic and military turmoil that everyone was in a celebratory mood when he died. The old priests got their jobs back, and they let his son succeed to the throne only because he went along with their restoration policies. They changed his name to Tutankhamen. He died a decade later and was forgotten for 2500 plus years until his tomb was discovered. Then he became a sensation.
As for Amanaten, the Egyptians wanted to deep six him, and almost succeeded for two thousand years until some archeologists discovered the ruins his new city of Samara, and learned his name.
A few others got the same treatment, including Cleopatra who had a child by Julius Caesar when he was married to a Roman woman, then with Marc Anthony who was unhappily married, and a few other dalliances that defied the Roman concept of “gravitas” or being serious. They wanted her out of sight and memory. Archeologists are still trying to find her tomb. Most of the ‘history’ we know about Cleo and Marc comes from the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton movie.
More recently, when war broke out in 1914, Germany and England were on opposite sides, which make things difficult for much of the European royalty. They were all related to each other, and the official family name of English King George V was Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They were also closed tied by marriage to the Wittlesbach, Oldenburg, and Glucksburg, all from Germany. Prime Minister David Lloyd George told the king that this was not good for public morale and the war effort. They had to change their name and forget about the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha past, which they did, to Windsor. The name, however, does not negate or change history.
We’ve done our share of revising history in our own country. Raise your hands if you learned about young George Washington fessing up to his daddy about cutting down a cherry tree with, “I cannot tell a lie.” Or the other big whopper about GW tossing a silver dollar across the mile wide Potomac River, a fete no one else could do, to prove his strength.
The list of these anomalies and stories are endless, and they will continue until it lights out for all of humanity. Meanwhile, there is a whole library of books and articles that could be written about the futility of revisionist history.
When Mr. Trump leaves the White House for one last time, and while the cleaners are making the rooms ready for the next tenant, a whole army of revisionist historians will be ready for tinker with our national story.
The question is whether it will be the “real” story, their own ideas, or something else. Stay healthy, stick around, and wait to be amazed and amused.
