Guest Post: A Modest Plea for Complicated History by Andrew Forney

I read Eliot A. Cohen’s “A Modest Plea for Patriotic History” at an interesting moment in my own reading, sandwiching it in between finishing Ron Chernow’s Grant (nearly 1000 pages!) and starting Edwin Moïse’s The Myths of Tet. Several of my historian friends shared his article on social media, arguing its’ merits and demerits from several different ideological perspectives. What were the implications of Cohen’s piece, they asked — the generation of a meta-narrative that supports claims to American exceptionalism, or a more nuanced critique of a trend to parse the differences within American history ahead of a unifying theme? Was Cohen arguing for a reformulation of our cultural context to unify us in a time of division, or was this the same “lumpers and splitters” debate rehashed in countless graduate school historiography seminars across academia?

I empathize with Eliot Cohen. His sense of dread and despair at the ongoing machinations of the Trump administration are clearly palpable in his writings. And while I did not agree with many of his claims in his latest book The Big Stick (a thinly disguised job interview for a centrist Republican presidential candidate that failed to materialize), I thought his book Supreme Command does the best job of any work I have ever read in arguing for civilian control of the military. His pieces at The Atlantic are always thoughtful; for one of the leading conservative voices on the benefits of American power, he is decidedly measured in his tone, recognizing that statements like “bombing ISIS until the sand glows” does more harm than good. And while I lean more towards understanding the limits of American power as outlined by Andrew Bacevich, I appreciate Cohen for his honesty, his rigor, and frankly, his conviction.

All of these factors made me second guess the sneer that I automatically drew on my face after I read Cohen’s latest piece. As I saw it, Cohen was looking for heroes within a triumphalist narrative of American history that could unify the nation in this time of partisan tribalism. He hearkened back to George Orwell (much like Alexander Hamilton, I have lost track of whether or not he is a rallying figure for conservative or liberal thinkers) to draw a distinction between nationalism —“the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects” — and patriotism — “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world.” Cohen argues that, in this moment in history, “The United States could do with more patriots and fewer nationalists.”

How’s that for a saccharine sweet appeal to a meta-narrative? But, in Cohen’s defense, he does state that “Patriotic history does not have to cover up the dark pages of the American past — the cruelties and sufferings of slavery and Jim Crow, the violence and injustice of the Trail of Tears or the massacre at Wounded Knee, the corruption of Tammany Hall, the follies of Red Scares or Charles Lindbergh’s creepy America Firstism” (I see what you did there, Eliot!). Cohen’s patriotic narrative is an overcoming of tragedies and injustices to realize the inherent sanctity of American values: equality, justice, self-worth, and industriousness. I feel that Cohen would readily agree that these values are more totem than reality, but exist as goals that should guide our behavior, to continue the quest to form a more perfect union. And while this may seem to some as only one standard deviation away from a fairy tale, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (among others) that once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The belief in progress and the hope for a better future, it seems, exists across the spectrum of American thought.

Reflecting anew on Cohen’s piece, I went back to my current readings. Were they patriotic? Cohen specifically mentioned Chernow as a “great popular historian” and applauded those that read his books. I had been looking forward to Grant’s eventual publication, much as I currently look forward to Robert Caro’s next volume on Lyndon Johnson (nerd alert: I told my wife that Grant was all I wanted to Christmas; she also got me a shirt, I believe). I enjoyed Chernow’s books on Washington and Hamilton, finding his takes on both of these figures rewarding and informative to my own research. In his current volume, Chernow paints Grant – ne’er do well, general, president, alcoholic — as indelibly human. As a disclaimer, I’m not a historian of the period and cannot fully comment about the book’s impact on the historiography of Grant, the Civil War, or Reconstruction. But it is clear that, as the general charged with saving the Union, Grant provided the viewpoint, stubbornness, and strategic vision to end the Civil War. On the other hand, his conciliatory moves at the close of the conflict planted seeds for the future Lost Cause narrative. And while I do think that Chernow may have overstated his case for Grant’s role as an early progressive on  race, I do accede that his administration fought valiantly to protect and extend the rights of recently freed African-Americans in the South. But a hero? Grant’s presidency, whether he was complicit or not, proved incredibly corrupt and his tendency to stay loyal to his inner circle, even if they had broken the law or established a Ponzi scheme, provides a glaring example of Grant’s personal blind spots to those close to him. If anything, Grant was a complicated man and a multi-faceted historical figure…like all humans throughout history tend to be.

What of Moïse and the Tet Offensive? He clearly intends his book as a frontal assault of the myths that ensnare many of our current estimations of Tet, specifically, and the Vietnam War in general. Moïse’s concern rests with the growth and propagation of several false narratives that have grown up around Tet, primarily that the liberal media, spineless politicians, and pampered college kids allowed a U.S. operational victory, after an initial tactical surprise, be turned into a strategic defeat. After the U.S. withdrawal from and eventual collapse of South Vietnam, several groups of intellectuals, commentators, and retired Army offices began to argue that the war had not been lost on the battlefields, but instead at home. Several authors (namely Christian Appy and Greg Daddis) have outlined the development of this narrative in regards to the Vietnam War writ large; Moïse channels this trend into his deeper examination of the 1968 Tet Offensive. On its face this would seem to fall outside of the patriotic history that Cohen desires: its iconoclastic, questions the utility of American power, and directly contradicts a narrative of American “heroes” fighting valiantly to preserve the sanctity of a state — South Vietnam — whose preservation had proven a fool’s errand since its establishment. And yet, is not the identification and attempted dismantling of such a false narrative a good thing for American society? Better not to heed the lessons of the Vietnam War and realize the contested nature of historical narratives than use a troublesome, but purportedly “heroic,” legacy as an example of how to do foreign intervention or counter-insurgency the “right way?”

Cohen must deal with a problem of definitions: what is patriotic? For him it is a search for heroes amidst the continuity of a heroic place. Granted, he has opened the patriotic aperture to include people outside of those fighting in wars (although he seems to prefer that), but how do we, by definition, define those that are patriotic? If we use one of the examples he provides — Harriet Tubman — how do we reconcile that she heroically led runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad against the reality that she even had to do this, that the nation she was sheltering these runaways through was a slave-holding nation with legislative mechanisms and judicial cover that protected slaveholders? And what of the figure set to share the $20 bill with Ms. Tubman? Is Andrew Jackson a war hero that fought for the little man and the newly expanding west, or a racist that invaded another nation’s territories without presidential directives, owned slaves, massacred Native Americans, and tested the foundations of Constitutional legality and legitimacy?

The history of each of these individuals and the events occurring around them, are complicated and contested. This is the other problem Cohen faces: the issue festering amidst the national divisions he is concerned about is not one of complicated history, but of simple history. Too many people want to ascribe to a “patriotic” narrative of “heroic” actors that justifies their given view of American exceptionalism. Cohen’s proposed search for heroes, while laudable, allows present day citizens to ascribe meaning to historical events and actors beyond their inherent troublesome qualities. Simplifying them robs these people and individuals of their context and agency, the very things that made them stand out in their time and now. A complicated narrative spurs our thinking about these events and people, what they mean to us, and where our nation and society have been and are going.

Discussing these things may seem like idle lecture room chatter, but it has a cultural importance to American society beyond the campus. In the wake of the decisions to remove several Confederate symbols and statuary in locations across the United States following recent outbursts of racist and xenophobic violence and rhetoric, there were some that argued for the protection of these testaments to the Southern cause as a means to “preserve history.” Others argued that such a move started a stone rolling on a slippery slope. Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders; should we recognize them, as the Father of our Country and the author of the Declaration of Independence, as heroes?

Maybe. But better yet, study shows us that they were complicated people living in dynamic times, that made good and bad decisions, and that loved and hated and held prejudices and took actions based on these beliefs. Our current visions of them reflect where we as a nation have come from and, frankly, who was doing the vision-creating and why. As Annette Gordon-Reed so eloquently put in her recent Foreign Affairs article, when it comes to reckoning with the role played by our Founding Fathers in creating the United States and perpetuating African-American slavery, “Learning how to strike the right balance has proved one of the most difficult problems for American society.” But we should not be afraid to question their legacies for fear of unearthing contested narratives or troublesome pasts. The debate over meaning and our national narrative show the signs of a vibrant democracy, not a stale recitation of given facts about heroes. Armed with this knowledge, we can have a discussion of how to remember those that came before…no matter how complicated — or patriotic — they proved to be.