History
in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the
Telling Over the Last 200 Years. Kyle Ward. New York: The New Press,
2006. Pp. 374. $26.95, hardcover. ISBN: 978-1-59558-044-3. TEL: 212-629-8802
• FAX: 212-629-8617
What you learned in school about American history may not be what your parents
or grandparents learned. This book examines how 200 years of history textbooks
have looked at the same historical events in completely different ways. The
author juxtaposes short excerpts sampled from dozens of textbooks—including
those used in the earliest years of the American nation up to the present
day.
Ward has grouped American history into eight major themes, which cover events
at home and abroad. These themes range from the beginning, “Exploration
and Colonization,” to the middle, “The Civil War Era,” and
conclude with “The Vietnam Era.” He offers brief introductions
to each entry, but the book is almost exclusively composed of carefully selected
excerpts. These entries help the reader to understand how recorded history
changes as prevailing sentiments change.
For example, this first account of the sinking of the USS Maine comes from
a 1905 textbook: “Demonstrations against the Americans in Havana led
our government to send the battleship the Maine to that city. On the night
of February 15, 1898, the Maine was blown up by an explosion, which killed
260 of the men; and an American naval board of inquiry later reported that
the ship was destroyed by a submarine mine. Our counsul-general, Fitzhugh
Lee, said: ‘I do not think it was an act of four or five subordinate
officers.’ Yet there was a widespread feeling in the United States that
the Spanish government was responsible.”
By 1920, Ward reports, blame for the sinking of the Maine had been spread
in a more evenhanded fashion. “History textbooks,” he writes,
“began adding some of the other individuals or events that were considered
the main protagonists for war in 1898.”
Here is how a history textbook published 1n 1920 portrayed events surrounding
the sinking of the Maine: “Prudence and humanity alike forbade the continuance
of these horrible conditions at our very doors. The platforms of both the
great parties in 1896 expressed sympathy for the Cuban insurgents,and both
Houses of Congress passed resolutions for the recognition of Cuban independence.
President McKinley labored hard to get Spain to grant the island some
degree of self-government and spoke in a hopeful tone in his message to Congress
of December, 1897. But in the early weeks of 1898 events occurred which roused
public indignation to a pitch where it drowned the voices of diplomacy.
On February 9, a New York paper published the facsimile ofa private letter
written by the Spanish minister at Washington, Señor de Lome. The letter
characterized President McKinley as a ‘cheap politician who truckled
to the masses.’ The country was still nursing its indignation over this
insult to its chief executive when it was horrified by the news that on the
evening of February 15 the battleship Maine, on a friendly visit in the harbor
of Havana, had been sunk by a terrific explosion, carrying two officers and
266 men to the bottom. The Spanish government immediately accepted the resignation
of Señor de Lome and expressed its sorrow over the ‘accident’
to the American warship.
But the conviction that the Maine had been blown up from the outside seized
on our people with uncontrollable force. Flags, pins, and buttons with the
motto ‘Remember the Maine!’ appeared all over the land. The spirit
of revenge was nurtured by the ‘yellow journals.’ Congress was
waiting eagerly to declare war.”
This 1961 textbook takes a less impassioned view of the incident: “To
this day, no one knows how the ship was destroyed. Spanish officials claimed
the Maine’s sides were blown out by an explosion of her powder magazine.
Other investigators stated her sides were blown in by a torpedo or a bomb.
There was a possibility that Cuban rebels might have set off the explosion,
hoping the United States would blame Spain and so give the Cubans support
in their fight for freedom. Many people jumped to the conclusion that Spanish
officials had planted a mine beneath the Maine. This was almost certainly
not true. Spanish leaders were trying desperately to avoid war with the United
States. They had nothing to gain by destroying the Maine.
Unfortunately, people did not stop to think and reason. In the streets, in
the newspapers, even in the halls of Congress, there rose a clamor for war.
‘Remember the Maine!’ was the cry that echoed throughout the country.”
Ward writes in the introduction to this book that in 1992, when he was teaching
history in high school, he asked the superintendent about the possibility
of replacing the 18-year-old textbook assigned to the course. He was told
that since history never changes, neither should the textbooks. History in
the Making reveals again and again that our view of events frequently changes
over time and that what students read in their history textbooks is not gospel.
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