A couple of years ago, I was shopping for books on military
occupation of the South; or, as the victors like to call it, “Reconstruction.” Before investing time and money on such a
purchase, I research the author for leftist biases, especially if they’re from
academia. I want facts; not propaganda. Sure enough, I came across Eric Foner’s, “Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution.”
Eric Foner is exactly what I suspected: a communist. Both his father and uncle were blacklisted
from academia for being “activist.” The
acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.
Here is a quote:
"In the course of the past twenty years,
American history has been remade. Inspired initially by the social movements of
the 1960s and 1970s – which shattered the ‘consensus’ vision that had dominated
historical writing – and influenced by new methods borrowed from other
disciplines, American historians redefined the very nature of historical study."
~ Eric Foner.
Yes, Eric Foner has redefined and distorted American
history. I ended up buying his work at a
used book store for a fraction of the retail price. God knows I didn’t want to offend a communist
by enhancing his bank account. After
all, capitalism is the evil of the world, so they tell us.
Sure enough, this “respected” historian berated and
dismissed others as racist propagandists for reporting the failures of the
Northern occupation. James S. Pike, in
particular, raised Foner’s ire.
James S. Pike was a journalist for the New York
Tribune. He was a radical republican and
an outspoken abolitionist who served as ambassador to the Netherlands during
the Lincoln administration. After the
war, he wrote a series of scathing articles on the corruption of public
officials which later became “The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro
Government.” This did not sit well with
Mr. Foner.
Pike was hardly a model of objectivity – he had long
held racist views, had taken an active part in the Greeley campaign in 1872
(when his brother campaigned for Congress as a Liberal Republican), and had
incorporated essentially the same critique in articles written before ever
visiting the state.
I’ve read “The Prostrate State.” Some of Mr. Foner’s assertions are plain
false. He attributes the pejorative “Sambo…”
to Mr. Pike’s work. I couldn’t find it. As for being a racist, that kind of attitude
was prevalent at that time. Most, if not
all, abolitionists were racist. Even Lincoln
could be considered a racist.
Mr. Foner admits this during a recent interview on
C-SPAN. By the way, I could have swore I
heard him during the course of this interview make a Freudian slip by admitting
he distorted history, but caught himself in mid-sentence. I don’t know if this video was edited, but I’m
sure he said it when broadcasted on television.
Mr. Foner would whitewash “Reconstruction” by
declaiming critics as racist or white supremacist. We could counter that “red diaper babies”
have a fascination with oppressive governments that enjoy lording their power
over a prostrate state.
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