Robert B. Simpson: On rewriting our history

We humans, or maybe more especially we Americans, if we pay attention to our history at all, prefer that it be nipped and tucked here and there for a better fit. Outright rewriting is sometimes required, while in other situations simply adding or subtracting a sentence or changing a few words may suffice. Just airbrushing out unpleasant details is often quite satisfactory. Thus some of us were taught that people held in bondage in our region were actually often quite happy being slaves. Or that the Civil War was fought for states' rights (ignoring the fact that a major point of contention was the question of states' rights to maintain and expand slavery.)

But we don't just prefer that large political and social issues be restructured to suit us. With the clarity of sight our modern life has given us, we look back at some famous individuals and discover, to our horror, that they were not as nearly perfect as we. The solution? Retroactively strip them of their honors. Rename their streets. Remove their statues. Disregard the fact that, just as we, they were neither totally good nor totally bad. Often they left us better off in some way despite not measuring up to our standards.

A good example of this involves the reputation of the man whose day we recently observed. Or at least some of us did. Some have chosen to rename the day, if not ignore it completely. I refer, of course, to Christopher Columbus. Now, it is debatable whether Columbus deserves all the credit he once got for "discovering America," given that it had been discovered by a few others before him, like Leif Erikson and some folks Columbus mistakenly called "Indians." And he was not the first to conclude that the world was round; many had already come to that conclusion.

But he certainly conducted some dangerous and productive explorations. His memory was celebrated in various ways, including naming a number of cities after him and remembering him with a special day. But in recent years, it has come to almost everyone's attention that Columbus was far from perfect. In fact, it is said that he treated the natives he found in the New World atrociously. We can certainly deplore that. But it seems to me a bit hypocritical for a society that still generally tends to treat women as not quite as valuable as men and people with dark skins as not quite as valuable as those with lighter skins to erase a historical figure from 500 years ago from our calendars because he was not as nearly perfect as we are. Less than perfect men, and women, sometimes make significant contributions and deserve not to be airbrushed out of history.

More recent examples of our holier-than-thou attitude is the loud effort to replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill because he badly mistreated Native Americans and to generally look down on Thomas Jefferson because he fathered children with one of his slaves.

Jackson was not the only person to horribly mistreat Native Americans. And he did some impressive and important things in the service of his country. I don't care if we put a woman on his place on the twenty-dollar bill. Still, a President who was tough, who made it from poverty to the top through personal effort, and who put the needs of the Union ahead of the desires of his native region, ought not to be totally discredited because we don't like some of the other things he did.

Jefferson had a continuing sexual relationship with one of his slaves. Slavery and sex with a less powerful subordinate make a double sin. But for all I know, they loved each other. Or maybe not, but should that outweigh all the positive things Jefferson did?

All of this came to mind recently when I visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It is an incredible institution, designed to highlight our history in far more than just cars, although there is an amazing collection of them. Ford, with seemingly unlimited resources, sent teams out to scour the country and buy up all the old things they could find. I understand there are warehouses full of this stuff. He also built an early American village and rural area, literally moving hills to different locations to improve the view. One wag said that Henry, with his massive wealth, arranged the landscape the way God would have done it if God had had the money.

Ford left, in addition to many other valuable gifts, an incredible aid to learning about our past. Ford was wealthy, but left much of his wealth to worthy purposes. He was also viciously anti-Semitic. We don't have to condone one to appreciate the other.

Robert B. Simpson, a 28-year Infantry veteran who retired as a colonel at Fort Benning, is the author of "Through the Dark Waters: Searching for Hope and Courage."

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Robert B. Simpson: On rewriting our history ."