[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

He talks about his Virginian roots in the Introduction off the bat, but you can tell even without him saying it lol. I tend to agree with the 20th century thought that you cannot fully remove yourself from what you are looking at, but I also agree with the 19th century German theory that objectivity should always be the goal. I wish the 5% that's hagiography had been cut out, but I really wish other historians dived into their subjects with the same passion and depth he did. Producing a 4 volume history work and a 3 volume supplemental followup is unthinkable now to a mainstream publisher.

I don't want to get to far into wokeism before people go nuts and this turns into an outrage thread, but I will never understand how Lee and Jackson are held as the symbols of things they had little involvement in and mixed records with for so many of my fellow citizens today. I am simultaneously against the hagiography. It's a shame we can't stick to facts for events within the last ~150 years.

When San Francisco renamed a school named for Abraham Lincoln because of his involvement in the Black Hawk War, I got off the fence and decided all this symbolic stuff really wasn't helpful to solving the very serious issues out there. The Confederate flag, OK I get that.