After the Revolutionary War battle of Guilford Courthouse, two ranking British officers — one being Lord Cornwallis — sent letters informing the king that judicious use of artillery allowed them to win the field.
As seasoned officers charged with projecting subduing the American rebellion in the southern colonies, both witnessed the affair. Indeed, one ordered troops to blast away with their cannons, so we can presumably take them at their word. After all, the Continental Army abandoned their positions shortly after the smoke cleared.
Yet the relative value of different sources is one of the first questions one learns to grapple with when learning to research history. When and why a person made a statement is as important as the easier to establish who and what — although the latter can be a bit fuzzy, as well.
Witness the politicians on both sides of the aisle who lean on statements from the founding fathers or other historical figures. Far too often those quotes tend to be fictitious, chopped into more partisan bits or mutilated beyond recognition.
Of course, it’s difficult to blame the modern day politician for such gaffes. They rely, for one, on harried and hurried staff members trained in the art of Wikipedia for research. Besides, adding footnotes and relevant context to a television soundbite just makes the morning news drag.
Much better to just mangle the past and move on.
And why not? Even in the old days people twisted words to suit their purposes — even when these purposes were benign. For example, the Confederate artillery officer Porter Alexander published a tidy memoir following the Civil War, one suited to tastes and expectations of the time. Few outside of his own family realized he had written a second one, unpublished and meant for the eyes of close relations.
Reading the more honest second memoir, you realized that many stories passed down over the years had been nudged off course by the omissions of the first.
Many of us have heard the story of the Confederate general Thomas J. Jackson earning his famous nickname at the first battle of Bull Run when fellow officer Bernard Bee shouted “there stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians.”
Some bits of evidence suggest, however, that Bee — at that moment watching his men break under pummeling fire from Federal troops — spotted Jackson’s disengaged men and instead complained “there stands Jackson like a (explicative deleted) stone wall! Why doesn’t he help us?”
Bee died shortly after, so it’s a difficult thing to confirm — although Virginia did need a hero.
The questioning of sources is something people need to learn, however. It’s a simple formulation, at least on the surface: Who said it? When did they say it? What was their reason for saying it? Why did they say it?
Yeah, I left out how. I guess that matters, too, in the social media era. It was a more ponderous process to whip out the old quill pen after a few trips to the punch bowl and to send a drunken Tweet.
But to truly assess the value of a source is not as easy as merely asking and answering questions. Some of the questions require us to establish a context. It is, for instance, well known that Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets upset win before Super Bowl III. Few remember that he did so in answer to a heckler. In some more recent interviews he claims to have instantly regretted the comment.
So he says.
Witness studies confirm that even those involved in an event recall it with sometimes glaring differences, but that’s human nature. On the other hand, a television pundit may be under pressure from bosses or money or personal bias unknown to the rest of us. An elected official may be bound to tell one version of a story, even though he or she knows this to be incomplete, perhaps even inaccurate (journalists come across this one quite often, the difference between off the record and on the record). A few simply abided by the notion that an outrageous lie, oft repeated, not only fires up partisan followers but also boosts ratings.
Even before understanding the veracity of a source, we must first honestly sort through our own flaws.
This may be the most difficult exercise of all. One predisposed to hate — or distrust, in milder terms — a race, religion or political party will be blind to a truth they see as contrary, a lie that falls within their understanding of affairs.
There is no progress without clearing this step.
Hopefully the process ends with a reliable sense of truth, fact or what actually went on — with a source you can trust.
Like the British officers in question, both loyal, dedicated and essentially truthful in their reports to the king. By ordering the artillery into action, the Redcoats indeed gained victory at Guilford Courthouse.
Of course, they left out the little detail about ordering it fired into the backs of their own men, engaged in a hand to hand melee and on the verge of faltering.
Oh, well. Those are just details found in other sources.
