The Real Myth America

In early 2023, accused plagiarist and Twitter (Princeton) historian Kevin Kruse published Myth America, a book that promised to replace “myths with research and reality.” You see, Kruse and his co-authors—many of whom are social media “celebrities” for their attacks on “conservative” scholarship—argued that, “The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperiling our democracy.”

Donald Trump certainly inspired the book. The introduction opens with an Orwellian tone: “We live in an age of disinformation.” Kruse’s “all-star team of fellow historians [sic]” then proceed to rant against Trump, Tucker Carleson, Ronald Reagan, Fox News, One America News, Newsmax, George W. Bush, the 1776 Commission, Liz Cheaney, and, in what might be the most humorously hypocritical statement of the book, “a new generation of amateur historians who, lacking any training the field or familiarity with its norms, have felt freer to write a history that begins with its conclusions and works backwards to find—or invent if need be—some sort of evidence that will seem to support it.” Kruse complained this has led to a “cottage industry…with partisan authors producing a partisan version of the past to please partisan audiences….” Kruse and most of his Twitter brigade are not “amateurs”, but they engage in the exact type of “history” they claim to be refuting. Orwell would be pointing the finger back at these “all-stars”.

Activist Karen Cox and her easily discredited and cherry-picked thesis that Southerners erected Confederate monuments to intimidate black people illustrate this point. Her chapter in the book aimed to take down the Confederate bogeyman by working “backwards to find—or invent if need be—some sort of evidence that will seem to support it.” This fits nicely with the “Twitter historian” war against the “Lost Cause Myth.” In fact, Kruse and his sycophants spend a lot of time whining about the “Lost Cause” on social media. The South, they say, “won” the second War, the “history war.” That would have been news to Southerners and the dominant literature on the War, even in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it supports the real lie of the postbellum period, “The Righteous Cause Myth”, something these “all-star” activists ignore in their thinly veiled polemic. Lies are only lies if the other side is telling them.

A recent controversy over a historic marker to Harriet Tubman in Maryland highlights this leftist duplicity. In the 1960s—right about the time dopes like Karen Cox think Southerners were erecting some Confederate monuments and hoisting Confederate flags to intimidate black people—the Maryland Civil War Centennial Commission placed a marker in Dorchester County that made two erroneous claims. First, it argues that Tubman was born on the farm where the State placed the maker. She was born ten miles away. Second, it insists that Tubman freed three hundred slaves during her time as a “conductor” in the “Underground Railroad.” The number was closer to seventy. Where did the Commission come up with this bogus information? An 1869 book written by Sara Hopkins Bradford, a noted Northern children’s book author who penned two biographies of Tubman to raise funds for her support. Bradford made the number up, but it sounded good, and a gullible American public adopted the number as accurate. But remember, the South “won” the history war, right? Such books never existed and had little impact according to the Kruseites. Yet, the three hundred number remained the standard “fact” until a 2003 biography corrected the lie.

You would never know as the marker with the incorrect information still stands in Maryland. The Maryland department of transportation said it will replace the marker in a “year or so”, but it has slow-walked the process. That’s an understatement. The lies have been publicly exposed for twenty years, at least. These aren’t interpretative disputes. But they serve a purpose. As one of Tubman’s descendants argued, “he can live with a little bit of inaccuracy and incompleteness. ‘Because history is a living thing…And it’s evolving.’” An adjunct professor at several local colleges agreed: “It’s a very good starting point for really understanding the dynamics of her story.” I’m sure all these leftist historians would use the same logic for keeping Confederate monuments or symbols in place. The Twitter historian brigade has used “inaccuracy” and “incompleteness” with great effect to justify removing monuments for the last several years. To her credit, the historian who corrected the factual errors has been leading the charge for a new marker, but for most of these people, the motto remains, “contextualization or removal for thee but not for me.”

Of course, the Tubman myth cannot be found in Kruse’s book, even though it probably has more currency than any part of the “Lost Cause” myth. According to a 2008 survey, Tubman was the third most recognized historical figure by (mostly white) American students and adults when presidents and first ladies were excluded. The other two were Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. So much for the “Lost Cause” victory in American history. The activists in Kruse’s book would have you believe that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson graced the cover of every K-12 history textbook in America and that no white person ever learned about King, Parks, or Tubman. Hollywood crafted an entire movie about Tubman’s life, even going so far as to claim she was some kind of general officer in the Union army at the end of the war who led a successful raid against Confederate forces. Honest historians have scoffed at these exaggerations for years, but they persist, due in large part to activist crusaders throughout the academy at all levels. Fiction is better than fact when you have an agenda.

The significance and existence of the “Underground Railroad” has also been overstated. In 1961, historian Larry Gara published The Liberty Line which explained that much of the “Underground Railroad” was in fact a myth propagated by Northern abolitionists after the War to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Gara was no “Lost Cause” mythologist. He was a Quaker who was booted from his job at Groove City College after being [incorrectly] accused of being a communist. But he was a real professional historian who sought to understand the past rather than use it for political advantage, something the alleged cribber Kruse cannot comprehend. I would bet that every student in America knows something about the “Underground Railroad” and some, if not many, would think it was a massive network of thousands of morally righteous Northern white people dedicated to helped tens of thousands of escaped slaves make it to freedom. The truth is far different, as Gara explained over sixty years ago. Funny that his conclusions have been virtually ignored by the academy. It doesn’t fit with the leftist activist agenda. But as we’ve seen on the news recently with violent “student” protests, higher education ceased being about real knowledge a long time ago. When you have professors like Kruse and Cox, it’s easy to understand why.

Brion McClanahan

Brion McClanahan is the author or co-author of six books, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017), 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), Forgotten Conservatives in American History (Pelican, 2012), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, (Regnery, 2012). He received a B.A. in History from Salisbury University in 1997 and an M.A. in History from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He finished his Ph.D. in History at the University of South Carolina in 2006, and had the privilege of being Clyde Wilson’s last doctoral student. He lives in Alabama with his wife and three daughters.

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