Behind the Lines
By William C. Davis · Originally published May-June 2025 · pp. 4–6
Behind the Lines By William C. Davis
If Winston Churchill really originated all the famous quotations attributed to him, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations would be called Churchill’s. One expression often credited to him is that “history is written by the victors.” In fact, he was not the original source and may never have said it in exactly those words. Yet he and many others have said the same in substance for 200 years or more. So far as we can determine, the first public figure to use the exact expression was George Vest, a one-time senator from Missouri in the Confederate Congress, speaking in 1891. It is all too true, of course. The history of the Roman empire was written by Roman historians, of course, and they and ruling officials reshaped history continually, not least in their efforts to lay responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus at the feet of the Jewish officials in Jerusalem, when in fact it was Rome that took his life. But after the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official—though not only—religion in the Empire, it was a bit inconvenient to have Rome murdering Christ. So, they rewrote history. We all know that the last Yorkist king of England, Richard III, was a brutish murderer of his young nephews and anyone else who got in his way. Or was he? All of what we think we know of him was written by Tudor chroniclers after his death and the accession of the first Tudor king Henry VII. Tudor historians consciously vilified Richard aided greatly—if unintentionally—by William Shakespeare. Though there is a good case now for positive revision of Richard and his reign, no writer at that time would wisely go against the Tudors’ revealed word. And so, the victors in the War of the Roses wrote the history that most of us still accept without question. There are innumerable other examples, all of which make it the more remarkable that a glaring exception to “history is written by the victors” comes with our Civil War. The South may have lost the war, but for generations it cannot be denied that it won the peace so far as “history” is concerned. I put “history” in quotations to emphasize a point too often forgotten. History is not “what happened.” It is what is written about what happened. There is a significant difference, as the examples above make evident. Apologists led by General Jubal Early and other high ranking former Confederates were fast out of the gate in the race to define the “history” of the years 1861–1865 and what led up to them. No one likes to lose a war, of course, and especially people like ante-bellum Southerners who prided themselves on their bravery and military prowess. It is worse to lose a war fought defending a cause like slavery.
Sir Winston Churchill – the Roaring Lion. (Public Domain)
The solution, of course, was to change history, making the conflict the “War of Northern Aggression,” or “the War Between the States,” while all but writing slavery out of the story. In creating what came to be called the Lost Cause myth, they changed the course of the war to explain away defeat as well. The Confederacy was not defeated; it just wore itself out whipping the Yankees. April-May 1865 was not the time of Southern defeat, but rather the period when the South ”withdrew from the war.” Yankee behavior was beastly and ruthless, not chivalric like the knightly “Southrons.” Every house burned in Georgia was destroyed by Sherman on his March to the Sea, even if they burned years after the end of the war. By contrast, Lee’s conduct in his 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania was a model of chivalry, ignoring the fact that his divisions also kidnapped escaped slaves and even freeborn black people to return them to Virginia. Having taken the high ground in the 19th century,
and reenforced by iconic cultural phenomena like Birth of A Nation and Gone With the Wind, the Lost Cause prevailed through most of the 20th. That should not be surprising. Who can resist the idealized portrait of “moonlight and magnolia” underdogs fighting a tragically doomed battle for independence? That was not, and is not, Southern apologists being intentionally mendacious, though some were. Rather, it is people being human, unable to disconnect emotion from fact. We prefer to believe what makes us feel good, what allows us to live with ourselves and our community and culture. Hence, we cannot take the historians out of the history they write. We all grumble about bias one way or another in our current media, but when we read a book about slavery or secession or the March to the Sea, we too often fall into the trap of taking it at face value without considering the influences acting on the writer. Sentimentality, unwitting prejudice and partisanship, conscious points of view, political, social, cultural motivations, and a host of other factors, influence how the historian shapes a narrative. All of that certainly acted on the creators of Lost Cause mythology, as it still acts on wellintentioned but unsophisticated readers today. Is this ever going to change? Not so long as human beings think and act like human beings. We cannot escape being ourselves. The best we can do is try to be aware of our own bias as we approach the people of the Civil War era, and to ask questions about our historians and of ourselves,
even as we read and enjoy what they write. And taking all of that into account, we can profit even from reading the time-worn Lost Cause narratives. They may not tell us a lot about the real factors and events driving Americans into and through a catastrophic war, but they can and do speak volumes about what our ancestors thought and felt, and how they coped with their time of trial. And by the way, Senator George Vest, an avid proponent of the Lost Cause? He is the first person definitely known to have said “history is written by the victors.”
William C. Davis was managing editor, then editor,
then publisher of Civil War Times Illustrated from 1969
to 1990. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books in Civil War and Southern history, and former director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia
Tech, where he served as professor of history until 2013. His most recent book is The Whartons’ War: The Civil War Correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865, co-edited with Sue Heth Bell.
Civil War History from Only $29.95 /year for 6 issues or $49.95 for two years Save 37%–48% off the newsstand price! Subscribe and join our thousands of readers at https://tinyurl.com/277vpke9
Notre Dame Press
“An important historical artifact.” —The Civil War Monitor
“A valuable addition to the literature.”
WALLACE MARKERT
[email protected] 16905 Nash Road • Dewitt, Virginia 23840 804-536-6413 | www.csacquisitions.com
—Journal of Military History
Fort Fisher items wanted e Provenanc
N ow Ava i l a b l e !
a Must!
Contact Mike at: 910-617-0333 • [email protected]
ACE pyro
llc
Located in Saline • MI Toll-free: (877) 223-3552 Shop: AcePyro.com
owders P g n i t r Fg Spo Available Now
Located in Munson • PA Phone: (814) 765-5918 Shop: FireArtCorp.com
“Fills a large gap in Civil War scholarship.” —James M. McPherson
Black Powder 1Fa•2Fa•3Fa•4Fa•7Fa 1Fg•2Fg•3Fg•4Fg
undpress.nd.edu
Photographs from the Original Article
Captions and credits appear in the article text as originally printed.