David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and last week he wrote a passionate declaration titled, The Importance of History. In it he deplores the “erosion†of interest in the subject (I assume he is talking about in high schools) that he laments has lead to cries for history teachers and historians to “free†themselves “from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future.â€Â Using racial slavery and American historiography as his vehicle, Davis makes his argument against such rhetoric:
To summarize some of the points concisely: by the 1930s a strong consensus had emerged to the effect that the Civil War had little if anything to do with slavery. One school of thought held that the war had been waged over economic issues and resulted in the triumph of Northern capitalism. A second school argued that the war had been a needless and avertable tragedy, brought on by abolitionist fanatics and a few Southern extremists. Virtually all American whites agreed that slavery had been an inefficient, backward institution, increasingly marginal to American life; and though maintained as a form of racial control, it would have soon ended, without a war, since slavery contained its own economic seeds of extinction.
