These Truths: A History of the United States

Though matters of truth and the proper reading of history may feel like recent concerns, issues regarding textual authority, the origins of the United States, and the manipulation of historical records to form creation myths have persisted since the country’s nascence. Arguably, the concern about truth in historiography, or our telling of history based on records, starts with the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas and his transcription of Christopher Columbus’s Diario. The diary had been copied in the 1530s, then disappeared twice in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lepore reminds readers that “[h]istory is the study of what remains, what’s left behind” (4). It is a story subject to perpetual revision as its narrators learn more and adjust their perspectives to contemporary cultural and social mores. This consideration of historiography and truth could likely also apply to Walter Raleigh’s history of the world, written in prison, Edward Coke’s revision of English common law for colonial administration, and James Madison’s record of the Philadelphia Convention. Though concrete facts—dates, names, and actual events—are key to the retelling of history, it is not entirely objective, as the perspective of either the witness or the narrator infiltrates the text.

Since the rise of social media in the 2000s, new sources of news, opinion, and even history have emerged, shared through Facebook memes, unverified tweets, and YouTube videos. The nation’s political stratification, which began in the late 1960s and widened more deeply in succeeding decades, influenced what people would accept as truth, reiterating a concern Walter Lippmann had once expressed about how people would decide on what was true—whether they would base their views on reason or on what they wished to believe. As the culture wars came to be fought mostly online, it seemed as though the latter tendency would prevail.

The debate over US history is pronounced and, arguably, most divisive when the public engages in discourse regarding the Founding Fathers’ true intentions when writing the Constitution and when discussing the origins of the Civil War. Perspectives tend to fall along political lines. Conservatives have put forth the idea of originalism, arguing for a strict interpretation of the Constitution that does not consider rights not already granted in the document, while liberals tend to advocate a loose interpretation, seeing the Constitution as a malleable document that must be interpreted in ways that are relevant and applicable to our times. Despite ample evidence that the Civil War was fought over slavery, some, particularly from the South, continue to believe that the war erupted over a states’ rights argument and that Confederate generals have an honorable a place in American history, just as any war hero. Reassessments of this history, fostered by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, have aided in delegitimizing this view, which is rooted in a mythologization of antebellum history that became particularly pronounced in the 1910s and has persisted.

The title of this book, which reappropriates a line from the Declaration of Independence, deals with the matter of truth when retelling history and interpreting the documents that give us some insight into the origins of the United States. However, Lepore seems to advocate using these documents as guides, rather than treating them as sacred texts.