Debunking Howard Zinn

by Mary Grabar

  In 2018, photojournalist Seif Kousmate traveled to Mauritania, where he was imprisoned for a time. His photos of the Haratine in Mauritania, published at the Guardian, are images of abject poverty and misery. Mauritania is a place where “up to 20% of the population is enslaved, with one in two Haratines forced to work on farms or in homes with no possibility of freedom, education or pay.” And contrary to Zinn’s assertion that racism is a uniquely American trait, Kousmate writes, “For centuries, Arabic-speaking Moors raided African villages, resulting in a rigid caste system that still exists . . . with darker-skinned inhabitants beholden to their lighter-skinned ‘masters.’ ” Many of the subjugated can conceive of no other system and accept their status. The government, however, “denies that slavery exists,” and “prais[es] itself for eradicating the practice.”52

  As Zinn was writing A People’s History, Mauritania had not yet made slavery officially illegal. Yet, Zinn obscures the practice of slavery in other parts of the world besides America—in the past and in his present—and focuses on American slavery, falsely presenting American slavery as the most cruel, and America as the most racist. He preemptively discounts statistical evidence to the contrary. For example, he writes, “Economists or cliometricians (statistical historians) have tried to assess slavery by estimating how much money was spent on slaves for food and medical care.” But then, to keep the reader from paying any attention to this evidence, Zinn immediately asks, “But can this describe the reality of slavery as it was to a human being who lived inside it? Are the conditions of slavery as important as the existence of slavery [emphasis in the original]?”53 The suggestion that they’re not, however, contradicts Zinn’s earlier excuse-making for African slavery, when he argued that the conditions of slavery there under their pre-capitalist society—“tribal life,” “a communal spirit”—made the existence of slavery not so bad.

  Zinn’s aim is to present all American slave owners as wicked Simon Legrees. So, he brings up the whipping of slaves “in 1840–1842 on the Barrow plantation in Louisiana with two hundred slaves.” Zinn quotes from Time on the Cross by Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman: “The records show that over the course of two years a total of 160 whippings were administered, an average of 0.7 whippings per hand per year. About half the hands were not whipped at all during the period.” Zinn adds an editorial note: “One could also say: ‘Half of all slaves were whipped.’ That has a different ring.” Zinn also points out that though “whipping was infrequent for any individual,” nonetheless “once every four or five days, some slave was whipped [emphasis in the original].” Zinn claims that the amount of cruel physical punishment on Barrow’s plantation was typical because “Barrow as a plantation owner, according to his biographer, was no worse than the average.”54 But do we know what “average” is? Zinn has presented only one isolated case.

  In another case of selective reporting, Zinn tells his readers, “A record of deaths kept in a plantation journal (now in the University of North Carolina Archives) lists the ages and cause of death of all those who died on the plantation between 1850 and 1855.” Zinn doesn’t tell his reader what plantation these numbers are from, but he does report the ages: “Of the thirty-two who died in that period, only four reached the age of sixty, four reached the age of fifty, seven died in their forties, seven died in their twenties or thirties, and nine died before they were five years old.”55 Those certainly seem like young ages, but they are records from only one plantation—which for all we know was chosen by Zinn precisely for the short life-spans of slaves there.

  Comparative statistics tell a very different story. Nobel Prize-winning economic historian Robert William Fogel has shown that American slaves were better nourished than many other groups, including “most European workers, during the nineteenth century.” At that time, “all of the working classes . . . probably suffered some degree of malnutrition,” in comparison to modern standards. The malnutrition of American slaves was not “as severe as that experienced by . . . Italian conscripts, or the illiterate French conscript,” he writes. Height is an indicator of nutrition, and slaves born in the United States were “about an inch shorter than U.S.-born whites in the Union Army,” but “taller than French and Italian conscripts, British town artisans, and British Royal Marines.”56 No wonder Zinn wants his reader to disregard the findings of “[e]conomists and cliometricians.” It better serves his purpose to discount and rely on isolated, misleading examples, instead.

  Consider the sources provided by Zinn: a diary kept by a plantation owner identified only by last name and state, and an unidentified plantation journal in the “archives” at the University of North Carolina. Can we find a grosser violation of the American Historical Association’s standards for evidence? As if this weren’t bad enough, Zinn then refers to “two northern liberal historians” who he says authored the “1932 edition of a best-selling textbook.” That unnamed book by unnamed authors allegedly excuses slavery “as perhaps the Negro’s ‘necessary transition to civilization.’ ”57 Who are the straw men who are supposed to have made this appalling observation? We have no way of knowing, so we can’t check Zinn’s accusations.

  Zinn switches back and forth from presenting untraceable isolated incidents, to discounting rigorous statistics, to posing leading questions: “But can statistics record what it meant for families to be torn apart, when a master, for profit, sold a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter? In 1858, a slave named Abream Scriven was sold by his master, and wrote to his wife: ‘Give my love to my father and mother and tell them good Bye for me, and if we Shall not meet in this world I hope to meet in heaven.’ ”58 In the face of such human suffering, which was very real, only a heartless cliometrician could be interested in actual data—so let’s not worry about the documented facts.

  Such forced family break-ups did happen to an estimated third of slave families—as conservative historians have acknowledged59—and they were horrific. Abolitionist writers, including Frederick Douglass, pointed to such inhumane practices to appeal for abolition, and Americans came to see slavery as wrong.

  The arguments that persuaded Americans to end slavery are grossly distorted by Zinn. Take Frederick Douglass’s July 5, 1852, speech in Rochester, New York: “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Zinn quotes from the early part of the speech which was intended to arouse the emotions of the audience, to make them empathize and understand the hypocrisy of celebrating the Declaration of Independence in a nation that denies freedom to slaves. But, not surprisingly, he ignores the patriotic climax of the speech. Thus, the only idea that Zinn takes away from it is that the “whole nation” was “complicit” in the “shame of slavery.”60 Zinn spares readers the passage in which Douglass expresses faith in the Constitution, calling it a “GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Those caps are in the original speech by Frederick Douglass, who had actually broken with fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison over Garrison’s abandonment of faith in the Constitution and the American system.61 At the climactic moment of the speech, Douglass declared, “I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanctions of the hateful thing [for slavery, that is, in the Constitution]; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Contrary to Zinn’s representation, Douglass’s speech expressed his optimistic faith in America. “I do not despair of this country,” Douglass proclaimed, expressing confidence that “the doom of slavery is certain.” His “spirit” was “cheered” by “drawing encouragement from the principles of the Declaration of Independence . . . and the genius of American Institutions. . . .”62

  Zinn quotes Douglass at length, though always selectively, but he says nothing about Douglass’s role in the Civil War—the war that Zinn casts as simply a means to perpetuate a racist capitalistic state. In fact, Douglass served as a recruiter of black troops—Douglass’s own sons served in the war—and as adviser to President Lincoln. Zinn also fails to mention the app
ointment of this stalwart Republican to political office as federal marshal (1877–1881), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881–1886), and chargé d’affaires for Santa Domingo and minister to Haiti (1889–1891).

  Zinn ignores Douglass’s relationship with Lincoln so that he can portray the president as a cowardly racist politician beholden to powerful money interests. To Zinn, Abraham Lincoln “combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism.” Lincoln used abolition for political advancement. It was only “close enough to the top” of his “list of priorities” that “it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage.” Zinn contrasts Lincoln’s statement “that the institution of slavery is founded on injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends to increase rather than abate its evils” with “Frederick Douglass’s statement on struggle, or Garrison’s ‘Sir, slavery will not be overthrown without excitement. . . .’ ” But Zinn does not tell the reader where the Lincoln quotation is from: a resolution that the future Great Emancipator made when he was a twenty-eight-year-old state house representative. It can be found in one of Zinn’s favorite sources, Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition, from which Zinn purloins not only quotations, but also Hofstadter’s jaundiced view of Lincoln, whom Zinn excoriates for being concerned about public opinion (imagine that, in an elected official!) and for following the Constitution (!)63 The only kind of abolitionist Zinn approves of is a violent abolitionist like John Brown, whose “last written statement, in prison, before he was hanged” for the raid on Harper’s Ferry, as Zinn approvingly notes, declared, that “the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”64

  Zinn ignores the fact that Brown’s raid led to the deaths of ten in his party, including two of Brown’s sons, as well as several civilians, including two slaves and a free black man. This was after Brown and his band of men had killed five settlers in Kansas, where the issue of slavery was being contested. The method was to drag “the man of the house from his house and butche[r] him as his family screamed in horror.” These victims were not even slave owners, just settlers who believed in allowing slavery into the territory. Brown succeeded only in sowing fear and mistrust in the South, in the opinion of Thomas Woods.65 Zinn naturally approves of purging injustices “with blood,” so John Brown is a hallowed martyr to him. A People’s History expresses Zinn’s disappointment that “it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown.”66

  Lincoln’s original hope to eliminate slavery gradually by beginning to outlaw it in the territories while keeping the nation together is not good enough for Zinn. He prefers Brown’s vigilante terrorism. As Zinn tells the story, Southern states seceded from the Union after Lincoln’s election not because of slavery, but out of “a long series of policy clashes between South and North.”

  The clash was not over slavery as a moral institution—most northerners did not care enough about slavery to make sacrifices for it, certainly not the sacrifice of war. It was not a clash of peoples (most northern whites were not economically favored, not politically powerful; most southern whites were poor farmers, not decisionmakers) but of elites. The northern elite wanted economic expansion—free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that; they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and prosperous way of life impossible in the future. 67

  Zinn ignores a little fact: that Lincoln had been elected on an antislavery ticket. The “decisionmakers” were the voters. The “clash” which had been building up for years before his election was over slavery. As one textbook notes, “The causes of secession, as they appeared to its protagonists, were plainly expressed by the state conventions [of the Deep South]. ‘The people of the Northern states,’ declared Mississippi, ‘have assumed a revolutionary position towards Southern states.’ ‘They have enticed our slaves from us,’ and obstructed their rendition under the fugitive slave law. They claim the right ‘to exclude slavery from their territories,’ and from any state henceforth admitted to the Union.”

  The North was charged with “ ‘a hostile invasion of a Southern state to excite insurrection, murder and rapine’. . . . South Carolina added, ‘They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them’ of abolition societies, and ‘have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.’ ” The textbook authors conclude:

  On their own showing, then, the states of the Lower South seceded as the result of a long series of dissatisfactions respecting the Northern attitude toward slavery. There was no mention in their manifestoes or in their leaders’ writings and speeches of any other cause. Protection figured as a ‘cause’ in the Confederate propaganda abroad and in Southern apologetics since; but there was no contemporary mention of it because most of the Southern congressmen, including the entire South Carolina delegation, had voted for the tariff of 1857, and because the Congress of the Confederacy re-enacted it. . . . or was any allusion made to states [sic] rights apart from slavery; on the contrary, the Northern states were reproached for sheltering themselves under states [sic] rights against the fugitive slave laws and the Dred Scott decision.68

  The new constitution of the Confederacy stated, “ ‘Our new Government is founded . . . upon the great truth that the negro is not the equal of the white man. That slavery—subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.’ ”69

  But in Zinn’s history, “Lincoln initiated hostilities.”70 Oh, really? In fact, Confederate forces fired the first shot of the war. When Confederate forces took over Fort Sumter, Lincoln notified them that he would be sending supplies only, leaving the ball in the court of the Confederates. On April 6, Lincoln notified the governor of South Carolina “to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumpter [sic] with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort.’ ” On April 12, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter.71

  Zinn is engaging in a kind mental gymnastics. The fact is, Zinn will do anything to make America look bad; he simply cannot allow his reader to give the first Republican elected president credit for freeing the slaves—and for going about it in a principled and prudent manner. That would mean giving the American people credit for abolishing slavery, and it would undermine Zinn’s picture of America as a uniquely racist country.

  So, Zinn has to make out that Lincoln’s actions always fall short. Even the Emancipation Proclamation did not arise out of a sincere desire to free the slaves, but only from political and military expediency: “When in September 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, it was a military move, giving the South four months to stop rebelling, threatening to emancipate their slaves if they continued to fight, promising to leave slavery untouched in states that came over to the North.” The Proclamation made the Union Army open to blacks—but that was just for propaganda purposes: “And the more blacks entered the war, the more it appeared a war for their liberation.”72

  Was Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a cynical move? Was it issued only for military advantage and public relations? To the contrary, in issuing the Proclamation, Lincoln put his military powers as commander-in-chief at the service of his moral convictions. That was the only way Lincoln could issue the proclamation. As James Oakes explains:

  Lincoln was freeing slaves by virtue of the power vested in the president as commander in chief of the army and navy “in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion”. .
 . . Except in time of war or insurrection the Constitution forbade the federal government from directly interfering with slavery in the states where it existed. Military necessity was the only constitutional ground on which Lincoln could justify federal “interference” with a state institution.73

  James McPherson believes that Lincoln may have been influenced by a pamphlet by William Whiting, a leading lawyer and abolitionist in Boston. In The War Powers of the President, and the Legislative Powers of Congress in Relation to Rebellion, Treason, and Slavery, Whiting had argued “that the laws of war ‘give the President full belligerent’ right as commander in chief to seize enemy property (in this case slaves) being used to wage war against the United States. . . .”74

  But, as McPherson also points out, Lincoln “recognized with regret that white racism was a stumbling block to emancipation.” Thus, in the months leading up to the Proclamation, he advanced “the colonization of freed slaves abroad.” It was “a way of defusing white fears of an influx into the North of freedpeople.” So, Lincoln met with “five black men from Washington” on August 14, 1862, to “urg[e] them to consider the idea of emigration.”75

  Zinn ignores Lincoln’s reasons for seeking to send freed blacks to Africa, charging that Lincoln “opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa.” He also ignores many efforts to end slavery short of war, claiming, “It was only as the war grew more bitter, the casualties mounted, desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists threatened to unravel the tattered coalition behind Lincoln that he began to act against slavery.”76 This is false. Lincoln had supported outlawing slavery in the new territories, hoping that that would lead to gradual abolition. And he gave the border states multiple opportunities to accept compensated abolition.77