The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad | The New Yorker That story, like so many that we tell
The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad | The New Yorker That story, like so many that we tell about our nation’s past, has a tricky relationship to the truth: not quite wrong, but simplified; not quite a myth, but mythologized. For one thing, far from being centrally organized, the Underground Railroad was what we might today call an emergent system: it arose through the largely unrelated actions of individuals and small groups, many of whom were oblivious of one another’s existence. What’s more, even the most active abolitionists spent only a tiny fraction of their time on surreptitious adventures with packing crates and the like; typically, they carried out crucial but banal tasks like fund-raising, education, and legal assistance. It’s worth noting that before the Victorian era, history was considered more an art than a science. History was meant to be instructive, so stories of military leaders and politicians were openly modified to be more heroic and have a clearer positive message. Over time that shifted (in time with many attitudes about public education, citizenship, and empirical studies). Now we lament all the histories inaccurately reported and recorded as history has become more and more like science; but history is never, has never been objective and unbiased. To call it so, or to read and study history operating under the assumption that it is, is highly dangerous. -- source link
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