The 1619 Project (in the New York Times Magazine)

[David Lockmiller]

The letter below will be published in the Dec. 29 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

RE: The 1619 Project

We write as historians to express our strong reservations about important aspects of The 1619 Project. The project is intended to offer a new version of American history in which slavery and white supremacy become the dominant organizing themes. The Times has announced ambitious plans to make the project available to schools in the form of curriculums and related instructional material.

We applaud all efforts to address the enduring centrality of slavery and racism to our history. Some of us have devoted our entire professional lives to those efforts, and all of us have worked hard to advance them. Raising profound, unsettling questions about slavery and the nation’s past and present, as The 1619 Project does, is a praiseworthy and urgent public service. Nevertheless, we are dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.

These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.

On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false. Some of the other material in the project is distorted, including the claim that “for the most part,” black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “alone.”

Still other material is misleading. The project criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s views on racial equality but ignores his conviction that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed universal equality, for blacks as well as whites, a view he upheld repeatedly against powerful white supremacists who opposed him. The project also ignores Lincoln’s agreement with Frederick Douglass that the Constitution was, in Douglass’s words, “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Instead, the project asserts that the United States was founded on racial slavery, an argument rejected by a majority of abolitionists and proclaimed by champions of slavery like John C. Calhoun.

The 1619 Project has not been presented as the views of individual writers — views that in some cases, as on the supposed direct connections between slavery and modern corporate practices, have so far failed to establish any empirical veracity or reliability and have been seriously challenged by other historians. Instead, the project is offered as an authoritative account that bears the imprimatur and credibility of The New York Times. Those connected with the project have assured the public that its materials were shaped by a panel of historians and have been scrupulously fact-checked. Yet the process remains opaque. The names of only some of the historians involved have been released, and the extent of their involvement as “consultants” and fact checkers remains vague. The selective transparency deepens our concern.

We ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in The 1619 Project. We also ask for the removal of these mistakes from any materials destined for use in schools, as well as in all further publications, including books bearing the name of The New York Times. We ask finally that The Times reveal fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated.

Sincerely,
Victoria Bynum, distinguished emerita professor of history, Texas State University;
James M. McPherson, George Henry Davis 1886 emeritus professor of American history, Princeton University;
James Oakes, distinguished professor, the Graduate Center, the City University of New York;
Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 professor of American history, Princeton University;
Gordon S. Wood, Alva O. Wade University emeritus professor and emeritus professor of history, Brown University.

I am adding the following statement: Professor James M. McPherson received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. In 2003, the Oxford University Press published The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

[David Lockmiller]

“Five professors say the 1619 Project should be amended. ‘We disagree,’ says the New York Times.”
Washington Post article by Katie Mettler Dec. 22, 2019

The project [was] conceived and shepherded by Times Magazine writer and MacArthur Foundation fellow Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Those errors, the five professors say, include an assertion in Hannah-Jones’s essay, which leads the project, about the events that preceded the American Revolution. “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology,” Hannah-Jones wrote, “is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”

In their correction request, the professors called this “not true” and wrote that “if supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.”

The professors also questioned Hannah-Jones’s presentation of Lincoln’s views on racial equality, calling it “misleading” because it “ignores” some of his documented assertions about the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

The Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein recounted Hannah-Jones’s reporting, placing it in the greater context of the goals of the 1619 Project. He wrote:

“She (Nikole Hannah-Jones) provides an important historical lesson by simply reminding the public, which tends to view Lincoln as a saint, that for much of his career, he believed that a necessary prerequisite for freedom would be a plan to encourage the four million formerly enslaved people to leave the country. . . . Yet the story of abolition becomes more complicated, and more instructive, when readers understand that even the Great Emancipator was ambivalent about full black citizenship.”

Silverstein wrote in his response that the professors’ letter was the magazine’s “first major request for correction” regarding the 1619 Project but that the Times has welcomed critique from those acting in good faith and has decided to incorporate some of that feedback into the expanding book.

“You do not produce a project like this and not expect pushback,” Hannah-Jones tweeted about the correction request. Hannah-Jones said she has engaged with and “taken … to heart” critical scholars who reached out to her directly, but she said none of the five professors who wrote the correction request did that.

The purpose of the project, Silverstein wrote, was to “expand the reader’s sense of the American past.”

[Gene C]

"The project is intended to offer a new version of American history in which slavery and white supremacy become the dominant organizing themes. The Times has announced ambitious plans to make the project available to schools in the form of curriculums and related instructional material."

These editors seem to be to full of themselves, their own self importance and virtues, They find supposed failures or shortcomings in others to elevate their own self worth and value. They don't understand the past, so they can't possibly understand the present.

When you start out trying to prove or justify a false premise, you end up with false conclusions.

[David Lockmiller]

The Atlantic is publishing a long article about the 1619 Project controversy. The following are two important consecutive paragraphs from the article.

"The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts"
The Atlantic DECEMBER 23, 2019
By Adam Serwer, Staff writer at The Atlantic

Hannah-Jones hasn’t budged from her conviction that slavery helped fuel the Revolution. “I do still back up that claim,” she told me last week—before Silverstein’s rebuttal was published—although she says she phrased it too strongly in her essay, in a way that might mislead readers into thinking that support for slavery was universal. “I think someone reading that would assume that this was the case: all 13 colonies and most people involved. And I accept that criticism, for sure.” She said that as the 1619 Project is expanded into a history curriculum and published in book form, the text will be changed to make sure claims are properly contextualized.

On this question, the critics of the 1619 Project are on firm ground. Although some southern slave owners likely were fighting the British to preserve slavery, as Silverstein writes in his rebuttal, the Revolution was kindled in New England, where prewar anti-slavery sentiment was strongest. Early patriots like James Otis, John Adams, and Thomas Paine were opposed to slavery, and the Revolution helped fuel abolitionism in the North.

For me, The Atlantic article has a very strange title: "The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts." Only "facts" can lead to accurate conclusions. The 1619 Project controversy with highly-respected Civil War historians is "About the Facts."

By definition, by distorting the facts, one distorts the truth. And, many times individuals will distort the facts in order to achieve their "desired" conclusion. A false syllogism is a good example of this falsification process. In court, opposing counsel present the "facts" to the Court and the impartial Court separates the "wheat from the chaff" in order to decide the truth.

In this important historical case, opposing counsel on one side includes Professor James M. McPherson, who received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for History for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. The opposing counsel is the author of The 1619 Project, Times Magazine writer and MacArthur Foundation fellow Nikole Hannah-Jones.

At trial, the "Five Historians" legal counsel made the following requests of the opposing party that specific corrections be made to the asserted history and the full disclosure be made of the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated.

"We ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in The 1619 Project. We also ask for the removal of these mistakes from any materials destined for use in schools, as well as in all further publications, including books bearing the name of The New York Times. We ask finally that The Times reveal fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated."

As a juror in the the "court of public opinion," I would consider these end-result requests of the "Five Historians" counsel to be both legitimate and necessary. And, as a juror, I see no good reason for the New York Times to object to "reveal[ing] fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated."

Please note that the author of the 1619 Project has only accepted criticism about the Revolutionary War basis. Her erroneous published statements regarding President Abraham Lincoln remain as is . . . for the time being.

---

(12-24-2019 09:14 AM)Gene C Wrote:  "The project is intended to offer a new version of American history in which slavery and white supremacy become the dominant organizing themes. The Times has announced ambitious plans to make the project available to schools in the form of curriculums and related instructional material."

These editors seem to be to full of themselves, their own self importance and virtues, They find supposed failures or shortcomings in others to elevate their own self worth and value. They don't understand the past, so they can't possibly understand the present.

When you start out trying to prove or justify a false premise, you end up with false conclusions.

I agree. As you say, the author started from the historical conclusions that she wanted and then distorted the relevant historical facts to support her "false conclusions."

[Amy L.]

I must say, if this is really an issue that is being precisely and philosophically hashed out today, it's mighty interesting.
An editorial voicing some concerns:
The ‘1619 Project’... and ideological ax-grinding

[David Lockmiller]

(05-07-2020 09:55 AM)Amy L. Wrote:  I must say, if this is really an issue that is being precisely and philosophically hashed out today, it's mighty interesting.
An editorial voicing some concerns:
The ‘1619 Project’... and ideological ax-grinding

A portion of this “opinion” reads as follows:

Confidence in institutions declines when they imprudently enlarge their missions. Empty pews rebuke churches that subordinate pastoral to political concerns. Prestige flows away from universities that prefer indoctrination to instruction. And trust evaporates when journalistic entities embrace political projects. On Monday, however, the New York Times — technically, one of its writers — received a Pulitzer Prize for just such an embrace.

Last August, an entire Times Sunday magazine was devoted to the multiauthor “1619 Project,” whose proposition — subsequently developed in many other articles and multimedia content, and turned into a curriculum for schools — is that the nation’s real founding was the arrival of 20 slaves in Virginia in 1619: The nation is about racism. Because the Times ignored today’s most eminent relevant scholars — e.g., Brown University’s Gordon Wood, Princeton’s James McPherson and Sean Wilentz and Allen Guelzo, City University of New York’s James Oakes, Columbia’s Barbara Fields — the project’s hectoring tone and ideological ax-grinding are unsurprising. Herewith three examples of slovenliness, even meretriciousness, regarding facts:

To establish that the American Revolution was launched to protect slavery, the Times’s project asserts that a November 1775 British offer of freedom to slaves fleeing to join the British army was decisive in the move to independence. But this offer was a response to the war that had been boiling since April’s battles at Lexington and Concord and simmering for a year before that, as detailed in Mary Beth Norton’s just-published “1774: The Long Year of Revolution” . . . .

Misdescribing an 1862 White House meeting with African American leaders, the project falsely says that President Abraham Lincoln flatly “opposed black equality” and adamantly favored colonization of emancipated slaves. Actually, Lincoln had already decided on an Emancipation Proclamation with no imperative of colonization. In Lincoln’s final speech, his openness to black enfranchisement infuriated a member of his audience: John Wilkes Booth.

The project asserts that in the long struggle for freedom and civil rights, “for the most part” blacks fought “alone.” This erases from history the important participation of whites, assiduously enlisted by, among others, Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The ferocity of arguments among professors often is inversely proportional to the arguments’ stakes. Not, however, those about “The 1619 Project,” because, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Has this, the slogan of the party governing Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984,” supplanted “All the news that’s fit to print” as the Times’s credo?

---

This morning, at 7:03 AM, Pacific Time, I sent the following email to George Will at the Washington Post.

Dear Mr. George Will,
Thank you for writing your column yesterday on The ‘1619 Project’ in the Washington Post. Your beginning and ending paragraphs were critical observations:

[T]rust evaporates when journalistic entities embrace political projects. On Monday, however, the New York Times — technically, one of its writers — received a Pulitzer Prize for just such an embrace.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Has this, the slogan of the party governing Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984,” supplanted “All the news that’s fit to print” as the Times’s credo?

In the New York Times “Editor’s letter” published on April 19, 2020, one paragraph unfairly and unjustly attacked the character and reputation of President Abraham Lincoln. The Editorial Board implied that President Abraham Lincoln was himself a hypocrite in signing the Homestead Act in 1862. The offending paragraph reads as follows:

The purpose of the federal government, Lincoln wrote to Congress on July 4, 1861, was “to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders, and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.” The Homestead Act in particular was a concrete step in that direction: 10 percent of all the land in the United States was ultimately distributed in 160-acre chunks. But Lincoln’s conception of “everyone” did not include everyone: The Homestead Act rested on the expropriation of Native American lands.

Implicit in this one paragraph statement made by the Editorial Board of the New York Times is that President Abraham Lincoln himself had done something morally wrong. In my opinion, the “cheap shot” denigration of the character and reputation of Abraham Lincoln in the Editorial pages of the New York Times in this manner (without President Abraham Lincoln being able to defend himself) is unwarranted and should not be permitted to go unchallenged.

I have done quite a bit of research to counter the statement of facts and argument made by the person I actually believe to be the true author of that single paragraph, Nikole Hannah-Jones, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

The counter facts, in chronological order, are as follows:

On May 28, 1830, the Indian Removal Act was signed by President Jackson. The Act allowed the government to divide land west of the Mississippi to give to Indian tribes in exchange for the land they’d lost. The government would pick up the cost of relocating the Indians and helping them resettle.

In 1838, President Martin Van Buren sent federal troops to march the remaining southern Cherokee holdouts 1,200 miles to Indian Territory in the Plains. Disease and starvation were rampant, and thousands died along the way, giving the tortuous journey the nickname “Trail of Tears.”

In 1851, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which created the Indian reservation system and provided funds to move Indian tribes onto farming reservations and hopefully keep them under control. Indians were not allowed to leave the reservations without permission. For Indians, reservation life was restraining, and the land Natives were forced to occupy were often too small to raise animals or hunt on and not viable agriculturally.

Yes, it is true as stated in the offending New York Times paragraph that the expropriation of Native American lands made the Homestead Act possible. But what role, if any, does the Editorial Board of the New York Times now legitimately believe that Abraham Lincoln played in “the expropriation of the Native American lands?” None, I presume would be their correct answer.

Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States on March 4, 1861. What does the New York Times Editorial Board now believe that the new President of the United States should have done at the time? Obviously, President Lincoln did not believe at that moment that he had the constitutional right to emancipate all of the slaves in the United States.

Does the Editorial Board now believe that President Lincoln had the right and authority to declare the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 unconstitutional? I don't think so.

Does the Editorial Board now believe that President Lincoln had the right and authority as President of the United States in 1862, when he signed the Homestead Act, to return all of the Native American lands to their rightful owners by Executive Order? I don't think so.

If the Editorial Board of the New York Times actually now believes that President Abraham Lincoln had the constitutional right to take either Executive action, why did not the Editorial Board write this or similar statement in their one paragraph spurious attack on President Abraham Lincoln’s character and reputation?

Regarding the treatment of American Indians by President Lincoln, there is the following information:

Episcopal Bishop Henry B. Whipple lobbied the President to reform the corrupt Indian agency system. In the spring of 1862, the bishop had recommended more humane treatment of the Minnesota Sioux. Lincoln promptly asked the secretary of the Interior to investigate, which he did and suggested numerous reforms.

The President told a friend that Whipple "came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots."

In reply to Whipple's appeal, Lincoln characteristically recounted a story:
"Bishop, a man thought that monkeys could pick cotton better than Negroes could because they were quicker and their fingers smaller. He turned a lot of them into his cotton field, but he found that it took two overseers to watch one monkey. It needs more than one honest man to watch one Indian agent."

[President Lincoln] pledged to Bishop Whipple that "[i]f we get through this war, and if I live, this Indian system shall be reformed."

(Henry B. Whipple, "Light and Shadows of a Long Episcopate, etc.," pages 136-137.)

In his 1862 Annual Message to Congress, President Lincoln asked the legislature to investigate this issue and take action.

Also, in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln came to the rescue of hundreds of Sioux Native Americans. 303 Sioux Indians were convicted of war crimes in the Minnesota Indian uprising and sentenced to death.

President Lincoln ordered General Pope to "forward, as soon as possible, the full and complete record of these convictions" and to prepare "a careful statement." As President Lincoln and two Interior Department lawyers scrutinized the record of the trials, they discovered that some had lasted only fifteen minutes, that hearsay evidence had been admitted, that due process had been ignored, and that counsel had not been provided the defendants.

President Lincoln authorized the execution of only 37 of the 303 condemned men (35 were found guilty of murder and 2 were convicted of rape). Lincoln explained his reasoning: "Anxious not to act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females." He further sought to discriminate between those involved in massacres and those involved only in battles. At the last minute before the executions, President Lincoln pardoned Round Wind, who had helped some whites to escape.

On December 26, 1862, the convicted rapists and killers died on the gallows while a peaceful crowd of more than 5,000 looked on. In 1864, Minnesota Governor Ramsey told President Lincoln that if he had executed all 303 Indians, he would have won more backing for his reelection bid. “I could not afford to hang men for votes," came the reply.

In 1864, Lincoln pardoned two dozen of the 264 Sioux who, after being spared the death penalty, had been incarcerated. The same year, he intervened to spare the life of Pocatello, chief of a Shoshoni band in Utah.

(Source: "Abraham Lincoln: A Life” Volume II, pages 480-84, by Professor Michael Burlingame, 2008.)

In short, at least two things would have been different had President Abraham Lincoln lived: 1) Reconstruction and 2) the government’s treatment of native American Indians.

Yours truly,
David Lockmiller

[David Lockmiller]

I received a brief acknowledgement from George Will of my email to him that I posted yesterday. He referred to my extensive email to him (later posted on this thread) as a "note." So, maybe it is standard office procedure to acknowledge emails in this manner and possibly without the email actually being read by anybody.

Dear David Lockmiller:
Thanks for your note.
--George F. Will

Nevertheless, I sent to Mr. Will another email.

My first email to him related to the "expropriation of Native American lands" attack by Nikole Hannah-Jones, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Mr. Will chose for his editorial example the "colonization" of freed blacks. But he did not provide any detail on this example in support. I provided such support in my email to him that I sent yesterday afternoon as follows.

Mr. George Will:

If you are seeking a historically accurate description of the August 14, 1862 meeting at the White House, I would suggest that you read historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2006 Lincoln Prize-winning book “Team of Rivals “ at page 469.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in her Pulitzer Prize winning work: “You can imagine the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. . . . As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly [emphasis added], that they would consult on his proposition. ‘Take your full time,’ Lincoln said. ‘No hurry at all.’”

Contrast these “factual” statements of history, according to historian Nikole Hannah-Jones, with what historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in 2005 in quoting what the delegation’s chairman, Edward Thomas, actually wrote to President Lincoln two days later on August 16, 1862:

“We were entirely hostile to the movement until all the advantages were so ably brought to our views by you,” the delegation chief wrote Lincoln two days later, promising to consult with prominent blacks in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston who he hoped would “join heartily in Sustaining Such a movement.”

David Lockmiller

I do not see any way that Mr. George Will can use this additional information regarding his editorial example unless Nikole Hannah-Jones chooses to challenge Mr. Will regarding the black "colonization" example. But at least now Mr. Will has the ammunition to defend his initial editorial statement (if Mr. Will actually reads my second email to him).

I read in last week's New York Times that online readership of the Times had now topped 6 million because of the corona-virus coverage. The number of daily subscribers of the Washington Post is less than 2 million (last reported online subscribers was 1 million in 2018).

It's amazing that the New York Times was able to corrupt the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize process in this manner. George Will of the Washington Post and prominent historians of this nation (specifically named in the Washington Post editorial) have stood against the onslaught of the New York Times regarding the revisionist-history of The 1619 Project.

I also intend to defend the reputation of President Abraham Lincoln as best as I am able to do so.

[Gene C]

(05-08-2020 09:52 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I also intend to defend the reputation of President Abraham Lincoln as best as I am able to do so.

Keep it up David

[David Lockmiller]

(05-08-2020 10:33 AM)Gene C Wrote:  

(05-08-2020 09:52 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I also intend to defend the reputation of President Abraham Lincoln as best as I am able to do so.

Keep it up David

Thank you, Gene.

[RJNorton]

David, I second Gene.

[AussieMick]

I regret not having commented previously .... thinking I'm too much of an outsider.

The Homestead Act : what if Lincoln had not authorized it? Do the member s of the Editorial Board think the Indians would have been left to live in blissful peace? At least Lincoln recognized that there was a need for a controlled approach to developing the vast potential.
It really is annoying when people seek to take the high moral ground without considering what other options and risks existed .... and asking themselves "what would I have done, in the same situation. "

[David Lockmiller]

George Will wrote in his Washington Post column criticizing the award of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times for her “1619 Project” work:

Last August, an entire Times Sunday magazine was devoted to the multiauthor “1619 Project,” whose proposition — subsequently developed in many other articles and multimedia content, and turned into a curriculum for schools — is that the nation’s real founding was the arrival of 20 slaves in Virginia in 1619: The nation is about racism. Because the Times ignored today’s most eminent relevant scholars — e.g., Brown University’s Gordon Wood, Princeton’s James McPherson and Sean Wilentz and Allen Guelzo, City University of New York’s James Oakes, Columbia’s Barbara Fields — the project’s hectoring tone and ideological ax-grinding are unsurprising.

These "eminent relevant scholars" had written previously to the New York Times critically objecting to The 1619 Project scholarship as follows:

"We ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in The 1619 Project. We also ask for the removal of these mistakes from any materials destined for use in schools, as well as in all further publications, including books bearing the name of The New York Times. We ask finally that The Times reveal fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated."

Now, I guess that we on the Lincoln Discussion Symposium will just have to wait to see when "the other shoe will drop."

---

(05-08-2020 02:21 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  David, I second Gene.

Thank you, Roger. And, thank you for the Lincoln Discussion Symposium.

[David Lockmiller]

(05-09-2020 02:23 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Now, I guess that we on the Lincoln Discussion Symposium will just have to wait to see when "the other shoe will drop."

If anyone was wondering what "the other shoe to drop" is, Professor Alan Guelzo explained the meaning of this term as it applies to The 1619 Project in the last paragraph (especially the final sentence) of an opinion piece that he wrote for the Wall Street Journal last week.

‘The 1619 Project’ Tells a False Story About Capitalism, Too
Writing in 1854, George Fitzhugh described slavery as ‘a beautiful example of communism.’
By Allen C. Guelzo
Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2020

The awarding of a Pulitzer Prize for commentary to the New York Times magazine’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of “The 1619 Project” will serve as an additional selling point as the Times and the Pulitzer Center (unaffiliated with the prize) seek to market their 1619 Project Curriculum. It’s hard not to see the prize as an attempt to deflect the criticisms the paper has taken from historians across the country.

Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor, waved away those objections as differences of “interpretation and intention, not fact” in a letter responding to a dozen concerned historians, including me. Historians do argue over interpretations, but parts of the 1619 Project are sloppy, at best, with the facts. Consider the essay on capitalism by sociologist Matthew Desmond. . . .

[A]ttempting to replace the nation’s ideals with a false and destructive story is no way to do history. The 1619 Project can wave its Pulitzer as credibility insurance, but credibility isn’t the same as truth. Pulitzers have been handed out before—to the Times’s Walter Duranty and the Washington Post’s Janet Cooke—only to collapse under the weight of falsehood.

Mr. Guelzo is a senior research scholar at Princeton University and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation

[David Lockmiller]

"Twelve Scholars Critique the 1619 Project and the New York Times Magazine Editor Responds" (The George Washington University – History News Network)
[Editor's note: Twelve Civil War historians and political scientists who research the Civil War composed a letter to The New Times Magazine concerning 'The 1619 Project.' The NYTM editor, Jake Silverstein, responded but the NYTM declined to publish the letter and his response. The scholars created a reply and Silverstein had no objection to publishing the exchange in another venue. It is published below.]

In his letter of response to the scholars, New York Times Editor Jake Silverstein wrote that “we correctly describe Lincoln’s views at the time of the meeting in 1862.” However, it is irrefutably true that Hannah-Jones incorrectly described the response of the five leaders of the black community to President Lincoln's “colonization proposal” in her essay in the New York Times Magazine.

According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, (“Team of Rivals” at page 469), the black delegation’s chairman, Edward Thomas, wrote the following in a letter to President Lincoln on August 16, 1862:

"We were entirely hostile to the movement until all the advantages were so ably brought to our views by you,” the delegation chief wrote Lincoln two days later, promising to consult with prominent blacks in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston who he hoped would “join heartily in Sustaining Such a movement.”

Instead of choosing to write the truth of history about this very important meeting in the White House with prominent black leaders and President Lincoln, historian Hannah-Jones (and now the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary) deliberately chose to “imagine” what the “truth of history” was. The fact is that the incontrovertible truth was available to her in the form of the delegation chairman’s letter of August 16, 1862, written only two days after the actual meeting took place, and that fact of history did not matter one iota to historian Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in her Pulitzer Prize winning work: “You can imagine [emphasis added] the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. . . . As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly [emphasis added], that they would consult on his proposition. ‘Take your full time,’ Lincoln said. ‘No hurry at all.’”

This was an intentional “error in need of correction” (to use The 1619 Project New York Times Editor Jake Silverstein’s own words) made by historian Hannah-Jones. By distorting the facts, historian Nikole Hannah-Jones distorted the truth of history.

Historian Hannah-Jones purposely sought to have all of The 1619 Project prospective curriculum readers believe that the five prominent leaders of the black community met President Lincoln’s “black colonization” proposal with shock and disbelief that such a proposal would actually be made to them by the President of the United States. “Already, 3,500 classrooms and five major urban school systems (including Buffalo, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) have adopted The 1619 Project for their history curricula.” (“1619 and the Narrative of Despair,” By Princeton Professor ALLEN C. GUELZO, National Review, May 11, 2020.)

[David Lockmiller]

(05-15-2020 04:29 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  “Already, 3,500 classrooms and five major urban school systems (including Buffalo, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) have adopted The 1619 Project for their history curricula.” (“1619 and the Narrative of Despair,” By Princeton Professor ALLEN C. GUELZO, National Review, May 11, 2020.)

This statement raises an obvious question:

Given the fact the six preeminent American history scholars in this country -- Brown University’s Gordon Wood, Princeton’s James McPherson and Sean Wilentz and Allen Guelzo, City University of New York’s James Oakes, Columbia’s Barbara Fields -- have joined to highly criticize this American history curricula, why would the responsible authorities at any major urban school system, such as Washington, D. C., authorize the purchase of "The 1619 Project" American history curricula?

This group of well-established, preeminent American history scholars wrote to the New York Times as follows:

"We ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in The 1619 Project. We also ask for the removal of these mistakes from any materials destined for use in schools, as well as in all further publications, including books bearing the name of The New York Times. We ask finally that The Times reveal fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated."

In response, these preeminent American history scholars were basically "stonewalled" by the Editor of the New York Times Magazine.

The central pivotal figure in the American Civil War is President Abraham Lincoln. Over 15,000 books have been published on the subject of President Lincoln. The aforementioned Professor Allen Guelzo of Princeton University has won three times the annually-awarded Lincoln Prize for the top Lincoln scholarship book published in any given year. He is one of the preeminent American history scholars who has requested that the New York Times "reveal fully the process through which the historical materials were and continue to be assembled, checked and authenticated."

This was not an unreasonable request and the request should have been honored by the New York Times.

And, given the fact the six preeminent American history scholars in this country have joined to highly criticize this American history curricula, why would the responsible authorities at any major urban school system authorize the purchase of "The 1619 Project" American history curricula?