Revisionist History
“Fellow citizens: I am not indifferent to the claims of a generous forgetfulness, but whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery; between those who fought to save the Republic and those who fought to destroy it.”
(Frederick Douglass)
Over time, the Civil War has grown more and more contentious. Perhaps that is inevitable. Even so, it was not without contention even early on. Many in North, after the War and until this day (2025) will argue that the Civil War was fundamentally a war about slavery.
(I am going to speak in generalized terms. I know that the issues, the claims, and the sides are not quite this clear-cut.)
However, we do know that, during the time leading up to the war, and during the war, many in the South made it quite clear that the fundamental diving issue was slavery. For example, in early 1861, Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederate States wrote:
The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of . . . the equality of races. This was an error . . .
Stephens seems fairly unambiguous in his stance.
From this stance, then, the Civil War was about slavery. The South fought to maintain slavery as a right and a tradition in the South.
And, yet, it was not long after the War that many in the South began a revision of the events. A new narrative emerged. The War was not about slavery, at all.
(Again, I am not naïve, and I am not trying to be overly reductive. I know that the Civil War was also about culture and about economics.)
Enter The Lost Cause. In post-Reconstruction era South, The Lost Cause was a revision of the foundations of the Civil. As Matthew Wills writes:
At its heart, the Lost Cause was a “mystique of chivalric Southern soldiers and the noble Confederate leadership embodied in Jefferson Davis” defending a way of life, state’s rights, even the original American Revolution, against a rapacious Northern industrial machine. The actual reason for the Confederacy’s existence, slavery and the power of a plantation economy based on it, didn’t play a large role in the myth, although continued white dominance of political power and the associated denial of humanity to black Southerners was very much the point of it.
The point here, is that The Lost Cause narrative became the de facto understanding of the War in the South. The Lost Cause pervades Southern culture, society, and politics. It became the foundational understanding for many in the South of the meaning of the South. It became the official version of the past, and it under-girded everything from the names of schools, to the names of military bases, to the statues in the parks, to the culture produced (think Birth of a Nation). It also became the foundation for the relationship between the South and the North. It became the received truth of history.
Why am I bringing all this up right now? After all, we haven’t publicly torn down a statue in a while.
J6.
It didn’t take quite as long, but the revisionist narrative of J6 is well underway. And, unless it is called out and undermined, it, too, will become the received truth of history.
On many occasions, Trump has called the events of J6 “a day of love.” He means to undercut the rhetoric that J6 was an insurrection, to undercut the fact that it was bloody and violent, and to undercut that it was illegal. His turn of phrase suggests that the day was peaceful, and that those in attendance were full of love: for the nation, for Democracy, and for him. It was not peaceful, at all.
In late December 2024, Trump said that he would pardon J6 rioters. The roughly 1,600 individuals arrested and convicted may well be pardoned. Trump is signaling that it was not an illegal activity, at all. Trump is calling the insurrectionists “patriots” who were fighting for Democracy. We know that they were fighting for Donald Trump, not Democracy. However, he needs the narrative to say that they were fighting for a large cause.
In the same event, Trump called for the investigation and prosecution of the J6 Select Committee that investigated the events of J6. A) the claim de-legitimizes the claims made by the Committee (and broadcast to the world), and B) it warns any future wold-be detractors from the Trump. Come after Trump — no matter how legitimately or legally — and Trump will respond. C) it solidifies the revisionist narrative — everything that Thomson, Raskin, Schiff, Kinzinger, and Cheney (among others) said was wrong, and Trump’s version is correct.
In a speech in January 2025, Trump said that J6 could not have been an insurrection because no one there had any guns. Not one. This is, of course, patently and demonstrably false. Take tens seconds of your time. Look at the footage from that day. Lots of guns. However, the revisionist narrative is consistent with his claims.
We have the precedent. We saw how this revisionism worked post-Civil War. We know how deeply the revisionist narrative became embedded. It cannot be allowed to happen again.
Every time that Trump and his minions espouse the new narrative, they must be called out on it. Every time they claim that is was not an insurrection and was not an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, they must be reminded. The words of lawmakers (from both sides of the aisle) on J6 bear that out.
Every time that Trump and his minions revise the violent attack on the (physical) capital building and the (metaphorical) capital of the nation as a “day of love,” they must be called out on the lie. The video footage bears it out. It was unlawful, and it was violent. People died.
Every time that Trump and his minions defend the insurrectionists who attacked and injured law enforcement, who were lawfully engaged in their sworn duty, they must be called anti-police. Their “back the blue” rhetoric falls apart in the face of the evidence.
Every time that Trump and his minions re-brand the J6 insurrectionists as “patriots” and “heroes,” they must be called out on it. They must be called what they are: traitors.
Call them out in your personal conversations. Call them out in letters to the editor. Call them out in public spaces.
It is the only way to (possibly) stop the revision of J6.
Let the record show: they were traitors.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Queering SF: Readings (Aqueduct), Feminist Epistemology and Feminist Science Fiction (Palgrave McMillan) and edited a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls (McFarland). His most recent book is Queering SF Comics: Readings (2024, Aqueduct Press).
