"How to Spot Fake Quotes on the Internet"- Abraham Lincoln

There's hardly any doubt now that fake news is a big problem (not to mention determining just what is fake news). However, that's not the only thing catching fire on social media nowadays. Fake quotes are a big problem too. As I've witnessed firsthand, quotes either falsely attributed to historical personages or taken out of context have officially reached meme status long ago. 

Case in point: I remember several years ago a distant aunt of mine shared a picture of Abraham Lincoln on Facebook with a quote:

Stunned at first, I soon smelled a rat. I'm somewhat of a fan of Abraham Lincoln, and though he definitely said and wrote a lot, I had never heard this before. In fact, such an overemphasis on libertarian-capitalism seemed out of character for Lincoln, considering his unprecedented expansion of government power to free slaves. That was strike one. And let's not forget that Lincoln was one of the greatest orators in American history. So if he was going to say something like this, he would probably would have found a more rhetorically effective way to do so other than cataloging. That's strike two. Finally (and appropriately) I did some quick googling and voilá: FAKE! In fact, the quote is actually from the pamphlet of a conservative German-American Presbyterian Minister, published over fifty years after Lincoln's death. Even now, I'm annoyed with my aunt sharing such a ridiculous falsehood.

While there are plenty of relatively benign cases where an inspirational quote turns out to be inaccurate, this issue shouldn't be underestimated. Anyone with an agenda can potentially appropriate a historical figure to justify their views, and make people believe those figures stood for something completely different than they did. This goes back to one of my earliest posts about using history to justify the present, often falsely. Whether it's gun owners believing Ghandi opposed gun control or video-gamers thinking that Stalin was self-aware, this proliferation of fake-quotes not only influences today's politics and culture but can change the perception of history itself. In the long-run, that's just as dangerous as fake news, if not more.

So to summarize, how to spot fake quotes online:

1. Go with your gut. If at any point someone is sharing a quote to justify one of their viewpoints or argue for it better than they could, your BS alarm should be active. While it may be tempting to take a shortcut and assume that previously unheard of quotes from famous people are fake, you shouldn't: many "well-known" quotes are often inaccurate too. To be honest, it might be best to just take every quote shared from a historical figure on social media with a grain of salt at least at first.                                                                                                                                  
2. Context, context, context. Even if they don't mention Twitter or tacos, someone living 500 years ago wouldn't use the same vernacular we do, especially if they spoke another language. Try to find clues in the "quote" that give the real author away.                                                                  
3. The most important step of all: fact check. Snopes is an excellent site that shuts down fake news and memes circulating on the internet. However, a simple Google search will do provided you do it right. I have to stress here that if you really want to get to the bottom of the story, go down the page: often the first few lines of a unspecified Google search either won't help you or confuse you more. It will take thirty seconds to a minute longer, but trust me, the research you do will be worth it to get to the truth. 

Happy hunting of fake memes my friends. Before I part, I'll leave you with some wise words from one of our Founding Fathers: 

Robert E. Lee Never Deserved Your Respect

I recently posted about the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and I found that I still had more to say that directly related to current events. The very reason I started this blog was in response to the growing calls for the removal of Confederate monuments in the South, and the frankly amazing fact that many were indeed taken down. None mattered more symbolically than the statue of General Robert E. Lee in New Orleans. His monument was one of the most hotly contested, and was subsequently the most satisfying of the removals when he was finally lowered from his pedestal, literally and figuratively. It really was a remarkable occasion, made more so by Mayor Mitch Landrieu's moving speech about the historical significance of the event; it's a major step forward to right the wrongs of the past.

I wish I could have been there, because years before the widespread calls for Confederate monument removals, Robert E. Lee was on my $#%& list. Unlike many other Civil War historians, even out of the ones that have no qualms labeling the Confederacy for what it was— an Empire of Slavery— there still remains a professional and personal admiration for Lee. They cite the integrity and pride of his Christian character and his brilliant tactics on the battlefield as justifications for their respect. Even as a kid, I never bought it. In fact, I remember on my tour of the Capitol Building shouting in offense at seeing a statue of Lee (in his rebel uniform no less!) sitting at a prominent spot in one of the halls. True, he was no John C. Calhoun or Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, but despite setting the bar so low, I never believed that somehow Lee was some sort of good guy in a terrible system.

I didn't know how right I was.

Credit to the author for this one (FYI Lee is on the left, Ulysses S. Grant is on the right)

In an outstanding and personally vindictive piece for the Atlantic, Adam Serwer exposes Lee for the man he really was, what he stood for, and how much damage he did. His popular image is mostly fiction, generally maximizing his good traits and minimizing his bad ones, but also, in Mitch Landieu's words, propels "lies by omission" by his defenders for over 150 years. Here are a few highlights:

• Before anything else should come the evaluation of Lee through a military perspective. While he is rightly considered to be a master tactician, his strategic decision to wage a conventional war against the industrial-powered North was a disastrous move that escalated the war and brought death and destruction to the South. Even tactically, he was still capable of colossal mistakes. His stubbornness at Gettysburg, namely Pickett's Charge lost him the battle and set the stage for the collapse of the Confederacy.

• Though not a rabid slave-owner, Lee was anything but benevolent. He was still by all means a white supremacist who paternalistically saw slavery as good for black people, and only Christ could free them. He split slave families and oversaw or personally beat slaves who tried to escape. 

• His army enslaved free blacks and executed captured black Union soldiers. He refused to conduct a prisoner exchange with Union General Ulysses S. Grant if black soldiers were on the table, despite his dire shortage of troops. 

• The one aspect of Lee I previously respected was the dignified surrender of his army to General Grant. This in effect prevented a Southern insurgency from spawning and contributed to the reunification of nation. Now I have none. After Appomattox Court House, Grant felt his former rival fell short in trying to sow seeds of peace, and saw Lee's conduct as a "forced acquiescence." This helped give way to the Lost Cause myth which was the foundation of Jim Crow. 

• Even as president of Washington College, Lee oversaw a chapter of the KKK formed at the university and turned the other way when white students committed crimes against blacks in the area, including several lynchings. Though he never formally endorsed the KKK, he never spoke against it either, and there's good evidence to suggest he tacitly approved of it by suggesting the South could give way to violence if it did not name the peace terms. 

As Serwer notes, the only fitting monument to Lee is the Arlington national military cemetery that's on his former land, which the federal government had seized. White supremacists are the only ones that have reason to admire him. That makes him nothing more than a disgrace to America and its history. Hopefully now his myth will finally start to die and the truth will come to stand in his place. 

What People Think I Do: Historian Edition

In a few previous posts, I talked a lot about the work that historians do and what I appreciate about studying history. However, while historians all take their work seriously, I don't believe it's the same for themselves personally (except for a few terrible people). With that attitude in mind, for this post I thought I'd do my best to qualify a classic meme's perception of historians:

• What my friends think I do
• This image is accurate enough. From the feedback I get from my friends, being a history major/historian doesn't capture the imagination quite as much as a lot of other fields of work. It should be noted though that when I'm researching or writing I often have multiple tabs YouTube videos ready to play at a moment's notice for no reason other than my own entertainment. Oh, I have sources too!

• What my mom thinks I do
• My mom was an English major, and being cooped up in a library is an experience I shared with her. It's really impossible not to spend extensive time in a library even in the digital age, especially for students, given the necessity for primary sources and the fact that libraries are free. For my last research paper on Thomas More, I needed at least 7 books published early in the last century, which required much searching, begging librarians for help, and sifting through mountains of paper. You will become trapped in a dark recess of the library forever if you're not careful.

• What society thinks I do
• Along with being jobless and usually ignored, re-enacting battles seems pretty accurate for the public's perception of historians. However, make no mistake: those guys are passionate about what they do. They have to provide their own equipment, donate tons of their spare time to learn how to "fight," and they know the details of the battle, the time, and the actual person they're playing like the back of their hand. Their hobby helps make sure society doesn't forget these battles and their consequences. Also, according to my friend who's a Revolutionary War re-enactor, they're great at partying too. Make no mistake though,  some re-enactors can take it a bit too seriously, or worse, do it for the wrong reasons altogether. 

• What the university thinks I do
• This is definitely true, but if any of my history classes had as many people as there are in this picture, we would have a lot more classes to choose from, not to mention more clout with the Dean. 

• What I think I do
• I do certainly hope that if you read my blog, or God forbid actually know me personally that I help you learn a bit more about history and its importance. Personally, I do feel  that I'm almost like an architect walking through a city whenever I watch the news or learn about a particular period––I know (generally) how it all got here. 

• What I actually do
• History-related or not, at any given time in my room at home or my dorm, this is what it looks like. Enough said.