Baker1

Cole Baker

9/28/22

Hist. 352

Dr. Levine

Word Count: 1275

Conflict Historiographical Essay

History is defined as the pursuit of truth in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian

War (404 BCE) and in David Blight’s Race and Reunion (2001). While both authors have

conflicting views of truth, they both employ the use of narratives, analyze and interpret events,

and create meaning from the past. Thucydides emphasizes the importance of accuracy and

focuses on analysis. Blight focuses on the memory of the Civil War, and explores how memory

can evolve into history, and be accepted as truth regardless of its accuracy.

Thucydides interprets history as an exact reiteration of events and attempts to write as

close to an exact recount of the Peloponnesian War as possible. This focus on accuracy is a

departure from other writings at the time and by comparison very accurate. In the introduction to

History, Thucydides criticizes the ulterior motives of poets and chroniclers1. Thucydides makes a

point to distance himself as an author from these motives, stressing his conclusions are derived

from evidence2. Thucydides also goes into great detail of his process of investigating and

constructing his narrative, stating that he cross checked all his sources or was an eyewitness to

them3. Thucydides’ attention to accuracy extends to his analysis of patterns. When describing the

symptoms of the plague, he only makes note of the common symptoms, stating he “omitted all

1 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (38)
2 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (2)
3 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (273)
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kinds of peculiarities which occurred in various individual cases.”4. This both demonstrates his

attention to accuracy and truth in representation of the effects of the illness. This synthesis of a

representation of the disease and its common patterns, instead of an encompassing survey of the

symptoms, defines the pursuit for truth beyond what is merely accurate. While some outlier

symptoms included in History would have been accurate, Thucydides sought for a distillation of

the plague that would be relevant to his narrative. This emphasis on the factual is what separates

itself from literature of the time and is proven in the permanence of History as a written work

that is still accepted as a factual account of the conflict today.

The opposing force in the pursuit of truth in both of these historical accounts is bias. Bias

is present in the analysis and interpretation of the authors and the works they cite. Race and

Reunion has complicated layers of bias in the selection of primary sources, the process in which

Blight fuses them in a cohesive narrative, and in the author himself. Blight selects press and

newspaper headlines throughout the book as a reductive representation of social ideas in the

aftermath of the Civil War5. By citing these primary sources as factual public perspectives, he is

able to highlight bias to different historical narratives based on their coverage and rhetoric. An

example of this is the omission of slavery in recounts of the Civil War6. This identifies a bias in

the source towards a white supremacist narrative, and is made obvious to the reader of Race and

Reunion. Blight’s bias as an author can be seen in the connection of the three narratives he

identifies in the post Civil War era7. Blight uses literature from African American authors as a

replacement for their participation in the political process8. When discussing the manifestations

4 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (55)
5 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (4)
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (125)
6 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (48)
7Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001) (46)
8 Thucydides, Rex Warner, and M. I. Finley. History of the Peloponnesian War. (New York, NY: Penguin
Books, 1990) (47)
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of white supremacist and reconciliation narratives in poltical settings, he substitutes the lack of

African American and emacipationist voices in the conversation with an excerpt of Frederick

Douglass9. This creation of a cohesive narrative that includes African Americans is a biased

construction of history that could be argued as both closer to the truth by placing an omitted

voice back into the conversation of memory, but also could move farther from the truth by

possibly invalidating the systemic racism and struggle to gain political voice by stitching

together a narrative where African Americans have equal political representation. While bias

conflicts with truth, it is an inevitable part of analysis and interpretation that is necessary to

create historical narratives, and history.

Thucydides effectively mentions his bias in his introduction10, but does not acknowledge

it outside of a disclaimer to his thesis11. Thucydides claims he has no agenda other than to point

out the significance of the Peloponnesian War, but has an innate bias12. This is best exemplified

by his attempt to use primary sources when describing the conflict. Thucydides’ work is centered

on the use of speeches to communicate events in the Peloponnesian War, but he admits that these

speeches are reproduced with the “general sense of the words…to make the speakers say what, in

my opinion, was called for”13. Thucydides is also an active participant in the conflict14, which

would expand his bias on the significance of events and his collection of information. However,

his efforts to get as close to a purely factual account should be measured against other myths and

poets of the time15. Thucydides’ pursuit of truth as a goal is crucial to the field today, as it invents

an element of historical practice by stressing the importance of accuracy. Through using his

9 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)

10 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (48)
11 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (154)
12 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)
13 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)
14Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)
15 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)
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unintentional bias when recounting the Peloponnesian War, he also creates a void for counter

analysis of the war, inventing another component of history: the capacity for multiple

interpretations of the same event.

This idea of multiple interpretations of the past is capitalized on by Blight’s examination

of Civil War memory. Blight’s examination of the multiple historical narratives following the

Civil War reveals that for history to be accepted as true, it does not have to be an accurate

account of an event, and that multiple conflicting interpretations can exist simultaneously. The

dominant narrative that arose in the years following the Civil war was fabricated from memories

that were not an accurate representation of the past. Blight examines how political and cultural

agendas for reconciliation and white supremacy motivate the creation of a history that is

inaccurate and incomplete. Blight notes the introduction of reconciliationist sympathies to the

former confederacy16, then explores the progression to the choice of forgetting and omission of

slavery and racism in the Civil war in effort to further advance reconciliation17. A similar pattern

of producing inaccurate history was explored in greater detail by Blight with the introduction of

white supremacist narratives on the causes and outcomes of the civil war18. This narrative was

legitimized through “historical” societies such as the Southern Historical Society19 and and went

as far as to rank books on their level of accuracy, which assessed books with inaccurate white

supremacist narratives as the truth20. The process of creating and legitimizing a historical

narrative was effective in being accepted by the public. This exemplifies that for history to be

accepted as truth, it does not necessarily need to be accurate.

16 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (47)

17 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (4)

18 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (262)
19 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (282)
20 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (51
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The historical process in the pursuit of truth is exhibited by both History and Race and

Reunion, but with different interpretations of how a narrative of the past becomes history.

Thucydides and Blight also examine the creation of meaning from the past and its impacts both

within the conflict and on current politics21. Both authors also conflict in their balance of the

literal and abstract22 in history. Thucydides emphasizes the minute details and literal, and makes

note of patterns, while Blight emphasizes the abstract and larger trends following the Civil War.

Thucydides and Blight also discuss the idea of permanence in very different contexts.

Thucydides notes his motivation of permanence of history as a testament to its importance23,

where Blight explores the unavoidable permanence of the Civil War and the continual search for

the truthful motivations and effects of the conflict24. These themes are also crucial to the

development and constant evolution that is history, but is eclipsed by the attention to and

interpretations of truth that create history.

Works Cited

21 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (61)
22 Blight. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. (37)
23 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. (328)
24 John Lewis Gaddis, “Chapter 1: The Landscape of History,” in The Landscape of History: How
Historians Map the Past(Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 1-16.
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Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Harvard

University Press, 2001. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjk2tsw.

Gaddis, John Lewis “Chapter 1: The Landscape of History,” in The Landscape of History:

How Historians Map the Past(Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 1-16.

Thucydides, Rex Warner, and M. I. Finley. History of the Peloponnesian War. New York,

NY: Penguin Books, 1990.