The prejudice of American historians

The government shutdown blocked access to national parks, but the debate over the nation’s past at public institutions continues. One specific site of contention is the President’s House at Independence Park in Philadelphia. Originally the home of Robert Morris, the Revolutionary War’s financier, it became George Washington’s residence when the federal government moved to Philadelphia. The home was demolished in 1832, but the National Park Service (NPS) built an open-air structure to indicate and honor where Washington lived while president. Because he brought slaves, in 2010 the National Park Service installed a display of panels and videos that feature the history of slavery in America. (The exhibit reveals little about Washington’s presidential career.)

The Trump administration has questioned the historical interpretation provided at places like Independence Park. President Trump’s executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” objected to previous training of park guides to dismantle “Western foundations” and interrogate “institutional racism.” The order specifies that all “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” should not “contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that” disparages the past. Exhibits should feature instead “the greatness of the achievements and progress” of Americans.

As heavy handed as the president’s order is, Trump has not been the only executive worried about interpretations of America’s past in Philadelphia. In January of 2024, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro persuaded Biden officials to cancel the removal of William Penn’s statue at Independence Park’s “Welcome” exhibit. The plan was to highlight native Americans in place of Penn’s statue.

Objections to Shapiro’s intervention did not materialize the way they have to Trump’s order. On Aug. 2, roughly 100 historians, clergy, and locals assembled near the Liberty Bell to protest changes to exhibits at the President’s House. Again, on Sept. 13, around 70 gathered at the President’s House to protest possible changes.

Local residents are not alone in objecting. The National Parks Conservation Association opposes Trump’s orders. Its director of cultural resources, Alan Spears, said, “Pretending that the bad stuff never happened is not going to make it go away.” In February, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, the premier institutions of professional historians concluded that President Trump was mandating “ideological instruction and the politicization of history.” “Uncomplicated celebration of American greatness,” historians warned, “flattens the past into a parade of platitudes devoid of the context, conflict, [and] contingency.”

Actually, emphasizing slavery at the President’s House distorts history and ignores the reasons for commemorating the past. Even the relations between slaves and owners defy simple categories of oppressors and victims. The case of Charles Willson Peale, famous for portraits of the Founders, is illustrative. At the White House Historical Association, a private organization that reflects a common outlook within public history, Peale’s biography features slavery. Since his death in 1827, the website explains, the artist “has been celebrated as a talented portraitist and innovative museum curator.” That impression ignores that Peale’s success was tied to slavery and should be “acknowledged as a part of his legacy.”

Not mentioned in this summary is a recognition of Peale’s own rags-to-riches story. His father died when Peale was nine, which forced the boy to apprentice with a saddle-maker. Once curious about painting, Peale sold a saddle to pay for a voyage to London where he studied with Benjamin West, the famous American painter. Back in America, Peale moved to Philadelphia, painted portraits of the Founders, and served in the Continental Army. After the war, Peale turned his home into a natural history museum that in 1804 occupied Independence Hall. His famous self-portrait, “The Artist and His Museum” (1822) gives a peek into the room where the Continental Congress entertained French dignitaries.

Despite Peale’s 300 portraits, not to mention his excavation of a mastodon’s skeleton in Newburgh, N.Y. (the subject of another painting), the White House Historical Association remembers Peale chiefly for slavery. He earns credit for supporting abolition. Still, the final takeaway is that “behind each stroke of [Peale’s] paintbrush is a more complicated history.”

This is moralism masquerading as truth-telling. Professional and public historians need to recalibrate how to add the less attractive parts of American history to the pieces that inspire and deserve commemoration. This revision has been well underway for at least two generations. On the eve of America’s bicentennial, Yale historian Edmund Morgan wrote, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, a book published by Norton and a standard assignment in graduate school seminars. Americans knew about slavery even as they celebrated the Bicentennial.

Recognizing the remarkable accomplishments of historical figures who were also flawed seems to be a bridge too far for a certain sector of Americans. Perhaps holding on to slavery as the most important aspect of American history appeals to those inclined to catastrophism. Also at play is an impulse to reduce the great people from the past so that we, not so accomplished, are superior to the formerly great. Whatever the psychology, refusing to be amazed by the past, especially the American Founding, is widespread among those who interpret history in classrooms and at national parks.

Donald Trump might be the wrong person to correct those who interpret American history for a living. At the same time, the prejudice against American exceptionalism is so pervasive that the only remedy may be an intervention by the most powerful executive in the free world.