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April Showers Bring Acid Rain
Issue 22.7: April
Posted: April 1, 2007

Spec PERSPECTIVES: Importance of History

Christine DeLong

Civil War, Modern Lesson

ERIC FONER

As students pile into my overcrowded lecture hall in the International Affairs Building for another round of historical lectures about the American Civil War or any one of my other classes that aren’t actually about the Civil War but wind up getting there, I brush up on current events. I take time, unfailingly, at the beginning of every lecture, to bring up a news article or press clipping from the past ten or so years and show it to the class. It makes a point that’s harsh but true: the Civil War’s effects still reverberate in our society today, and the unfinished business of Reconstruction left scars that are still slowly healing and even occasionally breaking back open in our nation’s psyche.

History is a wonderful tool not only for remembering the past but also shaping our understanding of the present. On my current sabbatical I’ve taken time to process countless historiographic essays by current and past historians to understand just how our present-day understanding of the Civil War governs how we conduct our lives in the present. Issues ranging from the War in Iraq to who’s able to walk my dog all revolve around concepts shaped by our understanding of the Civil War and its aftermath.

While it’s comforting to know that a vast majority of my class is not snoring “lifetime learners” or Spectador-reading misanthropes, those few sour grapes stick out prominently as those who ignore the lessons of history only to have the consequences reverberate in the present. It’s not enough to read history, or even the history of history. We must take our history into account in our present activities if we are to move forward instead of back.


The author is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.


Civil War, Boring Lesson

REBECCA CRABSWORTHY

So, it’s another chilly winter afternoon. I almost step in a puddle of someone’s puke in the stupid Carman stairwells, cram myself into that dreary International Affairs Building’s lecture hall, get out my laptop, open up Facebook, and prepare to zone out. Just another day with Eric Foner. Not like I haven’t done this a billion times already this semester.

“Isn’t he, like, totally famous, or something?” That’s what kids who went to less prestigious schools ask me on AIM when they read my funny away message about “Eric Boner.” Sure, I say. Whatever. All I know is that if he drags out another clipping from the Charlotte Post–Hornet or some other stupid newspaper about “the current effects of the Civil War” I’ll add my puke to the Carman stairs.

History as “present experience?” Isn’t that what, like, Lit Hum is for? I don’t get any of that “experience” in that stupid class, why should I expect to get any of it out of Walking-the-Dog Foner? Maybe I should write a lens essay about it. Or maybe that’s the final Frontier of Science, the one I keep sleeping through.

Besides, the Civil War wasn’t that bad. If it wasn’t for Benedict Arnold and his Merry Men, there wouldn’t have been a Gettysburg Address, but who cares? Abraham Lincoln was probably gay anyways. Why can’t Foner let Jake Gyllenhaal teach? Isn’t he totally his father? Why do they have different last names? That’s real history as “present experience.”


The author is a Columbia College first-year.