By John C. Fazio
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: John C. Fazio is a past president of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and the author of numerous articles on the Lincoln assassination as well as the book, Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln, published in 2015 by McFarland.
Truth, like a bastard, comes into the world, never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth. – Thomas Hardy
All great truths begin as blasphemies. – George Bernard Shaw
Shall truth be first or second with us? “Us” is we historians, real or fancied, amateur or professional. Lincoln said that history isn’t history unless it is the truth. I agree with that, to which I would add only “or some reasonable facsimile thereof arrived at conscientiously and with due diligence.” Therefore, if truth is to be second with us, second, that is, to convenience, aka political correctness or some other approximation of comfort, then I suggest that we are in the wrong business and that we should find some other vocation or avocation, one that doesn’t tax our character so meanly.
Continue reading “On Inconvenient Truth and Convenient Fiction”