I spent the final year of my three-decade career administering a historic preservation office, rewriting the historical markers that were under my auspices. Most were put up in the late 1960s, and many included language that was consider offensive by 2012. (Some were also, simply, grammatically clumsy or historically incorrect.) I was then asked to participate in an interview on a talk radio station where the moderators and the audience accused me of whitewashing history. Using terms like "squaw" or "horde" (to describe Chinese immigrations) was historic - I was told - and I was trying to change past, to change history itself. Also, I changed language that described conflicts between settlers with Native Americans as "this is where we fought the Indians." Since Native Americans were also citizens of the state, there could be no "us" versus them, but rather the conflict was between two groups - both of whom have descendants that are full-fledged members of the community.

My response was that there was a confusion between the terms "historical" and "historic." The markers were historical; that is, they were about history. They were not historic; that is, having significance in and of themselves. The way we view history changes, and markers that describe that perception should change also as new facts and/or perspectives emerge. Preserving racism in a historical marker, because it is 45 years old and should be revered, would be bad public policy. The markers needed to be changed. I suggested to the radio personalities and audience that if the markers had some old-fashioned, "colorful" terms to describe African Americans, we would all be falling all over ourselves to change them (as well we should!). I suggested that the Native Americans and the Chinese Americans (and others) deserved the same consideration.

Your examples are slightly different, but not really. Various monuments are erected, and building are named, all to honor certain people and events. Again, historical perspective change, and as we learn new facts or as we realize that an honor was not warranted, the present should reserve the right to take away honors bestowed. We should not be prisoners of the choices and perspectives of the past. Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, for example, includes two statues from every state - people that each state have decided deserve to be honored. States often replace those statues as perspectives change. That is a healthy process. It demonstrates that we are engaged with our past and interpretation and perspective is not stagnant. Nor should it be.

The assertion can be made, I suppose, that at some point a historical marker - like a monument or the name of a building - becomes historic. We would not recommend tearing down a statue of Caligula in the town square of an Italian village, even though he was clearly a jerk. Would we? The statue would be historic. Not merely historical. But I suppose if people in the village viewed the statue as a symbol of their own, painful, on-going oppression, they would have the right to tear it down. Soviet statues - many of which could be argued had been around for decades and had become "historic" - were removed after the fall of communism. People regarded then as symbols of oppression that continued to be painfully felt. They did not want to live with the symbol and the ongoing reminder to that oppression and pain, and they did not want to give public honors to the oppressors.

So I suppose that is the question: we need to ask ourselves about a monument or the name of a building whether it is an on-going symbol and expression of oppression. A monument or name that honors a slaveholder or the oppression of slaves doesn't matter if no one identifies with the oppressed group - or more importantly with the oppressors. On the other hand, if people literally "rally around" the monument to celebrate oppression of the past that they wish to continue into the present, the present has a right if not an obligation to remove that publically-owned symbol. Why, after all, should the oppressed have to pay taxes to maintain something that is actively used to contribute to their oppression?

That is why I changed the text of my historical markers. If a Native American child read a publically-owned marker that used the word "squaw" or talked about how "we" defeated her great-grandparents and made her feel less of a citizen, we are obliged to change how we refer to the past and to change that text. To tear down that monument. To change the name of that building.

Edited to change some clumsy grammar. Because the way we describe the past should stand ready to be changed!

History has always been political. If we're to believe Napoleon, history is merely a "set of lies agreed upon." There has always been an effort to get history on side of contemporary issues, from the modern politician's bombastic claim that "America is the Greatest Country in History" to the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans rhetorically sparring to side their particular view of American democracy with the memory of George Washington. Even earlier, rabble rousers, political provacateurs, malcontents and protestors of all stripes attempted to lend legitimacy to their political actions by wedding them to popular memories of classical heroes: Brutus and Gracchus come back to life as exemplars of whatever virtue is necessary.

Of course, none of this was new or unique to the United States, but it speaks to a great degree of the research for my master's thesis, which is largely concerned with the militia and memory of the War of 1812. The war in popular memory today is insignificant; it is represented as a minor roadbump in the road toward the inevitability of WASPy domination of the continent, but at the time it was (I would argue) a crisis point in terms of the direction of the country's development. Men and women who were involved in the war were aware of this, and were absolutely committed to preserving their particular view of the war for posterity.

While it happened to a great degree after the war, it was taking place while it raged. Men of the militia in Ohio and Michigan motivated themselves and each other by recalling the glorious victories had by rugged frontiersmen against the "indian menace" at Tippecanoe and Fallen Timbers, while men of New York and Pennsylvania were urged to remember their fathers, and the famous victories over British tyranny at Saratoga and Bennington. To balk, to refuse service, to desert or to agitate was to sell this memory for comfort and luxury of political slavery under British domination. Or so it was argued.

A couple of examples are particularly illuminating. In the early months of 1813, General Alexander Smyth, the newly-minted theater commander of the army in the Niagara country, was attempting to organize an invasion. Apart from the typical logistical and organizational concerns, to say nothing of keeping secrecy in a relatively porous frontier, Smyth had to contend with a peculiar civilian-military relation represented by the militia. Neither entirely soldier nor entirely civilian, a militia man was intended to combine civilian oversight of the military with the military power of a regular, and the War of 1812 saw ideological conflicts over the use of the militia as a regular occurrence.

In any case, in the early months of the war it was made clear by governors, generals, and other leaders that they fully expected a portion of the militia to refuse to cross state or international boundaries. The effort for clearly articulating to would-be militia that they were expected to invade was felt even at the highest levels of command. Henry Dearborn, writing to Simon Snyder in August, cited the Militia Acts of 1795 before stating that “there should be an understanding amongst the officers and Soldiers before they march, that it will be expected they will make no objection, if required to cross over to Upper Canada.” Dearborn wanted to be sure that any new troops on the move were aware that they would be put to use beyond the territory of the United States. Without that understanding, “there would be little, or no use in their marching to Niagara.”

Anyway, Smyth, like Van Rensselaer, Hull, and other military commanders, circumvented this possibility by asking for volunteers from the militia to perform limited actions. When Smyth - an unpopular, inexperienced officer who made more enemies than friends - asked for volunteers, he did it with a particularly bellicose proclamation that utilized all of the rhetorical strategies listed above: recalling the shared heroic past of all Americans against British tyranny, connecting masculinity with arms-bearing, making military subservience the boundary line between enlightened masculinity and "degeneration," etc. It's a doozy of a proclamation.

It didn't work. Smyth was unable to collect enough volunteers for the job, and he scrapped the attempt. However, unlike many of the other events of this kind throughout the war, where it was assumed that the militia balked either because of cowardice, constitutional scruples, or other implicitly "degenerate" reasons, we have a response to Smyth's proclamation from the militia in their own words. In summation (because otherwise I'd quote the entire thing at length), the militia said that Smyth was arguing for a particularly military definition of virtue and of masculinity, and that their version of the same had little to do with invasion or military service, but with humble citizenship, farming, and familial devotion. "Our renown," they said bluntly, "is not yours."

The other example is, I think, more amusing, but it reinforces the same struggle over the context of actions in regard to their posterity. After the Battle of Tippecanoe, Colonel John P. Boyd sent a report that was later published, in which he argued that (despite the victory), the militia's ill-discipline and cowardice cost the army a number of valiant soldiers. He described militia running from the lines, hiding under wagons, and generally making a chaotic battle much, much worse.

A few militiamen took exception, especially the printer of the local Indiana newspaper, The Western Sun, Elihu Stout. Stout published a counter-account, and savagely mocked Boyd's claims of valor:

Should there be a second expedition against the Indians, the Man, who by his personal skill and bravery decided the action of the 7th November, and took with his own hands the war club of their great warrior, the magic cup of the Prophet, and the scalp of a Chief, together with a number of other acts of bravery not necessary here to mention, but which will forever immortalize the HERO.

Boyd also took exception, and allegedly showed up at the office of the Sun to confront Stout, who then colorfully described the altercation, outlining the assault in explicitly regular vs. militia terms. It has been argued that this entire affair, the accounts and counter-accounts, the assault and its caricature printed in the paper, was at the heart of a struggle over the reputation of William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Indiana territory (and by extension the commander of the state militia), and his political opponents in Washington, who in this example were represented by the blue-coated regular soldiers, shown to act in the way that whiggish fears had always assumed: heavily armed thugs using force to project their authority over virtuous citizens, represented by Stout, the humble printer.

Memory has always been weaponized, has been turned into barbs and shackles for contemporary use by those with a purpose. Politicizing events is just as pervasive as taking history and turning it into marketing-friendly films or popular histories. It's not necessarily bad, but it should be something that we should be aware of. With enough work, historians can lever out the articles of history that have been so strongly associated with political goals, and can tell a more nuanced version of events that may work its way into the popular understanding. I think that is part of what it happening with historical monuments of the confederacy: enough work has been done to tear away the veneer of "lost cause" mythology that their monuments are no longer popularly valid.

History is and will always be a battleground, and that is just part of why the study of history is so vitally important.

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Luckily, you can read a lot of these primary sources entirely online. Smyth's documents, as well as the letters from Snyder and Dearborn, are in The Documentary History of the Niagara Campaign. THis links to volume 2, but the letters between Snyder and Dearborn are in Volume I, which you can get to by clicking the link on the top left that says "view full cartalogue record."

The Stout/Boyd controversey is similarly digitized, in editions of The Western Sun, starting with the issue of December 4th, 1811.