Niall Ferguson Critical Essay | Critical Review by Charles Paul Freund

Critical Review by Charles Paul Freund

SOURCE: “Split History,” in Reason, Vol. 31, No. 7, December, 1999, p. 50.

In the following review of Virtual History, Freund examines the function and application of counterfactuals in contemporary political discourse and historical scholarship.

After the historical, comes the conditional: That’s how Robert E. Lee lost a battle this year in Virginia, where things had otherwise gone so well for the general since the unpleasantness in Appomattox that he’d become a rare American example of honor traduced by fate, of the peculiar fulfillments of the tragic. Yet in June, just as officials in Richmond were placing a Lee mural as a tribute along a new James River walkway, Lee’s fate was recast. A single statement by Richmond City Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin ended a widening debate over the mural’s propriety, and resulted in what press accounts called the painting’s “instant removal.” “If Lee had won,” asserted El-Amin, “I’d still be...
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