Cogito Ergo Sum: History

by Cinda in Minneapolis

For the last year or so, I’ve been following and reading two American political history historians on YouTube and Substack: Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne B. Freeman. Both are college professors who clearly love history and love to teach. They are also on the front line against efforts to gut American history of topics and events that reflect negatively on this country. No country is perfect. No country is all good. No country hasn’t made mistakes. The study of history, a complete history, an honest history, allows a country to learn from its mistakes and to improve. Perfection isn’t the goal. Improvement and growth are.

 The last time I studied American history, I was a junior in high school. If memory serves me, it was a broad‐based survey from about 1776 through World War II. Almost two hundred years is a lot of history to cover for any country. I confess that at the time I was far more interested in Russian history, and, in fact, the following year I took the Russian history class. I also failed to realize it at the time, but I had been living through a tumultuous period in American history — the Vietnam War, protests nationwide against that war (Kent State), student unrest, political assassinations (Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr.), attempted political assassinations (George Wallace) — and on the brink of the 1972 presidential election that gave us Watergate. I wonder how American history classes teach that period now. I remember it as a scary, painful, and upsetting time coupled with the trials of high school.

 One of the things I’ve learned during the past year is just how much I don’t know about American history. I’ve been fascinated with the Revolutionary War period, the ten years leading up to it, and the aftermath that gave us our Constitution. The progression of the relationship between Great Britain, the monarchy, and the American colonists has shown me something I didn’t know before, i.e., the colonists considered themselves citizens of Great Britain, loyal subjects of the king, and they wanted to remain that way right up until the king and parliament began taxing them without representation in parliament. I’d never read the entire Declaration of Independence before and that was a revelation. So, I’ve begun reading other writings produced during that time, e.g., Common Sense by Thomas Paine.

 I knew very little about the Revolutionary War itself besides certain highlights like Paul Revere’s midnight ride to warn the colonists, and the first Battles of Concord and Lexington — “the shot heard ‘round the world.” The war had already begun when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence — George Washington was fighting the British around New York City. We celebrate July 4 as the birthday of the Declaration, and it was a beastly hot day in Philadelphia when the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain by approving the text Jefferson had written. They didn’t all sign it until August 2, 1776. I knew that the war of independence was a long one, but hadn’t known that African slaves were given the option of freedom if they would fight with the British or that Native Americans fought alongside the colonists. While the French supported the colonists, German mercenaries fought with the British. It was all a lot messier than I’d ever imagined, and not nearly as heroic, underscoring the notion of human fallibility on all sides. The November 2025 issue of The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2025/11/) offered different perspectives on the colonists’ struggles and the British perspective at the time.

 I’m reminded of the saying that history is written by the victors. I’d add the corollary that history is written by those in power at any given time. American society has been a staunchly patriarchal one throughout its history, so men have been the writers, usually white men. Any history about women’s contributions to our society or African Americans’ or Native Americans’ or immigrants’ has been told through a white male filter, if at all. What’s been interesting to discover has been the writings and actual contributions of these groups of people, their courage, their intelligence, and their loyalty to the country and to American democracy.

 Another important aspect I’ve been learning is that there are nearly endless stories of individuals throughout history that usually are not recorded. On the surface, this is understandable when a history spans centuries. But when these stories are discovered and published, they need to be respected equally with the times in which they occurred or the events to which they are connected. I remember visiting Gettysburg as a sixth grader and being astounded by the stories of the people who lived around the battlefield, as well as the blow‐by‐blow account of the battle. This experience prepared me for when I studied in Vienna, Austria, as a college junior and lived with an Austrian woman full of stories about World War II. She told me how the Viennese reacted to the approach of the Soviet army and how all the rumors of them plundering civilian homes were true. They stole everything from her, including her husband, who wasn’t returned until 1952, a broken man. The Soviets marked each building — markings that I could still see — that they had searched and plundered.

 Studying history, or even just reading history, gives me a fuller picture of my country and my personal history in it. I’m glad to have discovered active historians on Substack and YouTube that can guide me in my wanderings. I’ve learned much more in the last year about America’s early history, and I can fit one of my ancestors into it — my great‐great‐great‐grandfather Solomon Yager, who fought in the Revolutionary War from New York. He was a farmer from Rensselaer County near Albany. His great-grandfather immigrated from Germany (then Prussia) with his wife and first two children around 1710. Learning about life in America in the 1700s has given me a better picture of these ancestors and what their lives were like. History rocks!