We’re doing some of the final edits on Differ We Must, which tells Lincoln’s life story through his meetings with people who disagreed with him.
Some people have been sent galleys! Those are preliminary versions of the book, like a beta test. The real thing is out October 3 and, I hope, speaks to our fractious time: Lincoln meets with a wide range of people who differ with him. In a divided nation, he’s not likely to change many people’s basic beliefs: but can he draw them into his coalition, or at least get some use out of them? We see him building support before the Civil War, and leading the country through that war.
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Some of the tweaks involve exact word choices, including for a chapter about Lincoln’s meeting in 1863 with a delegate from the Cheyenne Nation. The chapter includes references to a war the United States waged against the Cheyenne, whose homeland covered much of modern Colorado.
In the galleys, at someone’s suggestion, I did not refer to Cheyenne fighters as “warriors,” instead choosing more universal words such as “soldiers” or “guerilla fighters.” It can be useful to write about the Plains tribes using the same terms as we would other societies, which did many of the same things, like going to war.
But when I shared my language with a Cheyenne historian who’s helping me, he suggested reverting to “warriors,” which is a more common term in that context. In his mind it was less confusing.
Our discussion brings to mind a survey of Indians taken in the 1990’s, before the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. It found that more people preferred “Indian” to the purportedly more correct term, “Native American.” (Many people have told me they prefer to be called by their tribe or nation when the context allows; and that is what I try to do.)
I think a lot about these choices in my day job. Modern-day news organizations constantly debate what to call people (are they "homeless people" or "people experiencing homelessness"? The AP style guide says the former is fine).
These discussions can get heated, because they relate to the larger cultural battleground over language. Many people are happy to identify someone as they prefer. But it gets more contentious when someone labels other people, and bakes an argument into the label. People across the political spectrum try to win arguments this way. A classic example is of a heavily armed man who opens fire in a distant city: is he a “terrorist” or a “freedom fighter”? Your choice announces who is right or wrong, and demands that your reader agree.
My preference, when I can manage it, is to turn down the heat, choose words that are clear, and avoid words that tell you what to think.
Differ We Must involves a special complexity because I'm writing about the past. Especially on subjects like race, a lot of today’s common usage was not common in the mid-1800’s. In some cases, our contemporary language is different than in 2015, when I first published a history!
I adopt some updated usage when I am persuaded that it works. For example, it seems better to talk of “enslaved people” rather than “slaves,” and there is no loss of clarity. They were people, not just a status. But I try not to “ban” words. Many original sources use language that we would not, and where necessary I quote the sources. Leaving out those sources would risk airbrushing some of the characters. I do try not to be gratuitous about it, and keep all language in context.
The goal is to reflect the lives of people in the mid-1800’s so that, in a sense, they can speak to our time. It would be unwise of me to reverse that formula, and start telling the dead what they should have said.
As we make the final touches, I don’t think Differ contains many contentious words, but does examine ideas that many modern-day citizens would find egregious. Some of the people Lincoln met were slaveowners or their allies. It’s darkly illuminating, a cautionary tale, to hear them come up with arguments to defend their political or economic interests. It’s also important to the story, because Lincoln and others had to answer those arguments. Many opinions of antislavery figures were also backward, by our standards. Almost the only figure in the book whose arguments fully stand up today is Frederick Douglass. Even his thinking evolved over time.
That points to the book’s big question. In a democracy there are many people with clashing ideas, including some we’d consider terrible. But they all have the vote. How do you organize them to make progress?
If it works, the book will put you in the room with people with wildly different perspectives; they confront each other with America on the line. I look forward to sharing it with you—it’s right here. And you will tell me if you differ.