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The 1619 Project: A Critique Paperback – April 7, 2020
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”When I first weighed in upon the New York Times’ 1619 Project, I was struck by its conflicted messaging. Comprising an entire magazine feature and a sizable advertising budget, the newspaper’s initiative conveyed a serious attempt to engage the public in an intellectual exchange about the history of slavery in the United States and its lingering harms to our social fabric. It also seemed to avoid the superficiality of many public history initiatives, which all too often reduce over 400 complex years of slavery’s history and legacy to sweeping generalizations. Instead, the Times promised detailed thematic explorations of topics ranging from the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 to the politics of race in the present day.
At the same time, however, certain 1619 Project essayists infused this worthy line of inquiry with a heavy stream of ideological advocacy. Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones announced this political intention openly, pairing progressive activism with the initiative’s stated educational purposes.
In assembling these essays, I make no claim of resolving what continues to be a vibrant and ongoing discussion. Neither should my work be viewed as the final arbiter of historical accuracy, though I do evaluate a number of factual and interpretive claims made by the project’s authors. Rather, the aim is to provide an accessible resource for readers wishing to navigate the scholarly disputes, offering my own interpretive take on claims pertaining to areas of history in which I have worked." -- Phil Magness
Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian specializing in the 19th century United States. He is the author of numerous works on the political and economic dimensions of slavery, the history of taxation, and the history of economic thought.
The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.
- Print length148 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateApril 7, 2020
- Dimensions6 x 0.37 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101630692018
- ISBN-13978-1630692018
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- Publisher : American Institute for Economic Research (April 7, 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 148 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1630692018
- ISBN-13 : 978-1630692018
- Item Weight : 8.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.37 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #80,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #172 in Economic History (Books)
- #1,812 in United States History (Books)
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About the author

Phil Magness is a political and economic historian of the "long" 19th century U.S. (1787-1920). His work aims to foster our understanding what Tocqueville and Bastiat described as two of the main policy problems in early American government: Slavery and Tariffs.
Magness' interest in abolitionism encompasses the works of the anti-slavery constitutionalist faction of Gerrit Smith and Lysander Spooner, as well as the little-studied yet historically important black pamphleteer & man of letters John Willis Menard. He is also a specialist in the history of the colonization movement and related attempts to resettle freed slaves abroad, particularly during the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's presidency. His work on trade and tax policy examines the tariff as a problem of political economy in the 19th century U.S., and covers the founding era through the adoption of the Income Tax in 1913 when tariffs ceased to be used as a primary revenue-generating policy.
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I'll let Magness speak for himself:
1.
"In its worst instances, the 1619 Project amounts to an unscholarly mess of historical misrepresentations, economic fallacy, and the explicit anti-capitalist ideological agenda. To the project's further discredit, the Times' editors and main contributors have adopted a dismissive stance in response to substantive criticism, including a refusal to correct documented factual errors among its historical claims" (p. 114).
2.
"In this essay I discuss the development, along with an intentionally understated but revealing correction that it prompted from the newspaper. When contextualized amid the larger debate, this embarrassing incident reveals the ideological nature of the 1619 Project and how the Times prioritization of its political message has harmed and largely discredited its once-promising value as a work of historical interpretation" (p. 125).
3.
When a group of conservative African-Americans academics and journalists launched a competing "1776 Project" in early 2020 to offer a counter-narrative, Hannah-Jones bombarded them with a string of personal attacks, the gist of which amounted to declaring them unworthy of her attention" (p. 130).
This is really quite a fascinating and enlightening critique of the 1619 Project. Not all of it is negative, such as the appraisal of Abraham Lincoln's racial beliefs and hope for African Americans after emancipation (pp. 113-124).
It is likely to introduce readers to several new issues they have not considered before. I found that to be the case for me, even though I am an avid reader of history and the American scene.
Phillip W. Magness of the conservative leaning American Institute for Economic Research has written several articles critiquing the much vaunted, and in reality much idiotic, 1619 Project by the <i>New York Times</i>. Here he collects those writings with a few more. Because some of these essays were first published in other venues, there is much overlap and repetition. Also, the original publications probably did not have footnotes, so footnotes seem to have been added. The footnotes are sloppily and inadequately done, and the citation style for economics is slipshod compared to the Chicago/Turabian standard in history. So, there is that. An editor could have been used, besides the odd footnotes, there were several minor errors in writing, spelling, punctuation, etc.
But, all said, these essays do mostly attack the 1619 Project on proper historical, historiographical, and economic grounds. The main gist is threefold, that the "New Historians of Capitalism" or NHC, those who say that modern capitalism was grounded, founded, and based on chattel slavery of African Americans: (1) do not properly define capitalism, because slavery is NOT capitalism, and they ignore slaveowners who detested free market capitalism; (2) some of the NHC writers use completely faulty economic and statistical evidence to make incorrect points about historical slavery and modern capitalism; and (3) the NHC historians ignore whole swathes of historiography on the economics of slavery, willfully ignorantly, (even to the point of denigrating Fogel and Engerman as "old white guys" who you needn't consider).
I disagree with the author's position on Lincoln and colonization. I think by the Spring of 1865 Lincoln was switching to giving black Americans citizenship and the men voting rights. He can both encourage colonization AND equality for the ones who don't want colonization. Anyway...
There are many good snippets of information here and there. It is good ammunition to fight back against the perversion that is the 1619 Project. Slavery was bad, and an important part of American history, but slavery is not what America is about. This book helps.







