Examples Of Bias In American History

Throughout history there are many different perspectives, but what they all have in common is that the man narrating wishes to gain from his perspective and he will manipulate his words to form bias.

There are three forms of Bias in American History, first and most easily identifiable is propaganda. An occurrence of propaganda is the two tellings of the battle of sand creek. Chivington states that the casualties for women and children were very low. He went so far as to say that the greater number of children and wives escaped. In this account, all-in­-all a battle with few signs of a massacre, causing the reader to see general chivington as the leader of an honorable battle. Chief Black kettle’s account of the same battle was very contradictive. He mentions how a girl age of six was shot while she was carrying a white flag to signal surrender and peace. He also states that many children had died in their mothers arms. The difference is astounding, and the truth can not be something in the middle but rather one or the other. General Chivington used propaganda to make his massacre seem as honorable as possible, and to glorify
himself as much as he could. Black Kettle went into detail about this tragedy to capture the hearts of Americans. While, of course Black Kettle’s account is true, The main concern is that he did try to reap what little benefit he could.
The second form of manipulation is omission. An example of omission is Thomas Jefferson’s slavery controversy. On the plus side everyone wants to believe is Jefferson's famous line “all men are created equal” and that Jefferson was one of the great founding fathers who abolished slavery.
From what we know Jefferson was anti slavery, but he never really fought for it. However that is not all of it, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. He had a slave woman with whom he bore children with. He also was in-debt at one point of his life, and he used slaves to increase his income. Thomas Jefferson never openly admitted that he had slaves, but he openly stated that he was against slavery. This benefits him as the full personality of Thomas Jefferson can only be found by digging deeper, rather than him being the perfect founding forefather that we thought. Many people believe that Thomas Jefferson was a truly great man, and while he did do good, the people of today are not fully aware of the bad that Thomas Jefferson was part
of.

The final form of bias or manipulation are the half truths of American history. The Emancipation
Proclamation is a law that abolished slavery. “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. Surely this is the law that rid America of slavery, wrong.... There was a loophole that President Lincoln was well aware of, The phrase “in rebellion of the United States” caused about 1 million blacks to be slaves legally. Lincoln as the president of the U.S.A. did not want not push his luck, so he had to give leeway for the slave industry. But then why were we told that the Emancipation proclamation abolished slavery? Because technically it did, it was what lead to the future freedom of slaves. So we were not given the full truth, but why? The full image that Abraham Lincoln was the man who truly abolished slavery wanted to be preserved in the youth. Instead we were given a half-truth which gave Abraham Lincoln benefit.