Professional historian or professional Tar Heel (choose)

The ongoing revision of North Carolina’s Civil War talking points brings to mind the advice R.D.W. Connor, the state’s most prominent historian, gave editor Robert B. House in 1923 on how to put out the new North Carolina Historical Review:

“Don’t let professional North Carolinians and professional Southerners ruin the quarterly with ‘patriotic’ articles… Make it a real scholarly historical publication. Avoid old hackneyed subjects — Mecklenburg Declaration, Regulators, First at Bethel, number of troops in Confed. Army, etc.!”