Historians need both those things. The hard facts on weather data, commodity prices, and voting records say exactly what was happening, but they can't tell a hi

Historians need both those things. The hard facts on weather data, commodity prices, and voting records say exactly what was happening, but they can't tell a historian why it happened. The reasons behind voting records are inherently emotional, subjective, messy things which can't be boiled down to a series of hard facts. Those reasons are also the important bit of history, because they're what allow us to (hopefully, we're not doing a great job of it lately) avoid making the same mistakes our ancestors did.