This report from the Washington Post is from July 5, so it’s not new, but I wasn’t aware of the issue until I saw yesterday’s Doonesbury cartoon by Garry Trudeau (below). The words in Trudeau’s strip are taken directly from new Texas school standards that will begin this fall.
Most of us know that Texas is constantly trying to revise public-school textbooks to reflect a conservative Republican viewpoint. They did it earlier to evolution, trying to sneak creationism into the biology curriculum, but ultimately failed. (Creationist dentist Don McLeroy, the head of the Texas Board of Education during those dark days, will be reading this piece and will try to leave a comment!)
But conservatives’ efforts are also directed at history and social studies, and here they’ve succeeded. Texas has in fact severely redacted the history of slavery and Southern secession in its new textbooks. As the Post reports:
Five million public school students in Texas will begin using new social studies textbooks this fall based on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.
And when it comes to the Civil War, children are supposed to learn that the conflict was caused by “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery” — written deliberately in that order to telegraph slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict, according to some members of the state board of education.
Slavery was a “side issue to the Civil War,” said Pat Hardy, a Republican board member, when the board adopted the standards in 2010. “There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.”
That’s bogus. And so what the students get to read is slanted, which, of course, will condition many of them for life. After all, the teacher said it!
Nowhere is the rejection of slavery’s central role more apparent than in Texas, where elected members of the state board of education revised state social studies standards in 2010 to correct for what they said was a liberal slant.
Students in Texas are required to read the speech Jefferson Davis gave when he was inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America, an address that does not mention slavery. But students are not required to read a famous speech by Alexander Stephens, Davis’s vice president, in which he explained that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the cornerstone of its new government and “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
Professional historians have decried this form of right-wing bowdlerizing, but it’s been fruitless:
Southern states made that clear in their declarations of independence from the union, said James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. Slavery’s primary role in driving the Civil War is a matter of scholarly consensus, he said.
“The War happened only because of the determination of the leadership of eleven states to defend the right of their residents to own other human beings,” Grossman wrote in an e-mail. “The Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery.”
. . . Texas’s social studies standards are more politicized than any other state, said Jeremy A. Stern, a historian who reviewed state standards for the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2011. He gave Texas’s standards a D and wrote that the board was “molding the telling of the past to justify its current views.”
The use of “states’ rights” as a euphemism for both slavery and segregation is something I’ve seen repeatedly in my lifetime. It was the mantra used by racists like George Wallace of Alabama and Lester Maddox of Georgia when opposing the Civil Rights Acts of the Sixties, and when trying to prevent blacks from attending state universities. But everybody knew then—and knows now—what it really means. It’s the most odious of euphemisms, for it recasts racism as a noble cause.
James W. Loewen , a sociologist who wrote the best-selling book “Lies My Teacher Told Me ,” says textbooks perpetuate myths about the Civil War in order to avoid offending state textbook-adoption panels. Nineteen states, including almost all of those in the South, adopt textbooks at the state level, according to the Association of American Publishers.
“I think we are at last seeing the de-Confederatization of America,” Loewen said. “And I’m hoping that we will see some action towards de-Confederatizing our textbooks.”
Loewen, who has reviewed many textbooks, said he has found many errors and omissions that help de-emphasize the role slavery played in causing the war. Among the biggest and most common problems, he said, is textbooks’ failure to quote from key primary sources [JAC: see below—Trudeau is up on this issue]: the Southern states’ declarations of secession, which made clear that they were leaving the union to protect white citizens’ right to own slaves.
Now some scholars (surprisingly, one is David. M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian, argue that the Texas textbooks’ take on slavery is fine, and some Texas teachers (one is quoted) do emphasize the role of slavery in the Civil War. But we can’t count on Texas teachers to correct there textbooks. You can see that in this scathing Doonesbury cartoon that led me to read about the stuff given above:
I should add that the Post hosts a website that collects all Doonesbury cartoons and is updated daily. I suspect Trudeau will do more on the Texas controversy.
UPDATE: As expected, creationist McLeroy tried to leave a comment here, and I reproduce it below:
Yes, Dr. Coyne, your are correct; I would like to comment.
First, we did not wish to sneak creationism into the biology curriculum; what we wished to do we accomplished. According to “Science” magazine, we struck “a major blow to the teaching of evolution” by just having Texas students look into evolutionary explanations for stasis in the fossil record and the complexity in the cell. As predicted, the explanations in our textbooks are incredibly weak. This is why I was in favored the adoption of the new textbooks two years ago.
Second, Emma Brown’s story in the Washington Post takes the situation of the horrible shooting of parishioners in Charleston to throw gasoline on the fire. The major premise of her story is absolutely false. Texas has not downplayed slavery – not in our standards or in the textbooks. Slavery is abominable as is abortion is today. Yes, Pat Hardy said what she said. But the key point, it was Texas’ social studies curriculum experts of whom Pat Hardy is one, that wrote the standards under attack. It was not the board’s conservative Republicans.
h/t: Stash Krod
Texas governor Abbott recently appointed Christian home-schooler advocate Donna Bahorich to chair the Texas BOE, and she’s also a graduate of Liberty University. So public school kids might be better off staying home and reading Doonesbury instead.
Is there a more complete citation for Donald Kennedy’s endorsement of TX standards (sic)?
I haven’t found any information on the Intertoobz…
Well the Washington Post quotes David Kennedy who is a Stanford History professor emeritus not Donald Kennedy who is a Stanford Biology professor emeritus and former university president.
I note that David Kennedy is saying his textbook (American Pageant) has not compromised. “I would defy anybody who read our text to conclude that we were unaware of slavery as the cause of the Civil War.” And apparently this textbook is not approved in Alabama for failure to meet that state’s standards (apparently having to do with its descriptions of 19th century religious revivals).
Two issues
1. Whether Texas history standards are lacking
2. Whether any or all Texas approved history textbooks have bowed.
More worrisome is that some textbook publishers are tailoring texts to meet state standards; something much easier to do in the days of digital printing. Fine if the tailoring is to give more information on that particular state (e.g., use the Texas secession statements in Texas, Georgia in Georgia, etc.). Not fine if it is to drop or distort controversial topics.
In other words is what Texas receiving what the authors’ wrote?
PCC, you need to figure out which Kennedy said what regarding slavery, and/or take down the reference to Donald Kennedy. I have not found a source for Donald Kennedy ever saying anything publicly on this topic.
Yes, I’ve fixed it, but please don’t tell me what I need to do. A simple comment will suffice.
I’ll grant that the civil war was about states’ rights. The right to own slaves, that is!
Yep exactly. They were opposed to the Federal government having the power to say they couldn’t own slaves.
And they weren’t happy about Northern states states’ rights to oppose Southern states.
Beat me to it.
b&
It’s similar to the claim that the ability to discriminate against gays and atheists is about “religious freedom.” In both cases the rules and rights generally granted to a personal household are extended into a wide and diverse public area, as if a store or a state was just like your own home. Ain’t nobody can tell you what to do in your own damn home with your own damn property.
Yep, my ex-stepfather “owned” a campground, but he couldn’t stick his finger up his posterior when it came to getting anything done. His youngest son made the critical difference in getting done what needed to be done, but was hamstrung by his father, who liked to remind his youngest son, “I own this damn place.”
I’m reminded that owning a Picasso, or some marble statuary which belongs back in Greece, is not the same as creating it.
Ding-ding-ding!
Of course it was about states’ rights. Southern states had so much respect for the rights of other states that they had laws passed that allowed slavery in the new territories and forced officials in Free States to give a hearing to slaveholders without a jury. Also mandated that courts and police in Free States cooperate in the apprehension of fugitive slaves.
Good additional info!
Yep, I’d like to see how Texas tap-dances around the Fugitive Slave Act, if slavery wasn’t such a big cause of the U.S. Civil War.
(Boy, Victoria, BC, sure looked awfully appealing when we visited the first week of June, vis-à-vis Texas and anywhere else minimizing slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Though I’ve read somewhere where PM Harper is trying to keep scientists from revealing their data. So much to keep up with, as opposed to being – as was said in the U.S. Navy – “fat, dumb and happy.”)
No, it was much more than that! Yes, that was part of it.
The Slave States (boldly) demanded:
1. Continuation of slavery of African Americans
2. The ability to take those slave to any state in the US as there continue to use them as slaves in any manner they wished (in essence, forcing slavery on the Northern states)
3. Transit of slaves across free states
4. All new states had to be slave states (!!) regardless of what the population wanted *
5. They wanted to legally bind every citizen in Northern states to actively pursue escaped slaves and return them to their slave holders, on pain of punishment in the courts for being even insufficiently zealous in their execution of these duties.
I can’t recommend James McPherson’s The Battle Cry of Freedom highly enough. A Pulitzer Prize winning single-volume history of the US Civil War.
Anyone who says the Civil War wasn’t about slavery is either lying or ignorant. If they are a GOP politician, you can put your money confidently on: Lying.
(* There was plenty of murder, intimidation, and vote-stuffing (often by invasion of non-local people to vote — illegally) to swing things towards slavery. There was some of this on the anti-slavery side but far less.)
More important information! One wonders how many of those “details” are in the Texas textbooks.
I have a Ph.D. in American history, majoring in the Civil War era. In the historical field there are many controversies, no different than most other disciplines. However, amongst reputable historians of the era, there is no doubt as to why the South seceded: it feared (rightly or wrongly) that the Lincoln administration represented a threat to the existence of slavery. This was already clear to me as a graduate student more than 40 years ago. Hundreds of books have been published that support this argument. I would be so bold as to say that the cause of secession is an established truth as much as evolution is in science.
This issue has inspired to me add a corollary to the famous Hitchens quip that religion poisons everything. Mine is that right-wing politics poisons everything.
Historian,
I think you are right on target. The part about it I always found ironic, was that Lincoln stated (several times I believe) that he wasn’t a supporter of ending slavery where it already existed, only in preventing it’s spread into new territories. I think the rebellious states were correct in thinking that as these new territories became free states it would eventually lead to Constitutional amendments outlawing slavery. But that would have probably taken decades. Instead, by entering into rebellion, they managed to end slavery in about 5 years.
Yes, Lincoln stated many times that he would take no action against slavery in the states where it already existed because he had no constitutional authority to do so. He, like most antislavery advocates(as opposed to abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison), opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories, which the federal government did control. If the expansion of slavery was contained, they believed that at some future, hazy time slavery would wither way.
As is well known, in April 1861 Lincoln used military force to quash the rebellion because his stated goal at the beginning of the war was to preserve the union. Emancipation became a war aim well after a year the war started. Also, ironically, if the rebellion had been defeated early on, the South would have been back in the Union with slavery intact!
Very well said!
Lincoln was also particularly upset with the Kansas-Nebraska Act which had blown the lid off the 1850 Compromise. In general the south believed that if slavery could not advance, they were doomed.
Also, the southern states, beginning with South Carolina started leaving the union soon after the election of Lincoln but it was several months still, before Lincoln took office in March of 1861. Based on what took place during this period, I would say it was a good possibility there would have been no Civil War without Lincoln. The other politicians would have simply let the south go as Buchanan was doing. Lincoln was the only guy who said no, and that secession was illegal.
What the southern states are doing with history and other subjects is ignorance and it’s sad.
Randy Schenck makes a good point. When discussing why the Civil War happened, it is necessary to consider two issues (often erroneously conflated): 1) why the South seceded (the threat to slavery perceived emanating from Lincoln) and 2)the military response by Lincoln to suppress the rebellion.
It was no sure thing that Lincoln would win the 1860 Republican nomination. See Doris Kearn Goodwin’s Lincoln:Team of Rivals. William Seward was Lincoln’s primary opponent for the nomination (there were others). The South (or at least the seven states of the lower South) may have seceded if any Republican won the election. But, it is speculation at best as to whether any of the other candidates would have used the military to end the rebellion. It is fair to say that American history would have been quite different, if Lincoln, a failed politician until 1860, had not won the election.
Historian, a question. And I don’t mean to ask for a long answer.
In your opinion, was (is) secession of a state from the U.S. legal?
Prior to the Civil War there were some in the South who claimed that secession was legal under the compact theory of government. That is, the states voluntarily joined the Union and could voluntarily leave. Almost all the people in the North argued that it wasn’t the states that made the Union, but the people. They referred to the preamble of the constitution which starts with “we the people of the United States”, not “we the states.” Thus, once in the Union a state could not leave. If Lincoln and the North did not believe this, there would be no justification for not letting the South go.
The war settled the issue. Secession by a state is not legal. Only a few right-wing wackos challenge this.
I hope this helps, Newish.
I’m not Historian (or a historian) but will venture an answer: No, secession of a state wasn’t (and isn’t) legal.
The U.S. Constitution contains no provision authorizing a state, or states, to leave the union. And the forerunner of the Constitution — the Articles of Confederation — make express (including in their title) that the states had bound together to form a “perpetual union.”
(Proviso: Others, including perhaps some actual historians, may have varying mileage on this question.)
Thank you for your reply.
If, by, “ignorance,” you mean, “shameless propaganda,” and, “sad,” “evil outrage,” I’m in complete agreement with you.
b&
My imperfect, subjective impression is that all South Carolina had to do was forebear from firing on Fort Sumter. But they just couldn’t handle the fact that Obama – I mean Lincoln – had gotten elected.
See my comment 23 below. This is not quite an accurate statement about Lincoln, and the truth undercuts the “it wasn’t slavery” claim even more.
NPR report on cenfederate flag, etc.,July 2015
Robert Siegel interviews James Loewen
…
LOEWEN: The most important single document has to be the first one, which is from the state of South Carolina, and it’s called Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.
Nothing could be more on point than that, and they immediately refer to the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution – no person held of service of labor in one state under the laws of thereof, et cetera. And then they list the states that upset them. They list some 16 states, from Maine and New Hampshire down to Wisconsin and Iowa, that have enacted laws that mess around with this fugitive slave act. They then accuse the Northern states of other little bitty states’ rights. For instance, they accuse New York of no longer allowing what’s called temporary slavery, namely the ability of Southern plantation owners to go see Broadway plays and bring along their cook. New York is now saying, we’re trying to run a free state here, if you bring your cook, she’s going to go free.
SIEGEL: So there’s no doubt that it’s about slavery, is what they’re complaining about in South Carolina.
LOEWEN: It’s about slavery and it’s against states’ rights.
SIEGEL: Yeah because New York, under states’ rights, would be able to do as you choose.
LOEWEN: That’s right.
…
It is also very obvious due to the fact that from 1850 until the war started the only subject within the Congress of the U.S. was Slavery. It was almost the only thing on everyone’s mind. The country was consumed.
Sic semper Amuricun Exceptionalism.
And this is precisely why the discipline of history is important, and why Alex Rosenberg is so wrong about the importance of history in his Atheist’s Guide to Reality.
My reading of Rosenberg on history is that he calls it ‘bunk’ because history has no predictive authority. I doubt he’d disagree with you concerning the need to get at the facts of the past and keep them stable over generations, so that judgments such as ‘the cause of the Civil War’ was slavery are as sound as we can make them. But I think he’s right that knowing history factually in no way informs us of what will or even may happen in the future. That is, history is not a science, nor are the historians’ ‘events’ a proper basis for a theory. [pace Asimov’s ‘psychohistory’]
So often we hear one or another version of Santayana’s famous dictum (paraphrased) ‘those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’ Probably true, I’d say. But what of individuals, nations, societies that DO know their history? How does this insure that they will not repeat it?
I often suspect that in some cases, particularly from the more conservative ranges of the political landscape, that people do want to repeat their history. In this case, I’m sure there are Texan politicians (and some of their constituents) who would like to see the return of Jim Crow laws, the suppression of those damned uppity niggers, and eventually a return of flat-out slavery.
Exactly right. And the “we don’t want to repeat that” history lesson for the sheet-heads isn’t that slavery was very, very, very bad; it’s that they never should have surrendered to the nigger-loving north. If they hadn’t been tricked into defeat, the White House wouldn’t be Black right now. Really galls them to have a muddy farm animal putting on airs and giving them orders.
b&
Is my sketchy knowledge of American history seriously flawed? I thought it was a pretty straight case of the North having more industry and simply out-shooting the South. Or do southern revisionists have a problem with phrases like “we were beaten fair and square”?
Yeah, that is pretty much correct. As Shelby Foote said, The North fought the war with one hand tied behind its back.
As soon as Lincoln could promote men of action (rather than by seniority*) such as Grant and Sherman to senior Army commands, the North showed what it could really do. The South was hopelessly out built, out-infrastructured, and out produced by the North.
Another key point was the failure of the South to gain Allies (or at least supporters) in any European capitols or in London. They tried very hard (as did the Lincoln Administration.) The British leaned towards the South; but the pragmatists in the government would not go for it.
(* The senior Army generals (especially McClellan) had a lot of political clout — McClellan was a presidential candidate in 1864.)
There is (still) a strong strain in the South that they were done wrong by the politicians (or whatever) and their army couldn’t be beaten (ha!). (Much like the sentiments in Germany in the 9120s and 30s.)
The South had some good generals, no doubt; but as soon as the North got some (hard-fighting ones) into command positions, the tide turned. As it had to, just based on men, material, food, and rail/river control.
In addition to jblilie’s accurate summation, I’d just like to answer your last question (“Or do southern revisionists have a problem with phrases like we were beaten fair and square?”) with the observation that these are people who sincerely believe that those with genetic predispositions to reduced melanin expression are superior to all other humans based on interpretative readings of a book that says that you can get stripy goats by breeding them in front of a picket fence.
b&
If you breed them in front of a picket fence for enough generations (in the presence of predators) then natural selection says you will indeed get sripy goats…
(but I don’t know where the ‘oly book says that)
cr
That was the trick
Well, if the Texan politicians decide they want to secede, as a good experimentalist, I’m in favor of seeing what happens if they do!
Only if they promise to take Oklahoma and Louisiana with them.
Yes. You have hit upon the definition of “reactionary.”
Very good. 😀
Yes, well said Ken.
And Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about it … “Glory days …”
I think Springsteen was expressing more of a desire to relive, not necessarily repeat, those days. I, at least, see a minor but significant difference between those two. Nostalgia to me is not quite the same as the conservative’s rose-colored-glasses view of the good ol’ days. 🙂
Yeah, the Boss is pretty far from “reactionary.” I like his music a lot; I like his politics even more.
The reason that, as you say, “history has no predictive authority” is because large-scale events as they occur are chaotic — as chaotic as that paradigmatically chaotic system: the weather.
But, as in the case of the weather, with careful study, we can observe patterns, suss out likely causes and effects, and draw lessons from history.
Yes, the joyful joker of the Eagles had something good to say about that (he was describing his own life), and I paraphrase: “When you’re going through it, it’s all chaos and shit flying at you from every direction. But when you look back at it, it looks like a finely-crafted gem stone.”
The joyful joker = Joe Walsh.
Thanks for the ID–I wasn’t sure…
Joe Walsh is my homeboy. My buddies and I used to go to a club, one that would let teenagers in, to see The James Gang every chance we got. Funk #49 was our anthem.
But we can’t count on Texas teachers to correct there textbooks.
Irony for breakfast. Their vs. there
Even the Texas war of independence (from Mexico) had a lot to do with slavery. Slavery was illegal in Mexico.
I wonder what the Texas textbooks say about that.
Yep. And IIRC, Congress took about 10 years to ratify Texas statehood after they requested it, mostly because Texas was adamant about being a slave state and the northern representatives didn’t want another slave state.
I remember reading that the Mexican-American War was also at least partially caused by slavery. Southern congressmen supported the war in hopes of gaining new slave territories in the south, to prevent or delay the north being able to outvote them on the slavery issue in Congress.
Yes they did, you are correct. That was also the spur for the US involvement in the Central American states and Cuba (to start with).
Now that, “The deed is done”, those behind this will not bother to listen to any argument against it, no matter how rational or or how much it’s based on original documents. They know, if perhaps unconsciously, that it’s far easier to insert an idea into someone’s head than it is to later try to revise it, once inserted. As one German anti-Nazi activist said of Hitler, in the early 1930s: “It’s too late- he’s got the children.”
Since many Nazis in the general public quickly backtracked after the war and often went through mental hoops explaining how they never really fell for it, I’m not sure that’s true.
One does realise, of course, that all of Nazi Germany’s actions were simply an exercise of State’s Rights? In this case a sovereign state. How can anyone outside criticise that?
[/sarcasm], in case it’s not obvious.
cr
On a related note, ‘historian’ David Barton’s campaign against Thomas Jefferson (largely because of his religious skepticism) is gaining traction in the current climate since the purge of the stars and bars. Democrats have started to flee from him (in at least one case, removing his name from an major annual event). You don’t get rid of history by covering it up.
Wait — what?
How the fuck can you even think about fleeing from the author of the Declaration of Independence? Wouldn’t that be like Christians fleeing from Paul?
b&
Not sure but I think jay meant Democrats are fleeing from “‘historian’ David Barton.”
At least, I hope so.
I would hope so, too….
b&
Unfortunately not. See this article, for instance.
Hmm, yes I see.I didn’t see too much in that article that I thought was unreasonable. A hint or two suggesting how it could get out of hand as these things often do though.
But, renaming dinners after people that more closely align with current societal values and changing the faces on some currency doesn’t seem troublesome to me. I do absolutely agree that one can appreciate the accomplishments of historical figures without condoning morals they exhibited that are considered bad today but where within the norm in their day. I also think it is vital that our histories don’t try to downplay or hide that kind of thing.
I would imagine that some of Jefferson’s property fled, or thought of fleeing, on more than one occasion.
Yep. Andrew Jackson too. There’s also a movement to get the names of slave-owning founders off of schools, etc. Seems like they’re going a bit overboard to me. You can appreciate the accomplishments of historical figures without condoning the morals of their day…
Indeed. To do otherwise is lying.
Lying to them is no way to prepare young people for the world.
They’re not preparing a future generation of citizens. They’re breeding replacement cannon fodder.
b&
There’s definitely something in that! 🙁
Meh. What they name their dinners is entirely up to them, and I don’t see it as trying to edit or remove history. Democrats aren’t trying to remove Jefferson and Jackson from the history books or downplay their role in US history in school curricula – and that’s what matters most. Not Dem party dinner event names.
I would only add that to consider Jefferson and the politics of his party as being the beginnings of the democratic party is a bit of a stretch. Jackson yes, but not Jefferson.
I should also quote a very good historian, Joseph J. Ellis who said — Viewing and judging the founding generation through the lens of our own values is inherently presumptive and presentistic, much like evaluating the child-rearing practices of indigenous tribes in Samoa by the standards of Dr. Spock.
Does Mr. Ellis hold that same opinion with regard to Henry David Thoreau and other contemporary abolitionists? Or are they also too far removed from the time of the Founders?
A classic instance of presentism.
Were there such a thing as an afterlife, Jefferson would have much to answer for regarding slavery. (As he himself said: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”)
Jefferson, above all the framers, knew that this “peculiar institution” was inconsistent with the nation’s founding principles — yet he (unlike other slaveholding founders like Washington) refused to manumit his human chattel, even upon his death.
But his getting one such huge thing wrong is no reason to run from all that he got right.
Yes, that’s spot-on.
I’m a big fan of Jefferson. Enlightenment man (as my super-hero). But, yes, very flawed — as are all humans.
His severe financial difficulties (self-induced) may in part explain why he did not free his slaves.
It was a time for rising up against the absurdity of monarchy (and inherited power). Jefferson skewered it beautifully. (Along with Tom Paine.)
The founders had to have understood that slavery did not comport with the words of either the Declaration or the Constitution. But they used the trick of all despots: Declare the oppressed to be less than human. I’m sure they really believed that (at least most of the Southerners.)
If the issue of slavery had been tackled in 1776 – 1791, the US would never have come to be; and maybe the UK would have picked us off piecemeal.
(And then we’d be speaking English now! Er, … wait .. uh.)
😀
Sometimes we go too far in the other direction nowadays-always so eager to suss out human failings in personal lives that we dissuade otherwise visionary leaders–or actually drum them out of contention.
It does save having to give a “nuanced” discussion in, say, a classroom discussion or lecture, if everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy (and hence not talked about).
But that’s no way to understand history. My favourite example is: yes, Galileo was a jerk and likely not too much fun if you rubbed him the wrong way. So what? We can still recognize his accomplishments and also be concerned and outraged how he was threatened, etc.
I’m reminded of that bumper sticker: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”
Coincidentally, I saw this video just the other day. Col. Ty Seidule, head of the History Department at West Point, arguing that the Civil War was most definitely caused by slavery.
There is also an excellent short book that examines the secession conventions to explore the avowed causes of the separation (hint: slavery), by Charles Drew called Apostles of Disunion. The language of the conventions and declarations make clear that it was slavery that the southern states cared about.
Yes, also saw that good video.
Sub
One of our neighbors is working on a movie here to be released next Spring. ‘The Free State of Jones’ is based on a true story about a band of Mississippi Civil War soldiers who rebelled and fought against the Confederacy. Their leader (played by Matthew McConaughey) married an ex-slave, and they attempted to form their own free interracial community near Jones County, MS. My neighbor is from Jones County (also a Ph.D in history), and he says research for the film has been difficult because many records from the period recording land sales, marriages, etc. have been ‘misplaced’. It will be interesting to see what Texas makes of this story when it comes out.
Col. Ty Seidule, head of the department of history at West Point, makes it clear that the Civil War was about slavery.
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/11/was_the_civil_war_fought_over_slavery_heres_the_video_to_show_idiots_who_think_the_answer_is_no/
And I just noticed that DrBrydon already posted this.
Sub
From the Don McLeroy update:
LOL Don you lack reading comprehension. Pat Hardy is a conservative republican; this is even stated in the article.
As an aside, I deplore McLeroy’s attempt to correlate slavery and abortion. There are many arguments why abortion, or rather the right to choose, is a positive thing. I don’t describe it as abominable.
Slavery, on the other hand, cannot be defended under any circumstances.
Sorry, no intention of derailing this thread, but the comment is there.
I don’t think it’s a derailment. Leroy said it and Prof CC printed it.
I’m presuming the rest of Leroy’s statement was intended to sound reasonable. If he can’t resist dropping that little bit of ‘fuck you all’ into the middle of it – because he must know how that will go down in this list – then I guess we can figure out how much his views are worth.
cr
(I know that was a bit weak. Trying hard not to use the words that naturally came to mind… Roolz and that…)
Couldn’t agree more, Geoff.
I noted it too and was waiting to see if anyone else commented.
Abortion and slavery are by no means equivalent, in any way, let alone abominableness.
Abortion, in any of its forms, natural miscarriage or procedure to help the life and health of a women, is not abominable.
The guy is just demonstrating, among a number of different levels of ignorance, that he does not really have any idea of just how abominable slavery really was/is.
I would suggest that he doesn’t really believe slavery was abominable.
I should have used his name.
It seems to me, by the way Don McLeroy phrased his condemnation of slavery that he in fact does not understand how abominable slavery was/is.
It may be the case that Don McLeroy does not really believe slavery was abominable.
Wow, that Texas secession document is quite something! I didn’t know about it before this post.
I bet these bits don’t get quoted that often by the Religious Right:
“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color–a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.”
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
“That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; …”
Useful material for the next time that someone says that Christianity emancipated the slaves.
As is Susan Jacoby’s book Freethinkers.
Both sides in the argument quoted scripture. Which really tells you something about the usefulness of “scripture” in any sort of serious decision making!
If you can use it argue both sides on the issue of slavery, it’s entirely worthless as a guide to morality.
“beneficent and patriarchal”
Hm! That’s a curious juxtaposition!
Given the number of people who believe in religions, we probably shouldn’t be surprised by the number who don’t believe the Civil War was caused by slavery, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it was. For example, from John C. Calhoun’s last speech before the Senate in 1850:
“Unless something decisive is done, I again ask, What is to stop this agitation before the great and final object at which it aims–the abolition of slavery in the States–is consummated? Is it, then, not certain that if something is not done to arrest it, the South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession? Indeed, as events are now moving, it will not require the South to secede in order to dissolve the Union. Agitation will of itself effect it, of which its past history furnishes abundant proof–as I shall next proceed to show.”
He was so ill another Senator had to read it for him at the time. His statue still stands on a high pedestal in downtown Charleston.
Read the source material! The instrument of secession of every southern state named slavery as the reason for leaving the Union, perhaps with a perfunctory mention of the tariff, states rights, etc. Virtually everyone who wrote about the subject in the North at the time knew it was about slavery. Virtually everyone who wrote about the subject in the South at the time knew it was about slavery. Foreign visitors all agreed that it was about slavery. And yet people still deny it was about slavery. It’s actually a phenomenon of the Left as well as the right. The Beards, Marxists who enjoyed a high reputation as historians in the 20’s and 30’s, and occasionally published in Mencken’s “Mercury,” also denied it as about slavery because, well Marxism!
Good to see our old friend Mr. Trudeau is back solidly on the side of the (metaphorical) angels.
So you all know this I presume, but I didn’t or had forgotten (creationists are so forgetable):
“Don McLeroy’s Strange Testimony on Texas Science Textbooks: ‘Support the Bible, and Adopt These Books’
In something of atour de farce, on Tuesday arch-creationist and former State Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy returned to the same state board meeting room in which he led efforts to rewrite science curriculum standards for Texas public schools in 2008-09. Those controversial standards, he hoped, would “strike a blow” against evolution in science education and, in particular, in new science textbooks that publishers would subsequently write. (Please excuse the periodic but short video blackouts in the clip above.)
Speaking at the SBOE’s public hearing on the proposed new science textbooks publishers submitted for approval in April, McLeroy — who lost a re-election bid in 2010 — launched into one of the most bizarre arguments we heard throughout the day. Before and after he spoke, creationists sharply criticized the textbooks for failing to include their discredited arguments attacking evolution. But not McLeroy. The College Station dentist insisted that the SBOE should actually adopt the textbooks because, he said repeatedly and emphatically, the evidence supporting evolution in those books is “weak”: …
Actually, according to science scholars at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the proposed biology textbooks do a fine job in explaining and supporting the science of evolution. Perhaps McLeroy simply recognizes his failure to force publishers to include creationist arguments attacking evolution in their textbooks and is looking for a way to claim “victory” anyway.”
[ http://tfninsider.org/2013/09/18/don-mcleroys-strange-testimony-on-texas-science-textbooks-support-the-bible-and-adopt-these-books/ ]
Leroy’s religious spiel on science education – now 3 year’s oldy and moldy – is a tour de farce indeed! Now apologists need apologetics for their apologetics, an apoplectic one at that… =D
Trying to equate the human suffering under slavery with the human liberation under abortion – or better, birth control – is a new one, I’ll admit. But just the confusion and bad morality you expect from a brain on religion.
By the way, my google-fu couldn’t confirm that McLeroy originally got his apologetics for apologetics from Science… As always with creationists and their literary efforts, beware of the sources!
“…a brain on religion.”
That’s good. Trying to imagine the commercial for “this is your brain on religion.” Scrambled eggs perhaps? Or maybe hardboiled?
Hard-boiled, then scrambled? Which would, ironically, be deviled eggs.
😀
Maybe McLeroy has read our arguments for making Xtians actually read their sacred book of absurdities and figures he can use the same tactic against us…?
(There is a fundamental problem with that, of course)
cr
I would say that there can be no greater authority on the cause of secession and the subsequent the Civil War than Abraham Lincoln himself.
His second inaugural address completely delves into the sole cause – the institution of slavery:
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”
Sorry to cut and paste such a long quote but I find it utterly beautiful and Shakespearean in depth. As an atheist I also must concede that use of religious allusion is still a rich and powerful medium.
Interestingly, despite all the religious allusion, the final line–“shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”–might be regarded as a hint that Lincoln’s not necessarily one of those believers.
I have not studied Lincoln in detail, but I got the impression he was a deist, like so many early US important figures. Perhaps even the last of them.
“might be regarded as a hint that Lincoln’s not necessarily one of those believers”
Im not in any way a scholar on Lincoln but I’ve done a fair bit of reading on him and I’ve noticed a number of authors questioning Lincoln’s religious beliefs. He was certainly a highly skeptical believer, if one at all. Maybe the horrible burden of the war drove him to seek consolation in a renewed need for religion.
In any case I have read of Lincoln’s strong philosophical beliefs – beliefs in “necessity” http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0018.105/–abraham-lincoln-and-the-doctrine-of-necessity?rgn=main;view=fulltext
which may have helped him face the war years.
This is what Lincoln had to say in a campaign speech in September 1858.
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
This was pretty much the opinion of the North at the time. Texas history books should report that the North and South were in cahoots in their economic exploitation of slavery.
For Lincoln, slavery and social equality were two separate issues. It was possible to believe that Blacks should be free, but not equal. Human rights (freedom) were different from civil rights (the right to vote, etc.) This may seem inconsistent to us, but did not to many White people of the time.
I don’t think it’s inconsistent. As you put it, “Human rights (freedom) were different from civil rights (the right to vote, etc.)” – and they still are. For example, US residents who are not citizens don’t have the the right to vote (in many areas), but nowhere is it legal to enslave them.
Lincoln was just reflecting the general opinion of the time, that Blacks were primitive and inferior to the white man. But (in Lincoln’s view) this did not mean it was acceptable to enslave them.
cr
I’ll even give the forefathers a pass for thinking that those of more-recent African heritage were intellectually inferior. Even to this day, the abysmal state of the American education system means that Africans statistically skew farther down the various academic achievement measures than Europeans, and we’ve made nearly incomprehensible improvements in the past couple centuries. Back then it would have been an obvious fact that only the most exceptional of Africans matched Europeans…and very easy to conclude that this reflected something other than a really fucked up society.
That they were able to see past that and to recognize that an equal opportunity should be granted to all, regardless of the chances of fulfilling that opportunity, is to be commended — especially given that they, too, were trapped in that same really fucked up society.
Failing to free their own slaves, in the case of Jefferson and the like…yeah, that deserves a good raking over the coals. But at least we were able to build a free society on the foundation they laid, even if they themselves didn’t fully trust the foundation they were laying. For that they deserve a great deal of credit and praise.
b&
I don’t think that it’s inconsistent either, but some people do. I’ve seen people use these and similar quotes by Lincoln to argue that because he rejected Black equality, he must not have really opposed slavery. And when I made this point on another website, someone wrote “Civil rights ARE human rights!”
The above comment is a response to infiniteimprobabilit.
@Doug
Yes I know it is (a response to my comment), it’s just that Ben got his in first so WordPress stuck it above yours. Sometimes WP gets replies in the worng order and confuses everybody.
As to the line between civil rights, human rights, citizens’ rights, taxpayers rights… it’s one of those wavy lines that varies from country to country and from one definition to another.
cr
Also it must be remembered that in that particular instance, Lincoln was taking part in debates with Senator Stephen Douglas, hoping to take Douglas’ place in the Senate, and speaking before an audience in southern Illinois that was very fearful that Lincoln was trying to bring about absolute equality between blacks and whites and Douglas was very much boosting those fears with is own speeches (Douglas won that election, although at that time Senators were chosen by state legislators rather than by direct election). If Lincoln had advocated total equality between all races in 1858 he likely would not have won the Republican primary in 1860 — the Republicans wanted someone who was staunchly opposed to slavery but not someone who was avidly for equality between the races, although in private Lincoln seemed far more favorable towards that than in his public speeches or letters. If Lincoln had been more like Thaddeus Stephens, he’d be an obscure figure of history rather than the Great Emancipator gracing our pennies and five dollar bills.
As an atheist I think all the religious allusion is a bit too much Bible-thumping for my liking, but that’s a side issue. So is the convoluted and obscure language, which I take to be the style of the times.
What intrigues me are the many oblique or opaque references which were doubtless quite clear at the time. Most notably “Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.” Which implies that ‘the cause’, whatever it is, may already have ceased?
cr
I read every word of it and get chills every time I visit the Lincoln Memorial.
I have spent countless hours debating this, usually with Ron Paul folks. They are generally impervious, and endlessly cite Lincoln’s letter, out of context.
What the apologists trade on is people’s ignorance of what the real debate was at the time. Lincoln, and the newly elected Republican congress, and most who wanted to end slavery agreed the constitution did not allow the federal government to do so directly by ending it in the slave states. (This was a matter of law not desire.) But they wanted to do so indirectly.
This refusal, on constituttional grounds, to act directly against state slave laws is falsely portrayed by confederate apologists as the Republicans not wanting to take action against slavery at all. The apologists then argue that since the Republicans were not against slavery, therefore slavery was not the cause of the war, QED. This is completely wrong.
The book to read is Freedom National by James Oakes. He has a slimmer volume summarizing the argument The Scorpion’s Sting.
Here is an interview with Oakes http://www.civilwar.org/books/interviews/james-oakes/freedom-national-the.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
Yes, there is no doubt that Republicans nibbled around the edges of slavery prior to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and then passage of the 13the amendment. The Confiscation Acts are examples of this. In other words, they did what they could to hurt slavery and the slaveowners, justified as a war necessity.
Still, even with the Emancipation Proclamation it is likely that slavery would have continued to exist in some limited fashion without the passage of the 13th amendment. This is why Lincoln was so eager to see the amendment passed. Remember, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves and could possibly have faced a legal challenge down the road. As Wikipedia puts it:
“Because it was issued under the President’s war powers, it necessarily excluded areas not in rebellion – it applied to more than 3 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. The Proclamation was based on the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces;it was not a law passed by Congress.”
I also recommend the Oakes book.