Why is it important to understand the era of America’s seminal event? Part 2
After the war, with the scorn of the entire world on them for fighting a war to maintain bondage, the conflict magically became about a made-up noble thing called “States rights”. But in the 9,000 pages of original, pre-war, primary documentation, the war was about slavery. Alexander Stevens, the Vice President of the Confederacy would surely know and in his famous “Cornerstone speech” of 1861, the year the war began, he was not bashful. “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization…Our new government is founded upon the idea, its foundations are laid, and its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Upon secession, five of the thirteen states that left the Union to join the Confederate states wrote quick, open letters to justify their actions. All the letters, called Declaration of Causes, were similar. Texas proclaimed: “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.”
Most of the conversations that I’ve been engaged in about American history and slavery, sooner or later, the other party will almost inevitably say, “Well you know, Wayne, most other countries engaged in slavery. Even Africa! ” I guess that’s supposed to make bondage and torture and tearing families apart Ok. But here’s where America is unique: If you talk with a historian who specializes in that era, they will acknowledge that slavery was known world-wide. But here’s what separated American slavery from say, African slavery: America was the only country in the world that justified enslavement on the superiority of one race over another. Vice President Alexander Stevens understood it. “The great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
Likewise, Texas was also clear: Texas was received (into the Confederacy) as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
…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; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.”
In 1913, Julian Carr, a prominent industrialist and supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, was invited to speak at the unveiling of a statue of ‘Silent Sam’ a Confederate soldier on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It had been placed there by the Daughters of the Confederacy. You may recall reading about Sam when UNC students protested his presence and then toppled him in 2018.
Yellowspacehopper, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Silent_Sam.jpg
Carr’s lengthy address made clear the symbolism of the statue when he credited Confederate soldiers with saving “the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” adding, “to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God.”
The daughters could not have been confused about the cause of the war. Nobody else seems to have been.
Facing South again confronted the southern myth of slavery as promoted by the Daughters: “In 1923, at its annual convention in Greensboro, the UDC's North Carolina Division endorsed for use as a school textbook "Young People's History of North Carolina" by Daniel Harvey Hill Jr. Hill’s book remined in use until well after 1940. Hill was the son of a famous Confederate general. First published in 1907, it had been in use in North Carolina since 1911 and would continue to be used In describing the conditions faced by enslaved people. Hill's textbook clung to the Lost Cause line that they were well treated and better off in slavery: As a rule the slaves were comfortably clothed, given an abundance of wholesome food, and kindly treated.
Occasionally some hard-hearted master or bad-tempered mistress made the lot of their slaves a hard one, but such cases were uncommon. Cruel masters and cruel mistresses were scorned then just as men and women who treat animals cruelly are now scorned. These slaves were brought into the colonies fresh from a savage life in Africa and in two or three generations were changed into respectable men and women. This fact shows, better than any words can, how prudently and how wisely they were managed.
In discussing slavery, Hill intermingled discussion of white indentured servants in the colonial South with enslaved blacks — a common tactic in textbooks endorsed by the UDC. The point was to minimize the immorality of slavery by equating the enslaved with those working off a debt, very often the debt of Atlantic passage." [1]
In 2015 leading educational publisher McGraw-Hill agreed to stop using the terms ‘workers’ and ‘immigrants’ when referring to enslaved people. “[W]e conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves,” the post read. “We believe we can do better. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor.”[2]
This came only after a Black mother complained about the language. And this wasn’t the first time that textbooks being used in Texas have come under fire for the way they depict racial issues. Textbooks approved for use in the state were criticized for downplaying slavery as a cause of the Civil War and failing to adequately address racial segregation in the Jim Crow era.
“Up until 1980, Mississippi's public schools used Lost Cause textbooks exclusively — and it took a federal court order to make them stop. In a bellwether moment for history textbooks in the South, authors James Loewen and Charles Sallis, with the help of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, sued Mississippi in federal court in 1975. The lawsuit came after the state textbook review committee, in a 5-2 vote that broke down along racial lines, rejected their nationally acclaimed, award-winning textbook, "Mississippi: Conflict and Change."
Instead, the commission chose "Your Mississippi" by Lost Cause proponent John K. Bettersworth. Though it was an updated version of an older Bettersworth book, "Your Mississippi" it contained classic Lost Cause tropes, totally ignored historic racial violence such as lynchings, and almost entirely overlooked the civil rights movement.
To show Mississippi had violated its own objective book selection standards and, in the process, violated Loewen's and Sallis' constitutional rights, the lawsuit pitted the books against one another — Lost Cause vs. basic historical fact — in court.
Bettersworth's book presented enslaved people as being largely well treated by white masters and blamed harsh punishment of slaves on black overseers. It also said that states' rights were the core reason for the Civil War, and it portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a simple fraternal club while totally ignoring its violence.”[3]
And of course it is not just the Daughters promoting this false history and false narrative. Hate groups increased from 121 in 2005[4] to a peak of 1,020 in 2018[5]. To be sure, not all hate groups are White supremacist. But those that were gave the Daughters a lot of assistance by promoting the same lies.
The Florida Board of Education helped too by setting a new social studies standards for middle schoolers in 2023. In a section about the duties and trades performed by enslaved people, the state adopted a clarification that said "instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."[6]
Governor Ron DeSantis followed up with "They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”[7]
Evidently, according to the revised history that the Daughters, White Supremacy Hate Groups, and the State of Florida all promote, slavery was basically a kind of beloved trade school run by owners who loved the humans they owned.
As of early 2022 36 states (Salmon colored, below) had passed laws to restrict teaching on racism, bias, the contribution of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history or related topics.[8]
Graphic by Tomas Wilburn, from a story written by Cathryn Stout and posted at https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism/
The problem that plagues America could be solved, of course, in our schools. The Daughters knew this. Our politicians know this too. Donald Trump knew this when he threatened to withhold federal money from any school that taught the NY Times 1619 Project. But here we still are.
Sources;
https://www.history.com/news/american-civil-war-deaths
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#Texas
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
[1] https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks
[2] https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-texas-textbook-calls-slaves-immigrants-20151005-story.html
[3] https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks
[4] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/issues/2006-spring-year-hate-2005
[5] https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/02/19/hate-groups-reach-record-high
[6] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/24/kamala-harris/do-Florida-school-standards-say-enslaved-people/
[7] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/24/kamala-harris/do-Florida-school-standards-say-enslaved-people/
[8] https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism/