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lies about the civil war my history teacher told me (tw)
I grew up in Alabama from first grade on and attended public school there, a transplant from the North at the age of 7. Many people are aware that a Confederate apologism is taught about Civil War history throughout the south, one full of outright lies, the results of the same whitewashing campaign spearheaded by the Daughters of the Confederacy which erected confederate statues around the country after the Reconstruction ended in 1877.
When I was fed this bullshit at 14, I was prepared for it to be wrong, and I found that none of my classmates (about 50% southerners, the remainder being the children of transplants associated with the local university) were convinced either. I was revolted and angered at the time, but the more time passes, the worse it all looks to me - which is not usually the case since normally an adult understanding of human foibles and better empathy at least conveys some understanding of the mistakes of the adults around me, which I was fairly unforgiving of as a child. But this is different.
Here are the main features of the propaganda:
The more I think about it, the more unforgiveable I find the act of teaching this propaganda. I've recently started to think that each teacher who passed along these lies - which, yes, are mandated by the state curriculum, so I'll say each teacher who passed it along without making clear where it was a lie - is individually responsible for the harm they cause, and that harm is systemic. I used to make excuses for the southern system along the lines that the southern history teachers were educated in the same propaganda from childhood, but outside of the strictest fundamentalist cults, that doesn't really hold water; these are college-educated people who had to study history at a higher level (a minor concentration alongside their major in education) in order to teach it in secondary school. These are adults with adult responsibility and intelligence who live in the world and have witnessed racial injustice their whole lives, who have the ability to recognize patterns and who don't have the excuse of rejecting the reliability of facts and the knowledge of authorities. My history teachers may have been brainwashed, but I knew them and their intelligence well enough to say that if they were deceived about racial reality around them and the history of the Civil War, it's because they wanted to be deceived.
You don't have to have reason to mistrust the source in advance to reject an idea like slavery being "kind" or a "big proportion" of people being contented with it or happy about it; it's an idea that the unprepared and uneducated default human instinctively rejects. Anyone who has ever allowed themselves to be persuaded of this laughable claim has had to work hard to suppress their empathy and knowledge of other people to do so! Yet they have the shamelessness to feed this bullshit to the entire public school population and require them to learn it and recite it back for a grade.
My history teacher had her Confederate reenactor husband come to the school and give a presentation in uniform to us, showing off his Civil War memorabilia! At the time I was angry, yes, but now I can hardly believe it. I have no idea where to find her now but I've toyed idly with the idea that she and everyone like her deserve personal letters of rebuke in light of current events. I mean, I wouldn't because it would be likely fruitless and I shy from social contacts in general, but I do feel that every teacher out there in her situation owes society and their students an apology.
When I was fed this bullshit at 14, I was prepared for it to be wrong, and I found that none of my classmates (about 50% southerners, the remainder being the children of transplants associated with the local university) were convinced either. I was revolted and angered at the time, but the more time passes, the worse it all looks to me - which is not usually the case since normally an adult understanding of human foibles and better empathy at least conveys some understanding of the mistakes of the adults around me, which I was fairly unforgiving of as a child. But this is different.
Here are the main features of the propaganda:
- Slavery was full of pain and deliberate torture and cruelty, but in Alabama everyone is taught the lie that "most slaveowners were "good" owners, who were kind and treated their slaves well, because after all, you wouldn't damage your valuable property"
- Most slaves wanted freedom, but in Alabama everyone is taught the lie that "most slaves were happy enough where they were and didn't want a different life"
- Slaves escaping to join the Union forces, and helping them, were a huge help to the Union victory, and they risked brutal deaths and torture to do it, but everyone in Alabama is taught the lie that "Most slaves were loyal and affectionate to their owners and lots of them even went to fight for the Confederacy with them". There were few slaves fighting for the Confederacy, and most of them had no choice.
- The Civil War was explicitly about slavery and the secession statements and numerous speeches say as much in so many words, but in Alabama everyone is taught the lie that "it wasn't really about slavery, it was mostly about states' rights." The right to own slaves, it is said, was merely the last straw and there were plenty of other states' rights that made everyone ALMOST secede before, like taxes and things like that, because the south was righteously angry about the promise of independent government for the states with little federal regulation from the time of the Constitution and Revolutionary War being broken. This is a lie. It was about slavery. It's true that the South was explicitly and implicitly allowed to continue with slavery at the time of the Revolutionary War, because the rest of the colonies made a devil's bargain when they allied with slaveholders to defeat England; they couldn't have done it otherwise, and it was an ideological schism from the first that made many abolitionists, like Alexander Hamilton, rather unhappy. But the laws that were passed at every stage were laws that the original constitution allowed the government to pass and the Constitution was agreed to by all the powerful slaveholders among the 'founding fathers' like Washington and Jefferson.
- Federal troops were in the South helping to make sure slaves were actually freed and given voting rights for just 12 years after the end of the Civil War. Black citizens began voting and electing representatives; federal troops helped protect them from mob violence and laws were initially passed to allow redress, but the Supreme Court overturned these in 1870 and in 1877 the federal government capitulated to the widespread southern insurrections and withdrew from the South, allowing the creation of the institutionalized systems of oppression and organized mob violence intended to deprive them of all agency and power. In Alabama, in contrast, everyone is taught that the "so-called Reconstruction" was a horrible period of Southern victimization by thuggish jackbooted rule from bitter Northern invaders who gleefully destroyed property and stole from Southerners with impunity out of a mean-spirited desire to humble them, while "carpetbaggers" (the term is taught), greedy Northerners eager to make a quick buck, streamed South and took advantage of military support to seize Southern resources for themselves while outrageously thumbing their noses at noble Southern culture. The enforcement role of Northern troops is not mentioned, nor are the struggles and Southern resistance faced in freeing and enfranchising the former slaves.
The more I think about it, the more unforgiveable I find the act of teaching this propaganda. I've recently started to think that each teacher who passed along these lies - which, yes, are mandated by the state curriculum, so I'll say each teacher who passed it along without making clear where it was a lie - is individually responsible for the harm they cause, and that harm is systemic. I used to make excuses for the southern system along the lines that the southern history teachers were educated in the same propaganda from childhood, but outside of the strictest fundamentalist cults, that doesn't really hold water; these are college-educated people who had to study history at a higher level (a minor concentration alongside their major in education) in order to teach it in secondary school. These are adults with adult responsibility and intelligence who live in the world and have witnessed racial injustice their whole lives, who have the ability to recognize patterns and who don't have the excuse of rejecting the reliability of facts and the knowledge of authorities. My history teachers may have been brainwashed, but I knew them and their intelligence well enough to say that if they were deceived about racial reality around them and the history of the Civil War, it's because they wanted to be deceived.
You don't have to have reason to mistrust the source in advance to reject an idea like slavery being "kind" or a "big proportion" of people being contented with it or happy about it; it's an idea that the unprepared and uneducated default human instinctively rejects. Anyone who has ever allowed themselves to be persuaded of this laughable claim has had to work hard to suppress their empathy and knowledge of other people to do so! Yet they have the shamelessness to feed this bullshit to the entire public school population and require them to learn it and recite it back for a grade.
My history teacher had her Confederate reenactor husband come to the school and give a presentation in uniform to us, showing off his Civil War memorabilia! At the time I was angry, yes, but now I can hardly believe it. I have no idea where to find her now but I've toyed idly with the idea that she and everyone like her deserve personal letters of rebuke in light of current events. I mean, I wouldn't because it would be likely fruitless and I shy from social contacts in general, but I do feel that every teacher out there in her situation owes society and their students an apology.