Lincoln Bashing, Secession, and Civil War Related Myths

I think it is time for me start up these series of posts I promised last weekend. For whatever reason there seems to come in waves an interest in Lincoln, the Civil War, Secession, Slavery, and other related topics. I think as we enter another important anniversary of the Civil War this will increase.

Sadly though what we see on the net especially is false or full of half truths.

There is a expression that those that victors are those that write history. No doubt that is true. However as a general matter I am very careful when I hear someone state that cliche because it is generally followed up with something absurd. It is also used as some preliminary volley to make what has been taught to be sort of viewed as some Govt propaganda.

One must question this cliche even more about the Civil War. I would contend as a Southerner that the Union might have won , but it seems the losing side has been writing their own version of history for some time. A history that strangely has become the acceptable version. One just can look at the early 20th century film Birth of a Nation , a film that could have been produced by Confederate Govt Film Unit, and really wonder if the "Victors wrote History"

Noted historian James McPherson in his book, The Mighty Scourge wrote:

"The Civil War remains one of the few exceptions to the adage that "history is written by the victors." There is a growing body of evidence suggesting much of the Civil War history now found in textbooks - from about 1910 onward - is largely written through southern filters

Early in the 20th-century, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) went on a textbook crusade throughout the South and pressured publication companies throughout the U.S. Their intent was to correct "Yankee falsehoods."

Mildred Rutherford, president of the UDC listed these instructions to teachers and librarians in 1919:

*Reject a book that speaks of the Constitution other than as a compact between Sovereign States.

*Reject a text-book that...does not clearly outline the interferences with the rights guaranteed to the South by the Constitution, and which caused secession...

*Reject a text-book that says the South fought to hold her slaves.

*Reject a book that speaks of the slaveholder of the South as cruel and unjust to slaves.

*Reject a text-book that glorifies Abraham Lincoln and vilifies Jefferson Davis.

*Reject a text-book that omits to tell of the South's heroes and their deeds.

Rutherford also lists her "historical facts" to consider when evaluating history.

They include:

*Southern men were anxious for the slaves to be free.

*More slaveholders and sons of slaveholders fought for the Union than for the Confederacy.

Despite the absurdity of her "facts", Rutherford was highly successful at her lobbying campaign, especially with textbooks below the college level. Eventually, however, these lobbying groups also were successful at revising college textbooks by 1920.".

What started perhaps as a effort to being more balance to Civil War history and fairness evolved in the most horrific one sided presentation of American history we have seen. We've been discussing Rutherford's arguments and efforts in nauseating detail ever since.

For those that want to know how far this effort went please through inter Library loan pick up the University of North Carolina Press, The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, ed. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh (Chapel Hill, 2004), and read the chapter "Long-Legged Yankee Lies," .

"The Lost Cause myth helped Southern whites deal with the shattering reality of catastrophic defeat and impoverishment in a war they had been sure they would win. They emerged from the war subdued but unrepentant; they had lost all save honor, and their unsullied honor became the foundation of the myth."This myth was helped by the dedications of hundreds of monuments to Confederate soldiers and their commanders planted on courthouse lawns and other public spaces across the South.

The UCV (United Confederate Veterans) and the UDC (United Daughters of the Confederacy) led massive campaigns to approve "correct" versions of the war for uses in schools, both public and private, and in universitys and colleges across the South. Many children's auxiliaries were organized by these two groups, with their purpose, according to a UDC member, was "telling the Truth to Children," to make the children a 'living monument' to those soldiers of the Confederacy who were fast dying off at this time.



From the book,"In South Carolina the UCV history committe got a bill introduced in the state legislature to ban any "partial or partisan or unfair or untrue book" from every school in the state and to punish anyone who assigned such a book with a $500 fine or one year's imprisonment. The bill did not pass, but school boards and teachers got the message.

By 1905 a UCV leader in South Carolina could congratulate his colleagues that "the most pernicious histories have been banished from the school rooms." The victor's write the history? Sorry, not in this case. It was the defeated South that took the utmost care to insure it's Lost Cause version became the only accepted version throughout the South."



As early as 1902 Professor William E. Dodd of Randolph-Macon College, who was a native of North Carolina and one of the few Southern liberals of his time, complained that Confederate veterans had imposed a straitjacket of censorship by requiring courses in American history to teach that "the South was altogether right in seceding from the Union" and "that the war was not waged about the negro." No serious scholarship was possible, wrote Dodd, "when such a confession of faith is made a sine qua non of fitness for teaching or writing history.

"The Lost Cause triumphed in the curriculum, if not on the battlefield. A North Carolinian educated in that state during the 1920s who later left the South and eventually became dean of Yale Divinity School looked back on the books he had read in school: "I never could understand how our Confederate troops could have won every battle in the War so decisively and then have lost the war itself!"Neo-Confederate historical committees had done their work well. Nevertheless, the crusade could not end. Eternal vigilance was still the price of true history.

Few members of the UCV remained by 1932, the last yeare of publication of Confederate Veteran Magazine. But the UDC and the Sons of Confederate Veterans remained vigilant. The Virginia chapter of the UDC expressed "shock" that year at the news that David Muzzey's all-time best seller among high school American history testbooks, described by the UDC as "atrocious" in its treatment of the South, had somehow been adopted by the Virginia textbook commission to replace a book by a native Virginian. The Sons of Confederate Veterans issued a "Call to Arms" to overturn this decision and return to "the purity of our history." That quest for purity remains vital today, as any historian working in the field can testify."Sorry, but after reading this one, it's hard to see where all those "Northern" historians are shoving their version of the Civil War down anyone's historical throat.

Now this reality is seen in every day life. The North were filled with incompetent Generals and the Southerners were the best fighting men ever!!! Even Yankees have this view. Ask them to name a horrible Civil War General and they will name the Union McClellan. However no one can name a bad Southern one. Which is pretty laughable.

These series of posts are not met to bash my own people. I honor their sacrifice. However we do not honor people by making the other side look like the Nazis. I am mainly doing this because I can't stand BAD history.

The posts I will do will try to go along this Guideline (no doubt there will be revision)

(1) An Overall Post on Lincoln and Lincoln Bashing

I will also discuss why for some reason certain strains of conservatism tend to bash Lincoln.
The agendas of other groups and why this is occuring will be explored
The glaring Silence by Lincoln Bashers on Jeff Davis's Faults, and Confederate/Southern State Govt suppression of Individual Rights

(2) Is there a Right to Secede from the United States?
This will be of some length and engaged the argument from a historical and legal viewpoint

(3)Did the Southern States have a Right to Rebellion Against the Union in 1861?

Please note this is a separate question from number 2.

(4) Slavery, State Rights, and the Poor Ole Oppressed South

Myths exploded.

This will be a round up of points and tying up of lose ends

So this is what I shall be working on over the next couple of weeks