In ottawa in the 1980s i had a history teacher tell us it was not slavery but States' Rights

[applegrove]

that the civil war was about. That lie spread long and far.

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[murielm99]

1. I had a teacher in Illinois who told us the same thing.

[Midnight Writer]

18. Yep, that was what was taught at my Illinois High School. State's Rights.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. In 1961, at the Centennial of the Civil War, all of a sudden

the crap about "It wasn't about slavery, it was about States Rights" became very widespread. I was living in northern New York State at the time, and I recall being puzzled about this, but I wasn't old enough or knowledgeable enough to make a counter argument.

It still infuriates me that somehow the Southern Bullshit took hold and became the mainstream mantra.

[applegrove]

3. I listened to teachers and professors back then. I did not question. N/T

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Alas, you should have. I should have.

But I was 12 years old, and essentially had no agency to do so.

[applegrove]

5. I was in my late teens and early twenties. Too much of a cream puff.

Yes if i had children i would warn them conservatives and Republicans will spread their lies and propaganda everywhere and will use people in authority to do it. I grew up in a civil service neighbourhood during liberal times. Was naive.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. I lived in a very White part of the country back then.

There was exactly one African American in my class of about 120 students. Even then, I knew I couldn't really imagine what her life was like, alone in a sea of white people.

I will say this. My parents, born in 1913 and 1916, both to immigrant parents from Ireland, were absolutely a product of their time and place. They essentially shared the prejudices of their time and place. But they did raise us, our children, to be more tolerant than they were, and I give them a lot of credit for that. They weren't in any way enlightened, and I don't think they understood how prejudiced they really were (at least as we'd think of that now) but they did have some kind of vague sense that things could be better.

To that end, I will recommend the movie "Only the Lonely", in which Maureen O'Hara plays the mother of John Candy, is amazing. The prejudices of that generation and that ethnicity, is spot on. I grew up hearing my aunts and uncles talk the way the Maureen O'Hara character speaks in that film, including the ethnic slurs.

[applegrove]

13. Yes people are mostly of their time. Many had to remain silent in their suffering

and not fight back.

My grandmother, daughter of a hard rock miner in rural NS, and her family took in an old lady, who had been a slave, into their kitchen during the days of winter when it was cold in Nova Scotia. My grandmother had many younger sisters she had to take care of but she was entertained by this old woman's stories and i imagined horrified at times though the woman talked so much she probably sugar coated her oral tradition to fit my 4 year old grandmother's ears. Granny's mother would tell granny to do this and do that, thread the needles, clean up toddlers. Girl this and girl that. She was the oldest girl and was very aware her older brother had no chores to do inside. Having the oral tradition of another life fascinated her the whole winter long. "Her people", as my grandmother said of the family of the old lady, lived next door and 'her people' had to go out to work and the old lady was to feeble to tend her own fire. So my grandfather, who worked in the mines, would walk over and pick this lady up and carry her over to his house in the mornings in the snow and return her at night. I don't know how many winters the old lady came. We never heard that story from granny until i came home from University having studied African History and she felt she could tell me. She could do the accent of the old woman perfectly. It was like nothing i had ever heard but if i have to guess i would say it was Caribbean and granny was very fluent in the dialect. I could not understand much of it at all. Granny was 4 in 1902 and told me when she was about 97 so that is 93 years that fascinating and great experience she had as a child she was proud of stayed dormant because of the 'times'. I wonder if it made her who she was (a nurse, a doctor's wife, she ran a farm, a community organizer, a rock, a hospital administrator, etc). And what richness we miss out on because we are people of our times. This woman's stories should have been shared and her life and freedom celebrated by my family all along. Granny probably got to share it with her husband as he was a pretty socialist country doctor who skipped over the fancy young ladies from town, sent his way to trip him into marriage, in favour of marrying my workhorse granny from more humble origins. He asked her to marry him when she was 25. She said no she was from too humble origins. He waited 5 years and asked her again. She said yes.

[argyl]

6. It was about States' Rights.The right to treat people in 11 states as property.

Next the Civil War will be rebranded as "The War of Northern Aggression."

Truly disgusting.

[brush]

7. Slavery is the stated reason in the declarations of sessesion of...

the southern states. Google them. Those old racists weren't shy about it, they were proud of it.

[Mariana]

15. The Constitution of the Confederate States

guaranteed that slavery would not be outlawed in the Confederacy as a whole, and it also prohibited any Confederate states or territories from outlawing or restricting the practice of slavery within their borders.

So much for state's rights.

[brush]

16. Yep, the lie about states rights was just another attempt to re-write history.

[Journeyman]

8. K & R . . .

[Earth-shine]

9. New York City 1974, 4th grade, same damn thing!

"It wasn't about slavery." Blah, blah, blah. "It was about secession." Blah, blah, blah.

I hated that teacher.

[JI7]

10. That's been a common thing forever. Only recently has there

people calling out that lie in greater numbers.

[unblock]

12. In fact almost the opposite. See the fugitive slave act.

The south used the federal government's powers to take away northern states' right to treat black people who managed to escape slavery as free people.

That law required northern states to treat them as property and to return then to their "owners".

The south was not really interested in states' rights. They wanted to expand slavery into new territories and to force the north to effectively participate in slavery.

The states' rights canard is mainly an after the fact pretense.

[Maraya1969]

14. I just wrote to them about their racist and ignorant content. I've watched some

good Ted talks. This one is a disgrace.

[tymorial]

17. Catholic School in early 90s. Yep, know what you are thinking.

And you would be wrong. Slavery was the primary cause for secession with state pride and rights used as cover (when necessary) in order to elicit support from people who disliked slavery but might accept the argument of federal overreach.

[csziggy]

19. In the 1960s in Florida I had an American History teacher tell us

It was about Northern Aggression. In fact that is what she called it, the War of Northern Aggression. According to her, the North fired the first shots of the war and the South was just protecting itself when the Southern states seceded.

She spent so much time defending the point of view of the South she barely covered the Spanish American War, or World Wars I & II. The Koren War was not in her syllabus. This was a source of confusion for many of my classmates whose fathers had served in Korea and wanted to learn more about that war. Of course, the Vietnam War was also not mentioned even though the anti-war protests were at their height at the time.

I knew she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and I later learned that her husband was a member of the KKK.

And of course, all of this went on in the middle of desegregating the schools. One of her "fun" projects was to have students make a family tree of their ancestors. My Dad helped me put together one taking our family back to Odin through William the Conqueror - which I have since learn was bogus since the link to William was invented by a genealogist in the 1880s. The black students who could only trace to their parents and grandparents, with a few tracing back to great-grandparents were derided for such a truncated family tree. White students who knew no more than that were not given the same level of scorn.

I hated that teacher for her attitudes but had to be civil to her not only because she was a teacher but because she was a friend of my grandmother.

[Dem4Life1102]

20. It wasn't about states rights

or even about Lincoln abolishing slavery in the southern states, which he never said he was going to do in the 1860 campaign. It was about the expansion of slavery in to the western territories which Lincoln did promise to end.

[Progressive Jones]

21. I've always found the conversation about "State's Rights" to be silly across the board.

State lines are a silly "ceremonial" concept to me.

[electric_blue68]

22. I think I learned about the CW as a slavery issue...

but not %100 sure. But as a 12 yr old living in NYC with liberal parents, reading a liberal news paper in the mid-late '60's I sure did know early that slavery was the main
reason.
My mom in particular being around her more pointed out racism that she'd hear around her to me when we were at home so I knew it wasn't just a Southern problem. Then I started reading the newspaper which added more info.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

23. The states' right to own slaves

Every secession document said slavery was the reason they were seceding.

[SweetieD]

24. The Daughters of the Confederacy are the group that championed to put this lie in all US history

textbooks in the early 1900s. Along with other half truths, lies and exaggerations about the Civil War and Lincoln.

[Paladin]

25. There used to be a plaque in the Texas capitol....

....placed there by the DOTC, and setting forth that idiotic "states' rights, not slavery" bullshit. For all I know, it's still there.

[applegrove]

27. They put a Jefferson Davis plaque up in Montreal I think. Nutters. Reeks

of a bunch of women trying to hide the fact their forefathers were rapists and kidnappers from their own damn selves or some pathology like that.

[FakeNoose]

26. To the Confederate states it truly was about states' rights

However the Northern states fought for keeping the Union together. Once the Confederate states quit the USA and started their own "country" - that's when the Civil War actually began.

The Missouri Compromise was the final straw for the southern states, because Missouri was the last state to be admitted to the Union in 1820 as a slave-owning state. After that, no more slavery would be allowed in any new territory or state. It didn't take long for the southern states to realize that they would be quickly out-voted on the issue of slavery, once the new territories were all admitted to the Union. Their heyday was over and that's why they decided to quit the Union.

The Confederate states believed they had the right to continue slavery and they didn't want to be told by President Lincoln or US Congress that they couldn't have it.