Subj : The Birth of a Nation (19
To : MRO
From : DaiTengu
Date : Fri Oct 21 2022 11:40 am
Re: The Birth of a Nation (19
By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Wed Oct 19 2022 09:03 pm
MR> I think slavery as a contributer to civil war was a red herring.
MR> If you look at the declairations of secession from the states that wanted
MR> to leave, they had valid reasons. Slavery played a part, but it wasn't the
MR> only reason.
Slavery was the root cause. The "declarations of secession" danced around the topic, because they knew they were on the wrong side of history. Over the course of 150 years, organizations like "The United Daughters of the Confederacy" pushed hard to re-write and re-define the Civil War.
I've lived in Wisconsin my whole life, and I remember our sections on The Civil War in history classes, most confederate generals were made out to be heroes. The books talked about how great these men were. Union generals were often just footnotes. Now, some of that is for good reason, as Lincoln went through A LOT of Generals-in-Chief before finally landing on Grant in 1864.
Sherman was champing at the bit, Grant sent him south to burn everything while he tied Lee up in Virginia.
"Gettysburg" is one of my favorite films, and it HEAVILY favors the confederate story. Even after Lee orders thousands of men to their deaths, he gets to be the sympathetic hero, by apologizing to returning soldiers and saying "it's all my fault". This is apocryphal. No one has ever been able to corroborate it. Lee never published any memoirs.
The saying goes "History is written by the victors" but in this case, that's not quite accurate. Many children's history textbooks are written to conform to southern states rules, and a lot of things slip in there that wind up being taught in schools all throughout the country. The narrative became that the Civil War was over "states rights" and, while techinically true, the "rights" the south attempted to secede over, was due to the inevitable collapse of their economic system which was based on owning other human beings.
DaiTengu
... Civil servants are neither civil nor servile.
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