Lying To School Children About Civil War

I was born and raised in the state of Texas, and I still live there.   But that does not mean I have to ignore history to defend some mythical view of "southern tradition".   I know that the people of Texas and 12 other states committed an act of treason when they seceded from the union and fought an illegal war against the United States of America.   And they did that to defend the "right" of some people to own other people -- slavery.

Any student of history or anyone who respects the truth knows this is an indisputable fact.   But there are still those who would deny this.   They would like for the world to believe that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but over "states rights" or defense of "southern traditions".   What they will not admit, even though the leaders of the Confederacy openly admitted it, is that the state right and southern tradition the Confederacy was defending was the right to own slaves and the tradition of slavery.

It looks like the government and school system of the state of Virginia has now officially joined the truth-deniers.   Virginia has bought and distributed a textbook to all its elementary schools that contains an outrageous lie.   The 4th grade textbook states,   "Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson."   The inference is that the South couldn't have been fighting to defend slavery if thousands of blacks fought with them.

The problem with the statement in the textbook is that it is nothing more than an outrageous lie!   Stonewall Jackson never commanded two black battalions and the Confederate Army didn't have thousands of black soldiers.   The author of the textbook admits she did not get her information from any scholarly work of history.   She got it online from information forwarded (and most likely created) by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).

The SCV is a group of Southern apologists who are trying to rewrite history and take the stain of defending slavery out of the history books.   I can understand how they would like for this outrageous lie to be accepted as truth.   But who on earth vetted this textbook for the state of Virginia.   Even a cursory glance at a real history book or source would have exposed this lie, and there is no way this book should have made it into the state's schools.

Virginia education officials are now back-pedaling since the truth is coming out.   They said they have notified all elementary schools and cautioned them against "teaching the passage".   That is not good enough.   As long as the textbook is used by the state some teachers will teach the untruth.   They need to pull the textbook from all of the state's elementary schools.

There is much good about the South (and Texas) that can and should be taught to school children, but that does not include a denial or defense of slavery.   And it does not include a whitewashing of the treasonous actions preceding and during the Civil War.   Everyone will be better off, including Southerners, if we just teach the truth.

(The picture above is of black soldiers during the Civil War in the Union Army -- Company E, 4th Infantry.)