Texas officials: Schools should teach that slavery was ‘side issue’ to Civil War. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.

remote_production · 1日前

Forms of the word "slave" appear 18 times in South Carolinas Declaration of Secession. Including the opening sentence.

The1andonlyZack · 1日前

Texas education officials love revisionist history.

mindlessrabble · 1日前

Background.

Texas had fought for independence from Mexico in part because Mexico had outlawed slavery.

In 1860, Lincoln ran on a reform platform of finding a way to eliminate slavery while minimizing the economic consequences.

In (Bloody) Kansas there was open war when immigrants from both sides rushed in to tilt the new state to pro or anti slavery.

Having abolished slavery in 1691, New Mexico was statehood in the 1850's because it refused to join the Union as a slave state, throwing a monkey wrench into the compromise of free north of the Mason-Dixon line and slave to the south.

In their succession manifesto the Confederacy mentioned slavery as the reason for separation with much greater frequency than states rights.

So, slavery was the central issue of the Civil War.

Add to that, slavery had already been abolished in Europe, Mexico, South America and the Caribbean over 30 years before. The US South was a last holdout in the civilized world.

The state's rights claims did not come forth until the 1920's when Confederate apologists found that fighting for slavery was no longer defensible.

sagan_drinks_cosmos · 1日前

They really only have to look at the reasoning announced in their own secession document:

To dissolve the Union between the State of Texas and the other States united under the Compact styled "the Constitution of the United States of America."

WHEREAS, The Federal Government has failed to accomplish the purposes of the compact of union between these States, in giving protection either to the persons of our people upon an exposed frontier, or to the property of our citizens, and

WHEREAS, the action of the Northern States of the Union is violative of the compact between the States and the guarantees of the Constitution; and,

WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression; THEREFORE...

It was about what they saw as an imminent threat to their slaves.

crooked-heart · 1日前

Instead they call them White Rights Activists and Religious Freedom laws?

wwarnout · 1日前

How can we expect to have an informed electorate when we teach our kids such bullshit?

re-ver-ber-ray · 19時間前

US history teacher from Texas here to elucidate. The state standards that govern our curriculum are public record, just lookup social studies TEKS or any other subjects if you're interested. I have taught 7th grade Texas history and 8th grade US history. In Texas US history is split between 8th and 11th grade which teach colonization through reconstruction and post 1877 respectively.

I can tell you that in 7th grade Texas history that KKK and Jim Crow were a part of the TEKS, they were included in the Civil Rights and Conservatism unit near the end of the year. Since 8th grade only goes to 1877 the KKK and Jim Crow are not discussed, though the Black Codes are.

Regarding causes of the Civil War the state standards require students to understand that the Civil War was caused by sectionalism that came about due to differences between the regions, slavery, and states' rights. That's all it says, beyond that the teacher can take in any direction. The thing is slavery is related to all three of those reasons, and that's the way every teacher I've been around conservative or liberal teaches it.

The social studies TEKS have problems (very vague), but they are pretty well balanced because politicians are only one voice when setting the learning standards.

Have any questions? Ask away!

tommiebooyy · 1日前

lol. Yeah like if slavery didn't exist there would have been a war over tariffs and railroad infrastructure. Morons.

pramirez184 · 1日前

I will agree that the Civil War was about States' Rights, and the specific right they cared about was slavery.

kaytay182 · 15時間前

Former Texas student here and now current Texas teacher, I was told the civil war was purely based on economics and not Slavery and I know that it hasn't changed much

Lazy_Osprey · 1日前

It was a side issue.

As in "The people on one side REALLY liked having slaves....."

whydoesthisitch · 22時間前

I grew up in rural north Texas, and this sounds pretty much like what I learned in 6th grade history. We learned that the civil war was fought due to the north's desire to economically subjugate the south, and that the south really wanted to end slavery, just on their own terms. We also learned that the vast majority of slaves were treated like family members, were given the option of leaving (but didn't want to), and were generally happy. There was one line that really stuck with me, our history teacher said "the blacks" made good slaves because they can't really control themselves on their own, and that slavery gave them a sense of purpose. This was in 1999.

clockworkgirl21 · 21時間前

This is how we get people who deny the war was about slavery.

fantasyfest · 20時間前

And lynching and segregation should be totally ignored.

jcooli09 · 20時間前

I guess in a way that's accurate, one side fought for the right to keep black slaves forever, one side fought to preserve the union.

AmyAkaSpentGladiator · 20時間前

My middle school history teacher told us that the civil war was fought over states rights.

AlSweigart · 18時間前

I love the opening to Crash Course US History #18 on this topic:

... and today we discuss one of the most confusing questions in American history: What caused the Civil War?

Just kidding, it's not a confusing question at all; slavery caused the civil war.

"Mr. Green, Mr Green, what about, like, state's rights, and nationalism, economics?"

Me from the past, your senior year of high school, you will be taught American Government by Mr. Fleming, a white Southerner who will seem to you to be about a hundred eight-two years old, and you will say something to him in class about state's rights, and Mr. Fleming will turn to you and he will say

"A state's right to what, sir?"

And for the first time in your snotty little life you will be well and truly speechless.

jpurdy · 1日前

The new textbooks those lunatics will have in schools this year also teach that our founding fathers were fundamentalists who wrote the Constitution from the bible, and that Moses was responsible for democracy.

Thelog0 · 1日前

Tex: Slavery ? of you mean volunteer work

ivsciguy · 1日前

THey also say that Moses and Thomas Aquinas were US founding fathers.

_tx · 1日前

And this is just another line in a disgustingly long list of why my children go to private school.

Elzam · 13時間前

From the Texas Ordinance of Secession (1861), paragraph 3.

She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.

To say that Slavery is a "side-issue" is at best disingenuous, at its worst a blatant lie. The first issue that Texas itself made in its official statement was "Yo, we were promised we could keep slaves."

In fact, you can read it yourself, but their entire "states rights" argument which follows is based that northern states were enacting laws that were aggressive towards slavery, a violation of the agreements meant to keep slave and free states on friendly terms.

But wait, they double down on the slavery issue right after, this time posing it in terms of racial superiority. Emphasis mine.

[The North] have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.

The way that some states want the Civil War whitewashed (no pun intended) is disgusting.

Edit: Cut out part of the first quotation, it was too long and not relevant. Is discussion about what every state gives up in becoming a state and what they receive.

tyrusrex · 20時間前

The same school board committees changing history text books also tried to change science textbooks to emphasize creationism over evolution.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/revisionaries/film.html

bmullan · 18時間前

Aside from slavery why do all these Southern supposedly patriotic people not also condemn the Confederates as what they were and what they would be called today... Traitors.??

Do you see statues of Benedict Arnold in front of courthouses schools and govt buildings... hell no!

The confederates were Traitors who fought a war against the government. Why pretend it was some honorable cause.

MpVpRb · 17時間前

Slavery was THE ONLY REASON the South broke away..PERIOD

All other disagreements could be negotiated or compromised away

Spencer_Drangus · 16時間前

Right and Hitler's foreign policy was a "side issue" to WWII

miashaee · 19時間前

Now now, clearly slavery was a side issue........I mean just because almost every state said that "Yes this is about slavery" when they seceded doesn't make it true.........I mean you can't take the direct language, quotes, and announcements from state and confederate leaders too seriously here.

This was about STATES' RIGHTS...........^to ^own ^slaves ..........

NewIndy · 17時間前

They are wrong. Slavery was the central conflict of the Civil War.
Anyone who denies this is willfully or incidentally ignorant of historical context.

THEREALPeanutGalaxy · 1日前

High school student here. Slavery was taught as a side issue in the civil war but it was talked about quite a bit outside of the civil war. What they taught me was slavery was not the main cause of the civil war but that it was refusal to compromise of several issues by both sides was the fuel. Slavery was simply the spark. Jim crow laws and KKK were completely skipped though.

Wooops, left out a word. I added a "taught as" in between was and a in the second sentence

BaloneyFactory · 23時間前

Well, all they need to do is make these disappear.

gg_bottles_gg · 20時間前

I feel like the book manufacturers have some sort of social obligation to not pander to to this idiocy, but like always money is king.

GOU_NoMoreMrNiceGuy · 20時間前

sounds like somebody's hankering for some union troops to roll in again....

JoJoRumbles · 20時間前

If I were a teacher in Texas, I would have my students take a mock voting test the same way blacks had to back in the day. Not for a grade of course, it would be a lesson on just how unjust the voting rights were back then.

ecsegar · 17時間前

So basically, the North forced the federal government on true Mericans by beating the hell out of their quaint tradition of human abuse?

KurtFF8 · 15時間前

Texas was always at war with Eurasia.

Uranus_Hz · 15時間前

This is why we can't have nice things.

jackv79 · 14時間前

For years, I've had to hear that BS that the Civil War was "fought to preserve the Union". Why do these people think the Union was breaking up? I think it had something to do with slavery.

nothingxv · 14時間前

Why are conservatives so supportive of revisionist history? It's appalling.

paraguas23 · 13時間前

If slavery was not an issue in the Civil War could someone please explain Bleeding Kansas?

pcar773 · 13時間前

Literally white-washing history...

bobbyfiend · 11時間前

I feel like Texas is generally just hoping to avoid any national scrutiny of its history on this subject, kind of like the guy in the sitcoms who goes real still in the corner of the party and invites you to turn your attention elsewhere, while he hides the fact that he's not wearing pants.

Basically, Texas was born in good portion from slavery. White slave owners emigrated there (Mexico), promising to follow Mexican laws prohibiting slavery, among other things. Then they proceeded to bend and push the laws until finally they just couldn't stand living in this oppressive nation that wouldn't even let them own other people. In fact, to the extent that it was about Texan independence, the Alamo was partly about slavery (and Santana being a raging friggin' psychopath).

TURCtheTEX · 8時間前

Being a Texan all my life, I can confirm that the Klan and Jim Crow are taught in middle and high school.

SolusLoqui · 1日前

You know what would make high school kids want to learn something? Tell them its forbidden information.

evanrphoto · 1日前

She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.

Texas Declaration of Succession February 2, 1861

cokocare · 18時間前

Disgusting.

The people of Southern States need to stop burying their heads in sand and pretending their position during the Civil War was justified.

The Confederacy was evil.

If we burden kids with that truth maybe we can begin to heal as a country.

armedburrito · 21時間前

Yay, revisionist history! I've heard a lot of it on reddit from angry Southerner's over the past few weeks. 'Those damn yanks are the reason we went to war, and those damn yanks are the reason the South never recovered.'

mornmyth · 17時間前

Controlling the histoical narrative has been a propaganda tool of longstanding. Ancient Egyptians exercised dead Pharaohs from Hieroglyphs and monuments, Nazis removed references in history that did not fit their "Superior Aryan Race" philosophy, so Texas is falling right in with other groups that practice(d) tyrannical governance. But with the Internet, cross-state university attendence, and lots of access to various media outlets, it is much more difficult to obfuscate the truth. The religious right has been trying for years to control the national "moral agenda" while doing the opposite of what they preached and it has pretty much caught up with them - Church attendance declining, moral authority gone, etc. May stil work on Fox news, but not so much elsewhere.

MSBeta1421 · 15時間前

Texas is awesome, but damn my state is run by dumbasses.

Aumah · 15時間前

Makes me feel bad to see the partisan war spilling over into everyday life like this. The GOP keeps drifting right into madness and the average Joe has no clue.

dickwhitman69 · 1日前

It is worse than that I had a education professor at a state run university say that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, needless to say I was quite flabbergasted.

Fett0174 · 21時間前

Texas makes no sense. Slavery was no side issue. When did the truth go out of style?

theHangedGod · 1日前

Like Germany omitting the Holocaust...

ncshooter426 · 23時間前

Preface: We're going to be talking about slavery. Now, I don't think there is anyone in the modern world who is pro-slavery. You don't hear Jim from Accounting saying "You know, we really could use some slaves (we call those interns now…(heh))" or Amazon offering Prime shipping on them. It's just not a thing (although slavery very much still exists). When talking about the civil war, and events in that time frame, we are referencing slavery in an economic force context. So, with that said…don't bite my head off on moral issues that I may or may not gloss over.

Hi. I'm NCShooter426, and today on Drunk History -- the American Civil War.

And here…we……go.

It's the 19th century. It was a chaotic time of expansion, revolution, and social shift. A few decades earlier we told England we're going solo. After they tried to retake the colonies, and failed, America was truly standing on her own two feet. The fledgling nation had some lofty goals -- build some infrastructure, make some money, and above all -- Expand (west). As all this rapid expansion and economic growth is taking place, two differing ideologies begin to emerge:

To set the stage, let's meet the players. Obviously, the big two in the discussion will be the North and the South. Western territories did play a role in the conflict, but for most of the events leading up to the war, the main players were the "core" south and northern zones.

The North realized it's too fucking cold to plant crops, so it moved away from agriculture to more of an industrial role. This was fueled by a combination of plentiful (cheap) immigrants, and the ever-present need supply itself with raw materials. Their (local) economy was built on having access to materials so they could churn out finished product -- so they were very buddy buddy with the Southern exporters. They also augmented things with tariffs collected on imported goods. As luck would have it, they imported very little…but their southern buddies, they imported damn near everything. Convenient how that worked out eh? ;)

The South, by contrast, was all about agriculture. The land was plentiful, and technology was pretty scarce. There was a massive demand for raw goods in the north (cotton) as well as exports (cotton, tobacco, etc) to Europe. All the things that required large amounts of unskilled labor to produce. Thus, the southern economy was built on slaves - to a degree. I say to a degree, because only a small percentage of people in the South actually owned slaves. We usually have the mental image of sprawling plantations with colonel Sanders looking assholes fanning themselves on the porch while drinking lemonade. That just wasn't the case. There were a boatload of very poor, very white farmers churning out material alongside slave-run camps. But, slavery was a very real part of Southern culture, and the backbone of their livelihood. At that time, slaves were considered property -- property protected under supreme law (constitution).

So both entities existed in a symbiotic relationship. The south was flush with cash -- the export of cotton made up like >50% of the income at the time for the growing nation - but it needed to import nearly all it's finished goods. North needed all that sweet sweet southern cotton and of course, tobacco and alcohol (mmm… vice) in order to fuel its production and export business. Business was boomin', and our nation was full throttle.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K

Things began to schism as the concept of slavery fell out of favor in the north in the early 1800's. Less and less slaves were needed, because like we said earlier, the northern industry needed skilled workers -- and they were getting people by the (literal) boatloads daily. Slaves, despite the contrary, were pretty expensive upkeep. They had to be transported, housed, fed, etc. That sort of worked in the early colonial days, but the actual math behind it was slowly falling behind compared to paying (low wage) workers like the Irish (which is a whole other topic). So the north was like "People shouldn't own people man. It's not cool". You couple this with growing distain over the practice of slavery by the Europeans (Uncle Tom's Cabin really drove that one home) and the overall consensus was "Nah, we don't want slavery here". Note: They didn't abolish slavery overnight -- it took well into the mid 1800's all northern states to eventually do it -- rather the idea of slavery was no longer kosher.

nycola · 1日前

Something interesting I just realized. I remember learning about slavery in school (i'm 35 for reference). I remember learning the ins and outs, the stories, we even had to read books with slavery in them. Ironically, through all of this I cannot ever remember a time that the teacher publicly denounced it as a bad thing, it was instead just taught as fact.

Obviously, I have some morals, and as an adult I realize it was a bad thing. But I have to wonder how many people would be different if school teachers actually put a very negative connotation on slavery.

They do it with other things, teaching opinions, voicing them, I just found it curious that through all of my years of school, none of my teachers put any sort of negative spin on it, as it was just something that happened * shrug *

saturnengr0 · 23時間前

The problem now is that even if you can get the text book changed or you can teach kids the real reasons, you've proven that what is taught in school can no longer be trusted to be accurate. This spills over to everything, from history to science to math to life

CollumMcJingleballs · 22時間前

There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.”

Yeah, Southern states rights to keep slavery.

The_Thane_Of_Cawdor · 21時間前

David Blight's Race and Reunion:The Civil War in American Memory does an excellent job of explaining how this is still a thing.

confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day

Retaliation · 20時間前

So our schools are trying to be like China and not teach history

allankcrain · 20時間前

At first I read the title, and was like "Yeah, that makes sense. It was the Confederate side's primary issue, but not as big an issue for the Union side."

Then I figured out what they meant by "side issue" wasn't "issue primarily important to one side" and I got a little bit sad in my soul.

scelerat · 19時間前

Should be in /r/wtf

webauteur · 17時間前

Texans actually want to bring back slavery.

GreenSage45 · 15時間前

This is the same attitude that pretends like the Confederate Flag is a symbol of "history."

It's whitewashing of history, and it's pathetic.

Fucking idiots.

El_Peeh_Soy · 15時間前

Rather ironic, since KKK-style domestic terrorism overlooked & permitted by the authorities, and Jim Crow laws, tend to confirm that slavery & the rights of African-Americans were indeed side issues to the Civil War.

This is sort of a logical "eat your cake and have it too" attempt.

Clowncopter · 15時間前

The central issue of the Civil War was states' rights (..........to own slaves)

Jynx3 · 14時間前

So they won't be teaching the cornerstone speech?

Jynx3 · 14時間前

So they won't be teaching the cornerstone speech?

notfarenough · 13時間前

The people who argue that the civil war was about state's rights are engaging in the worst kind of historical revisionism: arguing that because 'I' don't believe in slavery, it must have been about a higher principle. I grew up in the south, and I can say with a high level of confidence that this is the perspective of southern 'revisionists' today: The Civil war was about dignity and independence from central (northern) governance. The facts on the ground at the time of secession do not support that view. It was about slavery.

As an aside: North Carolina ca. 1981. We spent two 6 week sections in 6th grade: first on the revolutionary war; and then on the civil war. The logical equivalence of the two in my mind- at that time- was that both were legitimate wars for independence.

Second aside: My family is from Missouri, which was a divided state with a lot of guerilla factionalism during the civil war. I have relatives who fought with or supported guerillas (aka terrorists) on both sides.

markyca75 · 1日前

School history has always been a joke


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