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When, Where, and What Did You Learn in History Class?
In “Conservatives can’t win the history wars,” Matt Yglesias claims that when his wife was a kid in Texas she learned about “the war of Northern Aggression.” Yglesias was born in 1981, so I will assume his wife is the same age and attended Texas public schools from roughly 1986-1998. I find it hard to believe that, even in Texas, students learned the “lost cause” version of the Civil War.
I grew up in Florida in the 70s and 80s. Maybe not the deep South, but definitely not a progressive utopia. I learned about the evils of slavery, the rapaciousness and violence of Southern slaveowners, the broken promises of Reconstruction, and the brutal unfairness of the Jim Crow era. Martin Luther King, Jr. was presented as a national hero equal to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, a liberator who forced a recalcitrant country to finally reckon with our national sins. I did hear the phrase “War of Northern Aggression” from teachers, but tongue-in-cheek, an absurd aside to point out how backward and delusional “some people” used to be in the South.
I’ve taught U.S. history in conservative Christian private schools in the South using Bob Jones and secular textbooks. These texts unequivocally condemned slavery, tracing its introduction in 1619 and thoroughly describing the depravity of the system. They featured tragic images of slaves at the auction block, deplorable living conditions, and the horrible and iconic image of a slave’s whiplash-scarred back.
So why do we keep hearing anecdotes about what people supposedly learned in history class? This doesn’t track with my experience growing up and then teaching in the South. I can certainly believe my grandmother, growing up in the 20s and 30s in East Tennessee, or possibly that my parents, learning in Florida during the 1950s, might have received a soft-pedaled version. But in the early 90s? Really?
Is it possible a teacher was trying to describe the Lost Cause movement and his wife misunderstood? Is it possible she overheard an older relative utter the phrase with an eye roll? I wonder if those who claim this ever bothered to read their textbooks, or, more likely, their memory of history class is a mash-up of Schoolhouse Rock and bits and pieces heard and absorbed over a lifetime of pop culture and snarky memes? Because if you’re younger than 50, unless you studied 75-year-old textbooks under the tutelage of your cult leader’s one-room schoolhouse, I don’t think you learned the Lost Cause version of history as the serious and exclusive interpretation.
Am I wrong about this? Am I the only member of Generation X who received a fairly balanced history education? I really want to know—when, where, and what did you really learn in history class?
Published in History
Probably not the best candidate for this since I was a history nut about the Civil War when I was in grade school, and also spent a fair amount of time in private schools; however, most of my education was in the south including Texas, I seem to remember that slavery was certainly not soft pedaled when I was in school in the late 80s. I find it hard to believe it would have been more watered down in the early 90s.
My mother had a sister who was twenty-one years older than she. They were born and raised in Georgia on the Alabama line. That sister was taught it was called The War of Northern Aggression. But she went to school in the 1920’s and 30’s. My mother went to school in the 40’s and 50’s, but she was taught it was The War Between the States. By the 80’s and 90’s, probably even in the deepest of the Deep South, they taught it as “The Civil War.”
Good question.
I am reminded of those people who claim to have suffered under Reaganomics, or who had friends who did. Press them for specifics, and that’s the end of the conversation.
Graduated from HS in Corpus Christi in 1965: It was some ten years later that I first heard the phrase “War of Northern Agression.”
I do believe that’s a legitimate description: Certainly more correct than “War between the States.” But unless you’re prepared for some strife, I suggest that referring to the “Civil War” is safer.
Heh, always ready for strife when talking about that war.
Nationalist myths have been the standard for education since at least WW2.
Wonder who writes the history books.
I learned it as the Civil War and in AP history, my teacher did a good job presenting facts without bias. I think closest to bias from him I ever got was AP government a year later.
I drew my own unorthodox conclusions and didn’t feel prevented from it.
First, I never saw “War of Northern Aggression” as about slavery, but about states’ rights. I somehow was able to form a negative view of THAT while also maintaining that slavery was wrong, that the north wasn’t innocent on slavery, that the north used economic lawfare against the south in trade.
A lot that was wrong was going on. And I guess I was more open minded to the issues on both sides. I’m a bit more annoyed by the north because I don’t think they much deserve the moral high ground that has been accorded to them. But I enjoyed the opportunity to understand the war from multiple perspectives by reading voraciously from multiple perspectives. That includes slaves, freed men, soldiers, generals, industrialists, and lawmakers.
I was raised by northerners in Florida and was homeschooled for middle school in the 90s and high school at turn of century.
Thistle’s question, “What were you taught…” divides itself in two.
First, “…about the name of the war?” To call it a war of aggression (a war between nations) or a civil war (a war inside one nation) is to answer the question of which side had the right answer to the question of proper political authority. Independent of the question of slavery.
A liberal could, and some few today do, believe that it was in political terms an invasion: that secession had in fact occurred, whether it was Constitutional or not. Some dedicated liberals (i.e., opponents of slavery) even hold that it was Constitutional.
Second, the moral question of slavery and its offspring (Jim Crow, segregationist laws,…)
So your aunt may have been taught liberal ideas about history in the South even in the 1920s, which supports Thistle’s thesis. (Ack! That’s a tongue twister. The first time I dictated it the iPhone wrote “thupports Sistle’s sesis”.)
I like it.
How is this strictly liberal? Secession was constitutional. It was, as far as I know, embedded in Texas’s state constitution.
The ability to secede is critical to a federation of states. If they cannot secede, then they are in the union by force. That’s not freedom.
Why do you believe this? I was in high school in the 1950’s in Georgia and usually heard “War Between the States”. I think that was used just to avoid using the “yankee” Civil War terminology. We still had Confederate Memorial Day then, too. But the teaching of slavery as an abominable practice was taught and that the conflict was caused by the differences over the slavery issue was taught as well. Later in my life, when I looked a little closer at some of the details, I could understand the use of “War Between the States” as having a certain accuracy reflecting the attitude at the time of the states that attempted to secede from the Union. Those state governments acted very independently during that conflict. Ignorance (a lack of knowledge and understanding by the people of what their elite leaders were doing and why) prevailed among most of the Confederate soldiers doing the fighting. I think we have seen this phenomenon replicated within states during the pandemic.
“War of Northern Aggression” in the 1950’s was more a throwback to earlier views. None of these labels had any strong influence to deter students from the understanding of the wrongness of slavery and why it was to be abolished.
Correct. No state would have ratified the constitution if there was not an option to leave. The founding generation had just seceded from an overreaching central authority and didn’t want to repeat that here.
I’m curious what effect being knowledgeable of their elite leaders’ goals would have had on the confederate soldiers.
When your homes and livelihoods are being wrecked by an invading army, I’m not certain how much disagreement with their own leaders would change things. Even the nobodies who were helpful to the north were not treated very well, just as likely to have everything they owned plundered and destroyed by invading locusts.
Is the hope that they would have hogtied Davis and friends and delivered them to Sherman?
When I wrote it I thought it was pretty good, but I never expected this!
I learned very little history in school.
I was in a SWAS (School Within a School) in Junior High, where I had the same history teacher for three years. His “history” classes were mostly outlets for his personal hobbies. He taught classes like “History through Photography” and “History through Woodworking”, with very little focus on teaching any actual history. I do remember the day he walked into class and wrote, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” on the board, then spent the session explaining why this was the most pure and beautiful philosophy ever put forward.
I only recall one history class in High School. It was taught by a retired Navy pilot. He was a nice and interesting guy, but he made no pretense of actually teaching anything. He would sit at his desk and read the paper or, as frequently, take a nap. I had no interest in history through any of this, so I was content to spend class time playing chess with my classmates.
Likewise, I only recall a single history class from college. It was taught by an extreme leftist professor. The text book was called “Democracy for the Few” and she would say things like, “When the Declaration of Independence says ‘All men are created equal’, it really does mean MEN.” She absolutely forbid anyone to record anything she said in class because she said it could be used to distort her words. The irony of that was not lost on me at the time.
All in all, history was a bust for me throughout my schooling. I’ve been trying to remedy that ever since.
I’m questionable on just how worthy of defense the US (as an entity) is at the moment. I kind of have a more favorable view of Russia, though others might consider that highly naive.
If Russia invaded the US, what is the likelihood I would support the invaders even while firmly believing my own country’s leaders deserve to go down?
Now apply that to confederate soldiers.
I graduated high school in 1998 in Texas and “Civil War” was the official terminology. Textbooks are determined by state governments, but of course individual teachers will present any lessons as they please.
Like others here, I see no conflict between condemning slavery and rejecting the “civil war” framing. The Confederacy had been separate for more than a year when the war began. That the United States were reunited does not erase the fact that the North and South had formally split and established separate regional governments. It was not a civil war in the usual sense of a revolution to exercise authority over all.
The war can be argued just and simultaneously a war between sovereign powers.
Furthermore, though it is certainly true that the politics regarding secessions involved slavery, it is incorrect to say that the South fought for slavery. A bare few Southerners with political clout owned slaves. The majority of Southerners certainly did not risk their lives and families to preserve the “property” of a few aristocrats. They fought for home.
Abolition of slavery in America and later abolition of segregation are historical moments of which all Americans should cheer. But equivalence of racism and Southern culture is slanderous and false. Many people respond poorly to being unjustly attacked. When public education equates the South with racism, some people will respond with calm clarity and others with vengeful fictions of their own.
The “War of Northern Aggression” title has always seemed to me such a kneejerk counter-claim. “War Between the States” is more accurate and respectful of both sides (in the charitable spirit of Lincoln). But, right or wrong, “Civil War” is the norm and good enough.
There was a long lead up to the conflict, better part of three decades. I don’t mean necessarily a proximate action at the time of the war but a change in approach during the preceding period.
But you are knowledgable enough that you are working to change what we have.
Of course, it’s always possible that Matthew Yglesias is lying.
Yes. But how successful might that be? And there were southerners that did fight against it beforehand. And some southerners fought for the union. I’m just not certain knowledge will always get us the results we hope they would.
I believe this because I believe the Confederacy consisted of a peoples that were no longer part of the United States. Even the North understood this at the time.
We agree that slavery was, and is, just wrong: But that is a separate issue from the legitimacy of secession.
It is also apparent that “might makes right” and even if they wanted to, secession by the lesser is only possible with permission of the greater.
Ah yes, my (usually well-meaning) Democrat-voting husband – who grew up in rural Indiana – has trotted out this Texas history curriculum anecdote to me on more than one occasion. Good to finally uncover the source of the story. I attended high school in metro Atlanta in the late 90s-early 2000s, and obviously never once heard the conflict referred to as the “war of northern aggression”:-) We studied the lead-up, conflict and aftermath in great detail during US History (including the Civil Rights movement). In fact, I’d argue we spent MORE time on it than probably other areas of the country, given that a lot of the relevant events happened in or around our region.
I went to public school and didn’t learn anything about history. What I learned was by osmosis from those around me. Since we are not in wars requiring a draft, we don’t have a common source of patriotic/civics education. We need to add that into schools. What makes our country exceptional is our founding ideas and the *lore* that supports those ideas. We should force those things into every aspect of society. More statues, more holidays for freedom, PSAs on civics and the Federalist Papers. I want roads named after Frederick Douglas and Nathan Hale and Thomas Edison and John Locke and Publius Tacitus in every town and village.
I have a very clear memory of my 8th grade history teacher, circa 1963, telling us that the war was not about slavery, but about state’s rights. This was in northern Virginia. I don’t have as clear a memory of what we were taught to call the war, but I’m thinking it was the War Between the States. I was well into adulthood before I came around to realizing, yes, it was about slavery.
“The Late Unpleasantness”.
According to the common definition for “liberal” that I am using here, opposition to slavery is liberal by definition.
Note:
I am using one of the two most popular definitions in the present era, the one that is also called “classical liberalism“. Roughly, “the moral and political doctrine of universal equal human dignity—that is, equal rights and responsibilities for all.”
On Ricochet I use that one always, and usually without specifying a definition. Why? Because it saves words, and I am speaking to an educated, intelligent audience who I assume can discern which one I’m using from context, and by knowing me.
Note that according to the latest revision of Camp’s First Law, it is not a violation to fail to write all definitions and assumptions that appear in the Question That You Want a Meaningful Answer To. You only have to “ensure that you and the readers agree on all definitions.” In his Notes on the First Law, current rev, Camp in fact recommends that you defer explicitly writing all definitions and assumptions that are likely already agreed to by your audience, until such time as it becomes clear that there is a lack of agreement on them.
The Camp I refer to is the one known to historians of Western Civilization as “Camp the Modest” because he writes of himself in the third person not out of a false sense of his own importance, but merely because it sounds better, and he has the highest standards of excellence in his writings because he understands how important they are to the well-being of mankind.
We were taught that the Civil War was about slavery, Lincoln was a matyred hero, and that Frederick Douglass was a great man. And we were taught about George Washington Carver, Hannie Mae Famer, Martin Luther King, and other civil rights heroes- even Chesar Chavez- in rural Indiana in the 70s and 80s. We were also taught what I only later learned was a surprising amount about Indian tribes in a surprising breadth. Tecumseh was presented as a noble hero who just picked the wrong side, for example.