As you may already know, I've been spending some time in southern Virginia lately, and I've been learning a great deal.

the other day, the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, declared April to be "Confederate History Month". He also blatantly left out of his proclamation any mention of the south's history of slavery, much to the protest of - well, most people.

And that is justified. It is wrong to deny that slavery was a major part of the Civil War, and the Southern way of life during that time period. HOWEVER, this has brought on an absolute onslaught of poorly-educated anti-southern name calling. Most people don't know anything about the Civil War beyond what they were taught in elementary-middle school history class, and most are seemingly oblivious to the fact that history books are written by the victors. Mr. Andrew just finished writing a paper on this subject, and I'd like to paraphrase just a bit-

So here are some of the major myths about the American Civil War, from the understanding of someone who is not American to begin with, yet still knows a few things more than most on the subject:

1. The South Had Slaves, The North Did Not

The economies between the north and south were drastically different, with the south being very agrarian, producing and exporting large cash crops such as hemp, wheat, tobacco, and cotton, and bringing in huge money for the United States. The north was primarily industrial, an economy where large scale slavery simply wasn't useful. However, if you went to a rich man's home in Pennsylvania in 1850, he had slaves - the cook, the butler, the maid, the gardener, the man who tended the horses, etc, etc. They were called the "indentured servants" but they were the same thing. Slavery was a problem for America as a whole. In FACT, Ulysses S. Grant, the most prominent Union general, was a slaveholder until well after the war ended, and was the last President of the United States to own slaves. Robert E. Lee, the highest Confederate military authority, held no slaves at all, and thought of the system of slavery as an abomination unto God.

2. The Emancipation Proclamation Freed Slaves.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. In the north, slavery already wasn't legal (though it still went on), and in the South, no one held the US government as any kind of authority. It was issued half way through the war, only when it looked as though Britain and France were going to acknowledge the Confederacy as an independent nation. It was politically motivated, and only in the way of international politics, because, myth number three:

3. The North Was Fighting, in Any Capacity, to Free the Slaves.

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, riots broke out all over the Northern states. Black churches, schools, and orphanages were burned to the ground in New York. Enrollment in the Union Army dropped dramatically (many soldiers deserted). It was generally accepted, at the time, that Lincoln would not win a second term as president. He had sworn up and down since the beginning that the war was for the Union of all the States, for Manifest Destiny, and was in no way for slavery. He only ever went as far as to say that his goal was to halt the expansion of slavery into the newly forming West, which was unclaimed territory wanted fiercely by both North and South. When Northerners heard that they, their sons, their husbands had been dying in droves for the deliverance of the African race, they were pissed.

4. The Men who Fought in the Confederate Army were Fighting for the Preservation of Slavery.

The real soldiers themselves, the men (and sometimes women) who laid their lives down, were simple, most often poor people. The rich slaveholders never had to go to war. The poor didn't care any more than they would now for the preservation of a rich man's way of life. Yes, they depended day-to-day on slavery, and if asked would more than likely prefer to keep it in place, in the interests of not decimating their families' livelihoods. More importantly, though, they fought for freedom from what they felt was an oppressive Northern government who didn't care for the South or the people within it. If we didn't watch so much damn TV, we might be seeing the exact same sentiment today. We already do, in a certain capacity. There are secessionist movements in California, Oregon, and Texas, to name a few.

5. Secession is Un-American

Thomas Jefferson shuddered at the thought of an America that would go 20, 30 years without a revolution. The United States was built on a bloody revolution, based on the prevailing feeling that their governing body (at the time, Great Britain) was not listening to them, or valuing them as citizens. The second amendment is almost always interpreted as the right of the people to own and carry a gun. In fact, the second amendment was introduced as the right of the people to bear arms against their own government, so that if the ruling party ever collected too much power and became tyrannical, the people could, by force, tear down that government and institute a new one. You don't keep the government in check with a second tier of government - in a democracy, in a republic, the people are charged with keeping their own government in line. Secession, it seems, is the pacifist's way around that. The South wasn't happy within the Union of the United States, they declared that they were leaving. They drove the Northern Government out of Fort Sumter, within the borders of South Carolina, with no casualties except for one Confederate horse. It was Lincoln's government that marched 70,000 troops past the Mason-Dixon line, into a state where it was unwelcome, to suppress the people's natural, constitutional right to secede.


I don't want to sound like I spent a few months in the South and now I'm anti-Yankee. That's not the case. I also don't want to give the impression that I am justifying or in any way excusing the practice of slavery. I couldn't be prouder that I come from Canada, a country that was seen as a haven of freedom for escaped slaves. I do realize, though, that due to our climate and conditions, slavery would never have been useful to our economy. Had that been different, I'm sure England would have brought slaves to Canada just as she brought slaves to America, and then we would have our own sins to answer for. But I am against folks acting morally righteous and looking down their noses at an entire culture, an entire population of people, an entire section of history that they simply do not understand, but refuse to admit that they don't understand. If you grow up in Massachusetts, you learn that the South was a conglomeration of ass-backwards states that needed to be set straight by the heroic North, and were. You learn that Plymouth Rock was the first landing. You don't learn about Jamestown, at least not that it came first. You learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Virginians, owned slaves, and John Adams, a Massachusetts man, did not, but you'll never delve deep into the context of the times.

One of the most important things to me about this whole issue, is the way men, real people who lived, loved, had families, and died far too soon - great-grandfathers of people living today, are mushed together with these backwards ideals associated with the Confederacy, and the entire stew is condemned on the whole as something inherently evil. I'm hearing over and over that the Confederates don't deserve a history month because we don't agree with what we feel they represent. It is for exactly this reason that we doneed a Confederate History Month. Should we say, too, that Hitler was a bad guy, so we shouldn't learn about him? It's kind of like spitting on the soldiers returning home from Iraq. You don't have to support the war, but if you don't support the people who are brave enough the fight it, well - you're kind of an asshole. Every man with the courage to lay his life down for what he believes is the good of his people and his country deserved to be honoured, and it is no man's business to judge him on his morality. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

I could go on for hours about "What would you do if you were in their shoes?", but that's not the point. If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: Please, for the love of God, of YHWH, of Buddha, of Krishna, of light, love, and the Universe in which all these things exist; please, just learn what you're talking about before you condemn it, and never, ever think that you have all the answers, because no one does (this means you, New York Times).