Today, many Americans hold misguided views of the Civil War. When polled, 48% of Americans believe the Civil War was about states’ rights, while only 38% said it was about slavery. We hear this misguided sentiment echoed by political leaders like Nikki Haley. Over 150 years after the Civil War, Americans still find themselves largely uneducated about the principles that caused it and the factors which resolved it. This should be alarming to anyone who subscribes to the adage that those who disregard history are doomed to repeat it.
Tracing this misunderstanding of the past, it is not difficult to find its roots in public education. Everyday, with the warping of education policy that bans historical books and censors thorny history, the matter of political influences on youth education is thrust to the forefront of the national scene. It has become clear that statehouse-reliant education policy is failing in some areas to address historical truths, namely, the truth about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and figures of the time. Fortunately, this matter of ingrained ignorance can be mended. With miseducation being the issue, authentic education is the only real solution.
In an interview with the HPR, Harvard professor Dr. Myisha Eatmon stated that the largest misconception Americans hold is “that the Civil War was about states’ rights; it was about more than that. It was about slavery at the core.” Support for this claim is undeniable. Seceding states made this abundantly clear.
South Carolina’s 1860 Declaration of Secession from the United States reads, “An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.” From this line alone, the cause for secession is apparent: slavery.
Seeing as the cause of the war is apparent, why do a plurality of Americans paint it as a dispute over states’ rights instead of a battle over one of the ugliest stains on America’s historic fabric? The answer, as with so many questions today, can be found in how we educate our youth.
The federal government sets strict benchmarks for how states must educate on areas like mathematics and reading; there exists no such country-wide benchmark for social studies or history. As a result, states and localities create their own curriculum requirements in these fields, leading to vastly diverse and contradicting versions of history. In one stark example, while California teaches that slavery was institutionalized and continued to harm Black people after the Civil War, Florida, conversely, teaches that slavery served in some ways to benefit enslaved Black people.
Waylon Massie, a former American history and AP US Government teacher, weighed in on the nature of education as a factor in America’s corrupted view of these historical matters. Massie noted, “Over my 20 years in social studies, we really minimized slavery. You get more into the states’ rights.” Considering Massie’s 20 years in education were spent in southern Ohio, his experience seems representative, as the eighth grade Civil War curriculum — which does not need to be revisited in high school, per Ohio curriculum — reads, “Disputes over the nature of federalism, complicated by economic developments in the United States, resulted in sectional issues, including slavery, which led to the American Civil War.” While slavery is mentioned, the minimized nature of it and its classification as a mere “sectional issue” confirms Massie’s experience.
Massie found himself frustrated by the constraints of curriculum, and he credits this frustration as a major factor in his decision to leave the classroom. He explained, “I think if you’re not frustrated, you’re probably not a very good teacher.” His story points toward an unfortunate trend: We are facing an extreme educator shortage in this nation. Factors such as pay and working conditions are at the forefront of this struggle, and many educators express similar frustration to Massie’s about their constrained ability to teach. Texas, for example, has seen such low numbers of teachers that the state has lowered its standards to become a licensed teacher. That is terrifying. If the goal is to improve education, historical or otherwise, the answer is not to drive out experienced teachers and replace them with unprepared and underqualified ones.
As mentioned, on top of the burden of constrained curricula, teachers are facing all sorts of other constraints. “You could almost write another article on the types of constraints,” Massie said. “We’ve got time constraints, you have financial constraints, you’ve got constraints on the abilities of your learners, and then you have cultural constraints.” As light is shed on the plight of America’s public school teachers, it is no wonder that education on history is failing: The education system is failing teachers.
Eatmon expressed her wish that American youth be taught that “The election of 1876 was only contested because of voter fraud on the part of Southern Democrats.” This point — in the realm of Civil War-era education — is intriguing, as it connects an important theme in American history to modernity; we can see parallels to historic voter intimidation today. In another vein, Harvard professor Dr. Walter Johnson said in an interview with HPR, “I would want [American youth] to understand that it was possible to be anti-slavery while still being white supremacist.” Johnson brought up an important point: All too often, historical figures, especially from this era, are portrayed as heroic and unblemished. In reality, the fallacy behind their heroism exists only in their absence of being pro-slavery.
President Abraham Lincoln is likely the most famous example of the reality Johnson laid out. Lincoln is praised the world over as the “Great Emancipator.” Americans consistently rank him as the best president in United States history, and tributes to him not only adorn our nation’s capital but can be found across the world — such as his statue in London’s Parliament Square.
Lincoln is the great American hero, so I’ll allow his 1858 words to speak for him: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists … I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the White and the Black races.” I certainly never heard these words in school, and I am confident most others with an American public high school education did not either. Lincoln went on to add, “There is a physical difference between the two [races], which … will probably forever forbid their living together … [I] am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”
Abraham Lincoln — the Great Emancipator — uttered those sentiments. What would be the reaction today if President Biden were to utter those words? Surely, he’d be cast as anything but a hero. While some may argue that Lincoln’s words simply echoed his environment and his time, is that a sound excuse when compared to figures like John Brown, who actively fought against slavery and racism, even though he was a White man? No. Lincoln should not get an excuse; he was not solely a product of his environment.
Why is it that Lincoln is painted a hero on the modern canvas? Massie says it is because “We need heroes. We need things to hang our hats on as Americans.” Especially in poor and rural areas of the country, looking to Lincoln as an example of a poor country boy making it all the way from dirt floors to the White House is nothing short of inspiring. His accomplishments in that sense were absolutely noteworthy, and we must credit him with what he did accomplish. We can no longer credit him, however, with being an anti-racist trailblazer. He was not.
Massie is spot on: We do need heroes. Fortunately, according to Eatmon and Johnson, we have them. Eatmon explains, “I definitely think it’s Black people — whether it was people who self-emancipated during the war, whether it was Black men who fought in the war … whether it was Black people who were at constitutional conventions during Reconstruction … I think Black people are agents in emancipation that we don’t traditionally talk about.” Johnson said the true heroes are, “Enslaved people, themselves, as Du Bois pointed out in Black Reconstruction. John Brown.” These responses demonstrate another great failure in the education some states provide: a lack of discussion of the actual heroes of the Civil War — many of whom were Black.
When we take these truths and line them up next to what is widely accepted as true today, the difference is striking. American educators are tired of teaching a version of history that is dependent on state politics and whitewashing. But even more alarming than what they are instructed to teach in public school, is what is absent from the curriculum.
I asked Massie if, in his time as a teacher in these subjects, he was ever instructed by state standards to educate on Black agency during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His response was, “No. I don’t think I have ever seen that … The role of enslaved people is, if not absent completely, minimized.” Indeed, Black people did work to liberate themselves. How could state curricula not make that information front and center in discussions on emancipation? It seems this matter boils down to the political leanings of those with power over education. After all, the same Republican party that relies on voter intimidation and gerrymandering would surely not want our youth to be educated on similar matters from over a century ago. I seem to recall something about learning history so as not to repeat it.
Massie’s words are poignant. Teachers want to teach; it’s as simple as that. So often, however, they find themselves confined to a small scope of history, or fearful of the backlash that would ensue were they to challenge the state’s narrative. Teachers are beaten down every day and used as scapegoats for the miseducation that some state officials feed down the pipe from statehouses to classrooms. This process ultimately results in warped historical and social curriculum, in part, to advance the narratives of those in power.
If we, as a nation, mandate certain requirements for math and reading, why is it that we allow individual states to determine the version of history their youth deserve? Moreover, who benefits from propagating a history that all but removes mentions of slavery, Black agency, and self-emancipation and props up figures like Abraham Lincoln, who, at best, was a temporarily anti-slavery White supremacist? We must focus our efforts on ensuring that children across this nation are learning the truth of American history — the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is only as an educated society that we can ever truly hope to move forward socially and eliminate systemic prejudices and biases.
In the words of George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Right now, state governments control the past through the miseducation of American history. This nation needs to prioritize accurate history, make standardized social studies education national, and, most importantly, show respect for teachers, who should be allowed to serve as deliverers of truth, not used as political pawns.
Associate U.S. Editor
