Investigating Modern Narratives — What is the Legacy that the Civil War Leaves Behind?
To kick off this week’s blog post, I conducted a little experiment: I typed “Civil War Causes” into Google Search. This is an action that I anticipate many of my students will do when they begin studying for their Civil War test in two weeks, and I thought I should see what they will find. When I hit search, what I received was this: a hodgepodge of answers and inconsistencies. Although many scholars and sites attributed slavery as the main cause of the war, here are other causes that popped up: “states’ rights,” “ideological differences,” “power struggle,” and my personal favorite, “the South’s ‘way of life.’” All of these phrases can be interpreted as euphemisms for the institution of slavery, but to a junior in high school they may be misleading. One single search on the Internet can send students into a tailspin that is the many confusing, long-perpetuated myths and narratives that surround the Civil War in this country. Therefore, it is imperative to teach the Civil War in a way that helps students think critically about the dominant histories, which often times muddle or even directly contradict one another.
When teaching the Civil War to students in the North, a few narratives seem obviously biased. The ‘Lost Cause’ narrative of the Confederacy, for example, is one that Northerners are particularly skeptical of. The best example of an expression of the ‘Lost Cause’ that I could find was on the Daughters of the Confederacy webpage:
On the page, the DAC mentions their commitment to maintaining Confederate memorials, marking “Confederate valor,” and preserving the “truthful history of the War Between the States.” Many of these statements are deeply problematic, as they promote the narrative that the Confederates fought bravely for a patriotic cause instead of slavery. The use of the name “The War Between the States” in and of itself signifies that the Confederate states were not the rebels, but that all of the states were simply at odds with one another. A great book that debunks this “Lost Cause” myth and the “states rights” narrative is:
Confederates in the Attic follows one man’s journey as he explores the modern-day South and tries to dig deeper into common misconceptions that people still have pertaining to the Civil War. This book would be a great resource in the classroom when helping students investigate both the causes and modern-day notions of the war.
Another, less obvious narrative that needs to be debunked for students is the idea that Lincoln (as well as other republican politicians) was a champion of African Americans, and that racist legislation ended with the 13th Amendment. This topic comes up most when discussing Reconstruction. Many students throughout their formative school years are provided with the sense that Lincoln and the North were abolitionist and not racist. As educators, it is crucial that we help our students pick apart the laws and policies that were made at the time (especially the Emancipation Proclamation.) By analyzing the actual documents, students can determine whom the laws furthered disenfranchised, who they ignored, and what their limitations were.
Frederick Douglass’s thoughts on Lincoln as a president encapsulates the dichotomy of how people view Lincoln vs. the realities of a lot of his policies. Watch the video below to get a sense of how investing Douglass critiques of Lincoln’s policies could help students further understand his complicated presidency:
Probably the most important myth surrounding the Civil War that educators should help students see through is the idea that the war and its implications are obsolete. The current debate over Confederate monuments is evidence enough that tensions from the war are alive and well. Charlottesville brought these tensions to the forefront of the country’s attention, but the debate over what the monuments symbolize has been going on for decades and continue today. These current political cartoons exemplify the fact that the Confederate legacy continues to be a polarizing debate:
Investigating what symbols like Confederate monuments and the Confederate flag truly represent is a crucial way for students to understand the modern implications of archaic ideals. Even in Madison, the debate over Confederate monuments rages. You can find a full description of Madison’s Confederate tensions in this article:
The fact that the Confederate monument debate has reached the North is important for students to understand. Nothing about the Civil War and its implications is isolated in the South. Presenting students with counter-narratives is vital; students must understand the realities of Jim Crow, institutionalized racism, the KKK, housing segregation, and white flight in the North as it applies to where and when they live. These facets of America are all extensions of pre- and post-Antebellum policies and ideologies, and are very much present today in both the North and South. Students need to the hear voices of freed slaves and of people of color today, of those who were in fact oppressed by the war and its outcomes. With that, I’ll leave you with one last article that sums up the Civil War’s direct link to modern institutionalized racism quite nicely:
Studying the Civil War is not about mustering nostalgia, preserving the memory of a valiantly lost fight, or understanding Southern “heritage.” To understand the modern implications of the Civil War is to 1) examine the measures the South took in maintaining slavery as an institution, and then 2) look at the way racist policies were created after the war to maintain an institution that was as close to slavery as possible. Disenfranchisement, not disillusionment, is the key to understanding the Civil War’s legacy.