One Cannot Learn What They Have Never Been Taught (or Been Taught Properly)

Find Out Just How Incomplete the History You Were Taught Really Is

Feb 09, 2024

Picking Cotton, Savannah, GA Library of Congress

We are in 2024, an election year, a year I call “the Year of the Precipice” for our democracy. To better equip Americans to exercise their civic duty this year, we have begun a series in Democraticus examining important ways of thinking and belief systems that can have a major impact on our democracy’s future.

Critical Thinking Requires a “What”

Our history is about what happened. Without that “what”, we have nothing to think critically about, much less try to examine why it happened. Our poor historical knowledge is inhibited even further by the incompleteness of the history we are taught. Or, more accurately, by the large amount of relevant history that is never taught at all in our schools. Examples abound of American history waiting to be told, or be told more accurately, that would improve our civic literacy. Let’s examine some of the most glaring ones.

The Mexican-American War

Have we ever been clear that this was an unjust war, regardless of the fact that it significantly enlarged our country’s geographic area? It was clear to Ulysses S. Grant, a veteran of that war who wrote in his memoirs:

“…For myself I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory…The occupation, separation and annexation (i.e., of land that was part of Mexico) were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union.” (emphasis mine)[1]

The author wagers the reader did not see this in any of their history books. Grant, as an eyewitness to this war, knew that the pretense that the American army needed to respond to any threat by Mexico to the U.S. annexation of Texas was contrived and fabricated. He knew that all along this was a play to not only bring Texas into the Union as a slave state, but to incite a war with Mexico in order to take other Mexican controlled lands (that are now our states of New Mexico, Arizona, and California). Grant’s memoir confirms this when he says, “Even if the annexation (of Texas) could be justified, the manner which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot. The fact is, annexationists wanted more territory than they could possibly lay claim to, as a part of the new acquisition.”[2] For that reason, Grant concluded that the “Southern Rebellion” (i.e., the Civil War) was an “outgrowth” of the Mexican American War.[3]

What About Texas- Why Did the Texas Revolution Occur?

If the reader believes that Texas fought for its independence from Mexico to be free from tyranny, they would be entirely wrong. That is, unless one interprets “Mexican tyranny” to mean Mexico’s outlawing of slavery. The Texas Revolution was fought so that the Americans that had petitioned the Mexican government to move into and colonize Texas could keep their slaves. It was not fought, as is commonly portrayed, because some “freedom loving Texians” simply wanted to be removed from the yoke of Santa Anna’s “tyranny”.

To explain, one must understand that Texians (the name given to those who had moved into Mexico’s Tejas) had always envisioned a Texas with slavery and a slave driven agricultural economy. They brought their slaves with them when they settled there. These Texians, like Stephen F. Austin, had received permission from the Mexican government to colonize parts of what is now southeast and eastern Texas. Grant explained, these Texians “…paid little attention to the supreme (i.e., Mexican) government and had introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution.”[4] Austin’s own words as the primary leader of Texas’ Anglo settlement shows his intent and focus from the start was to bring slavery into Texas, saying that without slavery, “…we will have nothing but poverty for a long time, perhaps the rest of our lives.”[5]

Historical facts show that the Texas Revolution and Texas’ subsequent annexation into the United States was always about having slavery in Texas. As Casey Michel noted in his New Republic article, while Austin and other Texians had received a “carve out” to allow them to comply with the Mexican constitution by redefining slavery as “debt peonage”, when Mexico made their anti-slavery stance clear in 1829 (via Mexican President Guerrero’s proclamation to abolish slavery), these slaveholding Texians eventually revolted.[6]

The Result of Texas’ Revolution for “Freedom”

Once the revolt was successful, the newly written Republic of Texas’ constitution prohibited emancipating slaves. The writings of Quaker activist Benjamin Lundy, who had tried to obtain a grant from Mexico to settle freed slaves in the early 1830s, showed that he clearly understood this. Lundy understood that the Texas Revolution’s purpose was to obtain a large territory “…in order to re-establish the system of slavery; open a vast and profitable slave market therein; and ultimately, to annex it to the United States.”[7]

In less than a decade after the Texas Revolution, Texas had grown the number of its enslaved Black residents by “some 500 percent”, which further solidified the slave-based cotton agricultural economy of the new country. As Burroughs, Tomlinson, and Stanford assert in their history book Forget the Alamo, to understand the Texas Revolution, one must understand “…how cotton and slavery transformed Texas almost overnight…into a place where fortunes were made.”[8] Stephen F. Austin said it himself: “Texas could not survive without slavery.”[9] This version of Texas history is far different from the “remember the Alamo” history conveyed in many history books and in the movies.

The Myth the South Seceded and the Civil War Was Fought Over States’ Rights

This is one of the greatest inaccuracies in American history accounts that has been conveyed, or at least suggested, as a possible Civil War cause in many history books. States’ rights always had been a topic of debate periodically in our nation’s history since its inception, occurring at various times as the states and our national government worked to find their boundaries of authority and power in a federalist system. However, the Civil War was fought over one thing- slavery. As sociologist and historian James W. Loewen explains, “Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights- that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.”[10]

Loewen points to an examination of the documents and speeches of the Confederate states to confirm this. South Carolina, the first to secede, adopted on December 24, 1860 their “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify Secession of South Carolina from the Union”[11] which stated as the cause of that state’s secession:

“…an increasing hostility of non-slave holding States to the institution of slavery’ and protested that Northern states had failed to fulfill their constitutional obligations’ by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage.”[12]

Slavery, Loewen emphasized, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.[13] Other seceding states, such as Mississippi said the much the same thing in their secession declarations: “Its labor (i.e., that of slavery) supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth…A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”[14]

So what happened? According to Loewen, “In the 1890s ‘anything but slavery’ explanations gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this claim along with their preferred name for this conflict: the War Between the States.” Historian Adam Goodheart confirmed Loewen’s view on NPR at the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War’s start:

“…really the only significant state right that people were arguing about in 1860 was the right to own what was known as slave property- property and slaves unimpeded-and to be able to travel with that property anywhere that you wanted to. So it’s clear this was about slavery in almost every significant way, but we’ve sort of pushed that to the side because of course we want to believe our country is a country that always stood for freedom. And…certainly it’s difficult for some Southern Americans to accept that their ancestors fought a war on behalf of slavery. And I think that Northerners really, for the cause of national reconciliation, decided to push that aside- decided to accept Southerner’s denials or demurrals.”[15] (emphasis mine)

The Birth of Another Myth- the “Lost Cause” of the Civil War

And this gross inaccuracy or myth ascribing the Civil War’s cause to state’s rights or anything other slavery has birthed other false stories to support this denial. Chief among them is the creation of the “lost cause” myth that developed in the years following this war of secession. It is a myth that attempts to romanticize and ignore the human bondage and suffering that the war was actually about. Instead, the lost cause story is an effort to replace the real story of the South’s economic dependence on, and its desire to retain slavery, with a more sanitized story that attempts to make the South’s war on the United States seem like merely a valiant attempt to hold on to their “special” way of life.

Clint Smith, in his article for The Atlantic, “Why the Confederate Lies Live On”, identifies the various components that grew from this lost cause narrative. For example, in the early 1900s the “boom” in Confederate monument building was meant to “…reinforce white supremacy” in the era when Black communities were being terrorized by the KKK to impede Black social and political mobility.[16] According to Smith, these monuments “…were also intended to teach generations of white southerners that the cause their ancestors fought for was just.”[17] Other “sub-plots” that support this lost cause story include that most southerners who fought in the Civil War did not support slavery. Smith disproves this citing the work of historian Joseph T. Glatthaar who has analyzed the makeup of the unit that became Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He found “…the majority of volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery.’ Almost half either owned enslaved people or lived with a head of household who did, and many more worked for slave holders, rented land from them or had business relationships with them.”[18]

The “Lost Cause” Myth Overlooks the South’s Deep Societal Commitment to Slavery

Another part of this lost cause story that Smith shows is true is that southerners that did not own slaves were still “deeply committed to preserving the institution”. Southern newspapers regularly inundated southerners with racist warnings that without slavery, “…they would be forced to live, work, and inevitably procreate with their free Black neighbors.[19] This was the “fertile soil” of our history of slavery from which the white supremacy of the post-Civil War Jim Crow era germinated. As Smith tells it:

“The proposition of equality with Black people was one that millions of southern white people were unwilling to accept. The existence of slavery meant that, no matter your socio-economic status, there were always millions of people beneath you. As historian Charles Dew put it, “You don’t have to be actively involved in the system to derive at the least the psychological benefits of the system.”[20] (emphasis mine)

As Te-Nehisi Coates, writing in The Atlantic stresses, “It’s difficult for modern Americans to understand such militant commitment to bondage of others. But at $3.5 billion, the four million enslaved African Americans in the South represented the country’s greatest financial asset.”[21] Loewen expands on this, pointing out that in 1860: “…the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has every given up such immense wealth voluntarily.”[22] But, those fortunes could not have been made without unpaid slave labor.

History Always Comes Back to Haunt Us

One thing about history is you can try to recast it or try to erase it, but the truth of it always comes out eventually. An example of this the irrefutable proof of slavery being the cause of the Civil War are the written words of Confederate leaders like Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. Stephens’ words (along with those of many other Confederate leaders that are part of the historical record today) bring home the irrefutability of slavery as the cause of the Civil War when he wrote these words in 1860 about the Confederacy’s new constitution:

“The new (Confederate) constitution has put to rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution of African slavery…These ideas (i.e., of the nation’s founders regarding the equality of all men) were fundamentally wrong. They rested on the assumption of equality of the races…our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea, its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his normal and natural condition. This our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”[23] (emphasis mine)

There Are More Examples of Incomplete and Inadequate American History

As the reader might guess, there are many, many more examples of how incomplete the American history we teach truly is. A few more examples of the gaps and short comings in the history we learn relate to what many consider as “icons” of American history.

Most Americans know that Andrew Jackson was a U.S President, a War of 1812 hero, and our first major populist public figure. But, do they know that Jackson made a “killing” on Tennessee River valley land formerly owned by the Cherokees (who he was instrumental in forcibly removing to Oklahoma) and the huge profits he made on other Native American land as well?[24] If Americans knew this, would Jackson’s face still be on our twenty-dollar bill?

Another historical misteaching is that the Robert E. Lee who many believe lived, never existed. Contrary to popular belief and image, Robert E. Lee was not a brilliant military strategist. Possibly he was a great military tactician, but his military track record from Gettysburg on was strategically unsuccessful. More than that, the image of Lee being the gentle, reluctant warrior who did not support slavery is false. Lee not only believed in slavery and knew why the South was seceding from the Union, he owned slaves. He hired them out regularly for profit, breaking slave families apart when he needed to do so, and treated them harshly if they tried to escape.[25]

Lee is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers. Not a hero, Lee committed treason when he turned down a Union army command and fought for Virginia and the Confederacy. Were it not for Lincoln’s “let’em up easy” policy following the Confederacy’s surrender, many Northerners believed Lee (and Confederate President Jefferson Davis) should pay the ultimate price for this treason. Adam Server, writing in The Atlantic added regarding the myth of “the kindly General Lee”: “Lee’s elevation is a key part of the 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one.”[26]

Why This Matters to Democracy

All these topics just mentioned, whether taught incompletely, taught inaccurately, or not taught at all, come at cost to democracy, a cost we see in the public square today. With a “fuzzy picture” of the past, we unknowingly provide ourselves a puzzling picture of events today that are even “fuzzier”. Nothing makes any sense, and it will not make sense without accurate historical knowledge.

Today in many states across this nation their legislatures have become highly involved in deciding which history will be taught in their public schools. These legislatures are prescribing not only what and how American history will be taught, but what specifically cannot be taught, and even prescribing textbooks that can and cannot be used based on what they have determined to be a politically acceptable and accurate portrayal of American history.

Without this knowledge, in many cases Americans are “flying blind” in the public square and being misled by those in or running for public office. Removing our historical blinders would help us to see what we need to know so we do not repeat past mistakes as a nation or be led astray by those who seek to mislead us. Can you imagine the difference in dialogue on issues related to race as well as social equity and justice if, for example, the myth of the Civil War as a “lost and noble cause” had been confronted and dispelled head-on with the facts in the classroom for millions of Americans as it should have been?

Accurate Historical Knowledge Helps Ensure Our Freedom

Historian James Loewen provides further perspective on the importance of historical literacy to our civic literacy as well as one’s ability to be productive citizens in a democracy. He identifies two reasons our knowledge of history is important:

“First, the truth can set us free. That is, when we understand what really happened in the past, then we know what to do to cause the nation to remedy its problems in the present…Second, there is a reciprocal relationship between truth about the past and justice in the present. When we achieve justice in the present, remedying some past event or practice, then we can face it and talk about it more openly, precisely because we have made it right.”[27] (emphasis mine)

Which is why author William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”[28]

Having this partial or incomplete historical knowledge makes it much easier for us to being drawn into myths, accepting false or partially false narratives, coming to wrong conclusions, or failing to recognize major change in the public square, something we will address next. Stay tuned…

We will continue exploring topics like this gone that are not given near enough time and emphasis in our civic education efforts, if they are even taught at all. Democracy is so important. But it’s hard to keep, and it’s easy to lose. It’s up to us, and only us, to protect it. Support democracy, become a Democratist! Spread the word!

[1] The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, pg. 37, Konecky & Konecky, 156 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10010

[2] The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, pg. 38, Ibid

[3] The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, pg. 38, Ibid

[4] The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, pg. 37, Ibid

[6] “An Honest History of Texas Begins and Ends With White Supremacy”, by Casey Michel, The New Republic, June 12, 2021, https://www.newrepublic.com/article/161685/texas-1836-project-white-supremacy

[7] Big, Wonderful Thing, A History of Texas, by Stephen Harrigan, pp 200-201

[9] “An Honest History of Texas Begins and Ends With White Supremacy”, by Casey Michel, The New Republic, June 12, 2021, Ibid

[10] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths-about-why-the-south-seceeded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html

[11] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, Ibid

[12] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, Ibid

[13] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, Ibid

[14] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, Ibid

[15] “Slavery, Not States’ Rights, Caused Civil War Whose Political Effects Linger”, by Frank James, NPR, April 2011, https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/04/12/135353655/slavery-not-states-rise-was-civil-wars-cause

[16] “Why the Confederate Lie Lives On”, by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, June 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archieve/2021/06/confederate-lost-cause-myth/6187711/

[17] “Why the Confederate Lie Lives On”, by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, June 2021, Ibid

[18] “Why the Confederate Lie Lives On”, by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, June 2021, Ibid

[19] “Why the Confederate Lie Lives On”, by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, June 2021, Ibid

[20] “Why the Confederate Lie Lives On”, by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, June 2021, Ibid

[21] “What This Cruel War Was Over”, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, June 22, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over-396482/?utm_source=newsletter

[22] “Five Myths About Why the South Seceded”, by James W. Loewen, The Washington Post, February 26, 2011, Ibid

[23] “Slavery, Not States’ Rights, Caused Civil War Whose Political Effects Linger”, by Frank James, NPR, April 2011, Ibid

[24] “How Jackson Made a Killing in Real Estate”, by Steve Inskeep, Politico, July 4, 2015, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/Andrew-Jackson-made-a-killing-in-real-estate-119727/

[26] “The Myth of the Kindly General Lee”, by Adam Server, The Atlantic, June 4, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archieve/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/5290381/?utm_source=newsletter

[27] Lies My Teacher told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen, pg. xix, Ibid

[28] “Slavery, Not States’ Rights, Caused Civil War Whose Political Effects Linger”, by Frank James, NPR, April 2011, Ibid

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