Maybe it has lessened since 1965 or whatever, but I bet it's gotten worse since 2000

And also the states' rights to legally force other states to return self-liberated former-slaves to their former enslavers.

I also grew up in the South, and my experience was also definitely a lot more limited and "both sides" coded than what I've heard from others I know who grew up in the north. Very much driven by the lost cause myth.

Slavery was billed as an unfortunate consequence of the South, lumped in with other "it was a different time" hand-waves of historical atrocities. The North was still sorta branded as the "good guys," but in a way that implied the Civil War was still necessary for the North to realize its "neglect" of Southern issues. And Southern leaders (still enslavers all, but again, "different time") were upheld as heroes who did the right thing by nobly fighting for their homes after the (again regrettable but still necessary) acts of secession. The "Union" and the Confederacy were basically framed like sports teams, with each side having pros and cons, and the Civil War was taught as a necessary reconciliation of their differences.

I also put "Union" in quotations because I learned more recently that even this type of language plays into the lost cause myth. It encourages people to think of the Union and the Confederacy as equal peers that emerged from a collapsed United States, and only by rejoining with the Union could the United States exist once again. The reality is that the United States never collapsed, and the aftermath of the Civil War was not a reunification, but the defeat of an unjust rebellion.

Thank you for doing the Union's work, sir or ma'am! o7

I had almost the opposite experience. The textbooks barely mentioned slavery in the context of the war, besides the freeing of slaves after the war. The book said it was all about states rights. But our teachers did tell us it was mostly about slavery.

But I did grow up in the south, so much so that my middle school was pretty much segregated when I was there in the mid 00’s. What a shithole

My high school history teacher imparted the same thing.

He also explicitly went out of his way to note that the New Deal didn't alleviate the Great Depression (but it was the war – and, therefore, production – which did) and had an entire lecture about how Nixon never thought he was doing anything wrong and name dropped that he knew certain members of that administration on a personal level so I don't think he was exactly unbiased.

That said, he also spend more time on the 1940s civil rights movement than any other teacher I ever had and routinely highlighted that racial profiling was still prevalent in America so I'm not entirely certain what he had going on.

State's rights to do what?

Yeah the Confederacy was against states rights. Member states were not allowed to be abolitionist. And they left the union because they weren't allowed to force northern states to follow their laws. Anyone saying it was about states rights is a racist pos

War of northern aggression. Started by the South shooting at an American fort.

Not that I disagree, but is that just an aside, or did I miss an implication in the screenshot?

Is the states rights issue when mentioned in any letters of secession, I wonder? Kinda doubt it...

But slavery is explicitly named as an issue in every single one, so yeah..

Also a matter of how up-to-date your textbooks are, and when you grew up. It was definitely common in the Deep South as recently as the 90s.

I also grew up in Texas in the 90s and during our Texas History courses, they liked to sweep under the rug that that Texas independence was basically because the Mexican govt outlawed slavery on 1829 and didn't want anyone owning slaves or bringing more over anymore.

Re: the Civil War, there was LOTS of "lost cause" and "states rights" apologist language in our text books. The teachers didn't really dwell on that but the books did.

Did middle and high school near DFW. Texas still won’t admit the Alamo was about slavery. It explicitly was entirely about slavery. Texas went so far as to - twice - enshrine slavery into their constitution, and, even prohibit slave owners from emancipating their slaves.

That’s dedication. And when you look at Texas today, it’s after effects are everywhere.

In the South (Texas is not The South, it's Texas)

EDIT: I'm not saying this as an insult to Texas. It's a distinct culture from the deep south in the US. Texans will no doubt agree that they are built different.

The war of southern aggression. Only started because the south wouldn't let us free the enslaved people who entered northern states.

Ugh, no they didn't. Or at least they don't now.

20% of votes for the Nazis party itself, and a good 30% for the party saying we should "move past our history".

Everything in this shitty country tries to play the "it was a long time ago" card.

Many think that it has to do with the Mexican-American War too. Nope its the Texas Independence War (which was about slavery)

Weird to me you said it was "we fucked up". I would think they'd distance themselves from the losers and consider themselves the winners." They fucked up, and now their territory is back ours and we live here!"

Johnson sabotaged everything he could, but Grant was a good Union boy and put in 8 years of effort in Reconstruction.

Shame about Grant's choice of 'friends'.

If you really want to slam the lid on that dumb argument, start pulling up the Civil War era state constitutions of those Southern states. Nearly all of them START by talking about how Slavery is integral to their state.

They can try to claim it wasn't about slavery now, but back then, it was clearly the primary reason - in their own state constitutions.

It's also here in The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States, which is essentially the Confederate Declaration of Independence. They make it VERY clear that the problem is the North trying to abolish slavery. At one point they whine that the North gets help from the Federal government, while they get no help at all, Waaaah!

Sherman didn't burn enough of the South, and we NEVER should have let them choose their own educational curriculum. In the non-MAGA future, education will be Federal, and states won't have a choice. We gave them over a 100 years to introduce a responsible curriculum for our children, and many states used that opportunity to undermine our Nation's security. That must end. 2+2=4, and CAT spells cat in every state in the Union. We don't need 50 separate school curriculums. The money saved with that alone, could provide every public schoolkid with free breakfast and lunch every day.

Oddly, having grown up in rural Indiana in the 90s, I actually had really solid education through and through. We had honest decent coverage of the Civil War and it was emphasized how awful things were for the slaves. Same with WWII.

Can’t speak for the whole state ofc, but my school at least did a good job.

Ohio was the powerhouse of the north. Ohio Civil war history classes were less focused on the atrocities of the slaver, but that was so there could be more focus on the underground railroad, the indignity to both humanity and Ohio of the fugitive slave act, and many of the ohioan heroes of the war like Grant, Sherman, and Brown. We didn't learn as much about Oberlin as a hotbed of anti slaver resistance than you'd think though.

But yeah, despite the traitors rags that've slowly crept into the state there's a reason why Columbus's hockey team is named a reference to union soldiers.

Also it wasn't deep red until recently. It was a victim of redmap, extreme gerrymandering, and propaganda, but Ohio went to Obama twice and had a blue senator until last year.

To remember it.

Funny enough, I was taught next-to-nothing about the Alamo growing up. I think it was mentioned maybe once in all 12 years of grade school. I don't know that it has the same cultural currency it once did, at least outside of Texas.

We were taught largely that the Mexican-American War was started because of illegal immigrants from the USA going to then-Mexico and throwing a fit, including many Southerners who brought their slaves with them, and Mexico was cracking down on enforcement of anti-slavery laws.

That was an argument made at the time for those who wished to 'let' slavery die a 'natural' death.

I think such a point misses that the North and the South were not one society or even one economic system. Slavery perpetuates itself not because it's economically efficient (it's not, generally) but because it empowers elites who then leverage that power to preserve that power. They won't let it go unless it's torn from them - the North had the advantage of having never really been a 'slave society'; slavery was permitted before it was banned, but slave-dependent elites were never a majority of power in the North.

It was always going to come down to coercion - whether through a prolonged struggle, or through the acquiescence of the slavers to an overwhelming threat of force. We had the former. I don't think the latter would have been possible without the South being a much smaller proportion of the country, economically, demographically, and geographically.

They call it American Revolutionary War, because that is what it was to them. And from their point of view it was part of bigger conflict.

They were still in mids of the aftermath of 9 year campaing in India and at europes end France joined to the war at 1778 and Spain 1779 and Netherlands 1780.

During those times they were fighting on the Caribian, Gibraltar and the open sea.

Understantably for the Americans the independence war was the big thing, but from the British side it was part of bigger conflict.

we didn't really learn about it in high school. from memory we did the Tudors, the Stewarts, the Romans, Boudica, the Egyptians, Great Fire of London, Norman invasion, the black Plague, WW1, WW2, Iron Age, Bronze Age, Renaissance, The Enlightenment.

edit: plus the Raj

and we do some on the slave trade and America is mentioned but not the main character and civil rights/suffrage which does mention more American stuff (Rosa parks, MLK)

tbf that's much more reasonable.