Untruths in the School System: History Does Not Lie

Last summer, the Lane-Armistead Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans hosted an “encampment” at the Mathews Ruritan Club to raise funds for Mathews Little League and to honor the men of Mathews County who enlisted in the summer of 1861 to fight for the South.  As a member of the Capt. Sally Tompkins Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, I staffed one of the tables in the exhibit area next to a fellow Daughter who ran an activity table for children.  One of the children’s activities was to fill out copies of worksheets taken from an SOL-approved Mathews County fourth grade Social Studies work book.  Upon successful completion of a worksheet, the child would receive a prize.

I could not help but overhear a mother helping her children with one of the sections on the worksheet.  It was a fill-in-the-blank exercise on causes of the War Between the States, referred to as the Civil War.  One sentence read, “The southern states seceded after slavery had been declared _____.”  The only word provided that could possibly fit in the blank was “illegal.”  That statement is an outright lie.  Slavery was not made illegal in this country until the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, which happened after the war ended in 1865.

Since discovering my own ancestors’ service to “The Cause” and in defense of Virginia and indeed their own homes and families, I have learned some important truths that many in this country would prefer were forgotten:

• Virginia did not secede from the Union until April 17, 1861, five days after the first shots of the war had been fired at Fort Sumter and not until an order had come from Washington for Virginia to call up its militia and march it south to hold the seceding states by force.  Virginia, whose own James Madison is considered the Father of The Constitution, decided that would be an unconstitutional act and at that point seceded.

• In 1830, Virginia’s legislature missed passing by only one vote a bill that would have banned slavery in the Old Dominion, so it was on its way out.

• As the abolition movement grew and Congress debated the issue of slavery prior to the war, there was a proposal made by the southern states that they would free the slaves if they could be reimbursed for the value of them by the government.  They would then use the money to pay the freed slaves a wage.  The northern states would not accept the deal, and they had more representatives in the House of Representatives.  The South had one-third of the nation’s population at the time but provided two-thirds of the tax revenue collected by the government—disparity between taxation and representation!

• General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves just before going to war; because, for him, the war was not about keeping slaves but about preserving The Constitution.  Guess who also owned slaves but refused to free them?  Ulysses S. Grant!  For his reason, he was quoted as saying, “Good house help is hard to come by.”

·        The Emancipation Proclamation did not go into effect until 1863, and the war began in 1861.  Furthermore, it did not free a single slave.  Slavery was not made illegal in the United States until the passage of the 13^th Amendment after the war was over.  The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, and it was directed only to the states that seceded from the Union.  Slave states that remained with the Union were not affected.  However, since the Confederate States was a separate sovereign nation with its own constitution, closely mirroring the original, Lincoln’s executive order had no authority.

The causes of the war have been debated for 150 years, but to feed our children outright lies and not give them all the facts is a very dangerous injustice that only serves to promote racism and division.

We have come so far down the politically correct path that we descendants of the Confederacy are demonized for flying the Southern Cross or playing Dixie.  This censure amounts to a violation of our First Amendment rights, and since a large part of the cause of the war was over interpretation of the Constitution—which a certain black female tour guide at the Museum of the Confederacy adamantly tells her visitors—it is apparent that we are still entangled in the struggle to this day.

It makes me wonder:  is this lie perpetuated because having to admit that it wasn’t about slavery and was about the Constitution all along would cause people to realize that we are facing the same issues today and that our federal government is usurping power that it was never intended to have by our Founding Fathers?

Patricia Hudgins Miles