Getting the Civil War Right
From: jacksonskin1@yahoo.com
Hi Chuck
I work as an educator and receive a free magazine called Teaching Tolerance. In the Fall issue there is an article entitled "Getting the Civil War Right" written by James W. Loewen. James Loewen taught race relations for 20 years at the University of Vermont.
He is your typical Yankee. You can read his article at the following link:
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/getting-civil-war-right
He is really upset with teachers, who in overwhelming numbers believe that the main cause of the War was either state rights, taxes & high tariffs or Lincoln being elected and not slavery. He believes that slavery was the only reason and that these other issues were just a bunch of myths. He spends the rest of the article trying to show how tolerant he is by slamming Southerners whom he calls Neo-Confederates and trying to teach us dummies that the war was really all the Southerners fault. I wrote the following response to him.
This article is laughable:
Submitted by jacksonskin on 26 September 2011
"This article is laughable and one of the most least tolerant articles I have ever read in your magazine. The author tries to make the point that the Southern view about the war must be wrong, even though the overwhelming majority of teachers believe the main cause of the "Civil War" was state rights. The author then sets out to prove that the Northern view is the only correct view and that all the teachers are wrong. Since the North won the war you would think that most people, especially teachers, would teach the same views as the author. But that is certainly not the case. I think the author is most upset that his narrow view is only held by a few leftists and that people are not as ignorant as they once may have been. For a magazine that is supposed to be tolerant and open-minded, how this article was allowed in your publication is beyond me."
For the cause of truth,
Mr. Jackson
