Historians find Virginia textbooks about as accurate as Fox News
by Jed Lewison
Wed Dec 29, 2010 at 06:40:05 PM PST
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
To give you an idea how bad the scholarship was, one of the five academics who reviewed the textbooks compiled a ten-page-long list of errors.
Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor, reviewed "Our America" and concluded that it was "just too shocking for words."
"Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake," she said.
The review process began after The Post reported on the Civil War claims earlier this year. The author of the text defended her work by explaining she had conducted her research online, citing works published on the Internet by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. According to The Post, the group dismisses the role that slavery played in the Civil War, instead characterizing it as battle over states' rights -- a position embraced by Gov. Bob McDonnell in commemorating the South's secession from the Union. (McDonnell, who didn't even mention slavery, eventually conceded that it was wrong to completely omit any references to slavery.)
Now, to be fair to the textbook author, the Commonwealth of Virginia made it pretty clear how it wanted to handle discussions of the Civil War and slavery. The official position of the commonwealth's Department of Education is that while slavery was one of the four issues that divided the nation before the Civil War, the war itself was primarily a matter of states' rights:
The South feared that the North would take control of Congress, and Southerners began to proclaim states’ rights as a means of self-protection.
The North believed that the nation was a union that could not be divided.
While the Civil War did not begin as a war to abolish slavery, issues surrounding slavery deeply divided the nation.
Of course, some might say the Civil War began when the South seceded from the union and confederate soldiers opened fire on Fort Sumter. And some might say that given that history, it is historical folly to minimize the fact that among the "rights" that southerners sought to defend was the right to own other human beings. Especially given that in seceding, South Carolina mentioned slavery no less than eighteen times.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
Then again, despite this obvious history, there are some who actually go so far as to call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. Others merely describe it as such. And when that description becomes a state government's officially recognized narrative of the war, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with lousy textbooks.
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