Southerners have misled nation for a century about cause of Civil War; time to set record straight

By Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Friday The Rural Blog picked up an excerpt from Tracy Thompson's new book, The New Mind of the South, about a Clarksdale, Miss., tourist court comprising plantation shacks. Another part of the book is much more important. It explains why more Americans believe the Southern-generated myth that the concept of states' rights was the cause of the Civil War, rather than slavery. "Thompson’s analysis is most incisive and heartfelt" on this point, J. Bryan Lowder writes in Slate.

This is not an arcane, academic argument. It is about facing the fundamental facts about our country, and its fundamental divider, race. And those facts are especially important to confront right now because we have a black president and are going through the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a term some in the South still refuse to use. "To call it a Civil War was to concede that secession was impossible and/or unconstitutional," Thompson (above), who was raised in Georgia, writes in the book. (Photo by Dayna Smith)

The 3,940-word book excerpt in Salon carries an extreme headline, "The South still lies about the Civil War," but as someone who was born, raised and lived all my life in slave states, I find it a compelling account of how Confederate veterans, their descendants and their allies perpetuated the myth, often with the help of Northerners who thought it would encourage regional reconciliation, and how it invaded textbooks and the public mind. To read it, click here.