James W. Loewe Quotes
As soon as the Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done and why. The resulting mythology took hold of the nation a generation later and persists.
James W. Loewe, Historian & Sociologist, "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong.", The Washington Post, July 5, 2015
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
When he referred to "the noose" he was connoting one of the major ways the Southern Segregationists and racists maintained white supremacy and Jim Crowe after the Civil War: Lynching. They terrorized blacks and whites who had different views by kidnapping their victims, torturing them, hanging them, and often mutilating their bodies after the murder. They never were convicted because the Southern law enforcement officers were often part of the lynch mob, the judges were usually themselves racist segregationists, and if jurors voted to convict in the few cases that went to trial, they themselves were risking lynching. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black.
This quotation shows us that Ancient historians knew well, that rulers and governments could intimidate contemporary historians and even after rulers died hatreds from previous periods also often distort history. The hatred and resentment of the American Southerners after the Civil War warped most history books in America and especially history text books for over 100 years before histories of the Civil War and Reconstruction could be written with more reasonable accuracy.
As just one example of Southern States' reasons, see {583044}. Many of the Northern States had passed laws declaring everyone in the state was free and making it illegal to return or assist in the returning of escaped slaves. The Southerners got the Federal Fugitive Slave Act passed which required all Americans to assist in recapturing escaped slaves. It was the Northern States who claimed states' rights were being trampled. The South was vehemently opposed to States' Rights when it came to allowing individual states to decide who was free and who was not. The Southerners had only one fundamental reason for secession—the maintenance of the Negro slavery system on which much of their economy depended as did their sociology, culture, and way of life.
While this assessment was true up until the 1980s. By the 21st century there were almost no serious historians who thought that the motivation of the Confederate States for the Civil War was anything but slavery and the economic impact that abolition might bring. However, one of your advantages having this collection of historical quotations is that you can see for yourself why the Southern states say they were seceding. This following are four of the official secession resolution documents. Read these and you will see that all the claims that there were other major reasons for secession are just attempts to make the Confederacy a little less brutal and greedy. See {621371}, {619793}, {621372}, {621375}
Blight was referring to one classic example where the myth developed in the South and spread to the rest of the country, that the Civil war motivation was not to maintain slavery but a noble fight for freedom and states rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the seceding states had a legislative declaration of secession and all of them stated maintaining slavery was the cause of the war and secession. None mentioned a general principle of states’ rights. As a matter of fact the State’s rights issue went the other way. It was the Northern states that refused to obey the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court to return fugitive slaves. The Northern states claimed State’s rights and the South responded that states had no right to nullify a Federal Law that had been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. The historical myths that nations create, puts a more acceptable veneer on disreputable behavior of the past. The United States does this but other nations do as well, and some of the myths cause conflict and violence hundreds of years later as with the Balkans where each ethnic subgroup has its own myths all of which are wrong but believed.
After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the American nation was still bitterly divided intelelctually, socially, emotionally and poliotically. In an effort to bring more unity to America, most of the power stucture and the influentials of the nation began to avoid those issues that would divide North and South and try and promote a narrative that both sides might be able to live with. And this is what Zeitz describes in this quotation. America went through a period of Revisionist History that even in the 21st century was held by many people. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that the real history and narrative of the Civil War and Reconstrution emerged from the few academics who had all along criticized the fabricated narritive that did unify the country at the cost of historical accuracy and truth. Many scholars point out that the price that America paid for this unity was the Jim Crow era and a century of legalized racism. Much of the nation was built on the labor of Negro slaves and the victims of the slavery era, also bore the brunt of American unity and reconcilliation.
