Clyde N. WIlson - Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence

L I E S

My Teacher Told Me

The True History of the War for

SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE

And Other Essays

Clyde N. Wilson

Shotwell Publishing

Columbia, SC

LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME

Copyright 2016 by Clyde N. Wilson & Shotwell Publishing, LLC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Produced in the Republic of South Carolina by

SHOTWELL PUBLISHING LLC

Post Office Box 2592

Columbia, So. Carolina 29202

www.ShotwellPublishing.com

Cover design by Hazels Dream.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

Comments on Clyde Wilson's Writings:

Clyde Wilson had been ploughing the ground long before many of us came to plant. Donald Livingston

Clyde Wilson is a national treasure. Alice Teller

Clyde Wilson shows great ability in the field of intellectual history.

American Historical Review

Clyde Wilson is certainly the biggest intellectual heavyweight with the neo-Confederate scene. Southern Poverty Law Center

. . . a careful scholar who has thought hard and deep about his beloved South. Wilson is, in short, an exemplary historian who displays formidable talent. Eugene Genovese

... a mind as precise and expansive as an encyclopedia... These are the same old preoccupations given new life and meaning by a real mind-as opposed to what passes for minds in the current intellectual establishment. Thomas H. Landess

... Clyde Wilsons essays... places him on the same level with all the unreconstructed greats in modern Southern letters: Donald Davidson, Andrew Lytle, Frank L. Owsley, Richard Weaver, and M.E. Bradford. Joseph Scotchie

Clyde Wilson is an obstreperous soldier in the great Jacobin wars that have plagued the nation. Robert C. Cheeks

IN 2015 THE JIHAD AGAINST everything Southern has been artificially revved up again, with even more malice and less sense than before. For war-weary sons and daughters of Dixie and our friends everywhere we offer this free antidote. A sample of lots more unreconstructed fare from SHOTWELL PUBLISHING.

Columbia, South Carolina. January 2016.

THE SOUTH IS A GARDEN. It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of allModernity; yet, a worn-out garden, its contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a time which will last no longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored, to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the human spirit and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.

Dr. Robert M. Peters of Louisiana

I DID NOT BELIEVE more than I ever had, that the nation would unite indefinitely behind any Southerner. One reason the country could not rally behind a Southern president, I was convinced, was that the metropolitan press of the Eastern Seaboard would never permit it. My experience in office had confirmed this reaction. I was not thinking just of the derisive articles about my style, my clothes, my manner, my accent, and my familyalthough I admit I received enough of that kind of treatment in my first few months as President to last a lifetime. I was also thinking of a more deep-seated and far-reaching attitudea disdain for the South that seems to be woven into the fabric of Northern experience. This is a subject that deserves a more profound explanation than I can give it herea subject that has never been sufficiently examined.

President Lyndon B. Johnson

Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence

I N THIS AGE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 18611865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known.

All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labelled Slavery and Treason. Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat.

It was not always so. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter were not ashamed to be photographed with a Confederate flag. Dwight Eisenhower wrote a letter rebuking and correcting someone who had called R.E. Lee a traitor. In the newsreels of World War II and Korea our flag can be seen painted on fighter planes and flying over Marine tents. In the first half of the 20th century every single big Hollywood star played an admirable Confederate character in the movies at least once.

Those days are gone forever as you well know, although I doubt if you know how really bad it is. When we had the controversy over the flag in South Carolina in 2000, some 90 or more historians issued a statement declaring that the war was about slavery and nothing but slavery and that all contrary ideas are invalid. They claimed that this was not simply their opinion, it was irrefutable fact established by them as experts in history. They did not put it exactly this way, but they were saying that our ancestors were despicable and that you and I are stupid and deluded in thinking well of them.

There are a hundred different things wrong with this statement. These historians are not speaking from knowledge or evidence; they are merely expressing the current fashion in historical interpretation. It is a misuse of history, indeed an absurdity, to reduce such a large and complex event as the War for Southern Independence to such simplistic and self-righteous terms. Historical interpretations change over time. Fifty years ago the foremost American historians believed that the war was primarily about economic interests and that slavery was a lesser issue. Fifty years from now, if people are still permitted to voice ideas that differ from the official government party line, historians will be saying something else.

Remember this. History is human experience and you do not have to be an expert to have an opinion about human experience. Furthermore, the kindergarten lesson of history is that human experience can be seen from more than one perspective. Never let yourself be put down by a so-called expert who claims to know more about your ancestors than you do. The qualities needed for understanding history are not some special expertise, but are the same qualities you look for in a good jurorthe ability to examine all the evidence and weigh it fairly.