Grew up in the South. Learned that it was a Civil War about slavery. What was taught was a brief overview, maybe at best a week, far more is covered now in a single Youtube video. And definitely didn’t learn about the darker parts of the war or the aftermath, including atrocities that happened locally to blacks who were managing to find a path from their days of bondage (Wilmington, Tulsa, plenty of others). I get that everything can’t be covered in grade school and often times the basics taught is not only the bare minimum but even incorrect because the details are far too many and are university level courses of their own. But I was shocked as an adult that someone wasn’t mentioned. The Civil War was almost glorified in the little we really learned.
I also grew up in the South, and my experience was also definitely a lot more limited and “both sides” coded than what I’ve heard from others I know who grew up in the north. Very much driven by the lost cause myth.
Slavery was billed as an unfortunate consequence of the South, lumped in with other “it was a different time” hand-waves of historical atrocities. The North was still sorta branded as the “good guys,” but in a way that implied the Civil War was still necessary for the North to realize its “neglect” of Southern issues. And Southern leaders (still enslavers all, but again, “different time”) were upheld as heroes who did the right thing by nobly fighting for their homes after the (again regrettable but still necessary) acts of secession. The “Union” and the Confederacy were basically framed like sports teams, with each side having pros and cons, and the Civil War was taught as a necessary reconciliation of their differences.
I also put “Union” in quotations because I learned more recently that even this type of language plays into the lost cause myth. It encourages people to think of the Union and the Confederacy as equal peers that emerged from a collapsed United States, and only by rejoining with the Union could the United States exist once again. The reality is that the United States never collapsed, and the aftermath of the Civil War was not a reunification, but the defeat of an unjust rebellion.
Defeat? The aftermath was the subversion of any attempt to hold the traitors responsible. Set everything up for the “business plot/coup”, which was a successful silent coup of the federal government. This country has always been fucked.
Grew up in the South. Learned that it was a Civil War about slavery. What was taught was a brief overview, maybe at best a week, far more is covered now in a single Youtube video. And definitely didn’t learn about the darker parts of the war or the aftermath, including atrocities that happened locally to blacks who were managing to find a path from their days of bondage (Wilmington, Tulsa, plenty of others). I get that everything can’t be covered in grade school and often times the basics taught is not only the bare minimum but even incorrect because the details are far too many and are university level courses of their own. But I was shocked as an adult that someone wasn’t mentioned. The Civil War was almost glorified in the little we really learned.
I also grew up in the South, and my experience was also definitely a lot more limited and “both sides” coded than what I’ve heard from others I know who grew up in the north. Very much driven by the lost cause myth.
Slavery was billed as an unfortunate consequence of the South, lumped in with other “it was a different time” hand-waves of historical atrocities. The North was still sorta branded as the “good guys,” but in a way that implied the Civil War was still necessary for the North to realize its “neglect” of Southern issues. And Southern leaders (still enslavers all, but again, “different time”) were upheld as heroes who did the right thing by nobly fighting for their homes after the (again regrettable but still necessary) acts of secession. The “Union” and the Confederacy were basically framed like sports teams, with each side having pros and cons, and the Civil War was taught as a necessary reconciliation of their differences.
I also put “Union” in quotations because I learned more recently that even this type of language plays into the lost cause myth. It encourages people to think of the Union and the Confederacy as equal peers that emerged from a collapsed United States, and only by rejoining with the Union could the United States exist once again. The reality is that the United States never collapsed, and the aftermath of the Civil War was not a reunification, but the defeat of an unjust rebellion.
That bit always makes me think of the Dixie Stampede show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sNZ-RULhHY
Defeat? The aftermath was the subversion of any attempt to hold the traitors responsible. Set everything up for the “business plot/coup”, which was a successful silent coup of the federal government. This country has always been fucked.