The Souths Right Essay, Research Paper

The public school system was used as a tool of the government and still is to skew the American mind into believing whatever it wants. For example: at the present time the school child has evolution drilled into their head as fact, even though it has already been accounted for as false. The C.S.A. (Confederate States of America) President Jefferson Davis actually predicted this. He taught that if the South lost, then the North would write it s history. Therefore, the generations to come wouldn t understand the Confederate call for independence (Kennedy 17).

The public school system was put into effect after the North won the war. It s plan was to appeal with a free education, which it did. Then it used it s captives in it s scheme of confusing them about their parents cause. They were fed by such lies as the Confederates were prejudice slave-holders who beat black people for fun. This, of course, was very successful. Now a people who once believed in the federal government was here to help the states reach common goals, believe it s their supreme authority.

One of the lies that has already been mentioned is that the “Civil War” is over slavery. This is one of the most dead wrong statements that one could think of. First of all, 70 to 80 percent of Southern soldiers didn t even own slaves (Kennedy 34). People just don t get motivated enough to give up their life over whether their neighbor is going to be able to continue having something. One soldier in the Confederate army claimed, “I declare I never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery.” Secondly, even for the few slaveholders in the war, C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis, their leader, predicted that all slave property “will eventually be lost” no matter what the outcome (Kennedy 35). Why would a slaveholder risk his life to keep a slave that his leader already told him he ll lose in the future?

The next popular belief to destroy is that only white Southerners owned slaves. This one isn t even close to accurate. First things first, white men weren t the only slave holders. In fact, black men started slavery by enslaving their own people in Africa, but that s beside the point. In the 1830 American census, over 10,000 slaves were owned by other African-Americans (Kennedy 64, 65). This would also have to mean that there were free blacks in the South. Actually when a member of the 12th Connecticut came down, he said that he saw as many free blacks South as he did in larger cities North (Kennedy 134).

Another surprise will be that the North legalized slavery first in America. Believe it or not, Massachusetts legalized in 1641 while still a colony (Kennedy 71). Also, New Jersey still had slavery going on at the start of the war. In New Jersey to become a free black, you must be born after 1804 and be older than 21 years of age. So this means that everyone not born after 1804 is a slave for life and everyone else is until over 21. In the 1851 census, New Jersey still had 236 slaves for life (Kennedy 75). This was only ten years before the war! Here s the last one on slavery for now, Major General Ulysses S. Grant s wife owned slaves during the war (Kennedy 27).

Everyone had their own views on whites and blacks at this time, including the President Abraham Lincoln. In 1858, Lincoln was in a debate with Douglas in which he spoke on the relationship between whites and blacks. Listen for yourself:

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races-that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races…I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race (Kennedy 27).

Go figure, Abraham Lincoln a white supremacist! Now that is something you won t here in the history books and neither is the next point about him. But if he was a white supremacist, then why would he be against slavery? It s because he wants separation from the black people. In another debate with Douglas, he says, and I quote, “Let us be brought to believe that it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at least not against, our interests to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be” (Kennedy 28). It sounds like everyone will rejoice at Lincoln picking the splinter out of the South s eye, but they all miss the plank in his.

The Northern hypocrites were found more racist than their leader. In the North, the white carpenters, bricklayers, and painters refused to do work with the black people, but the whites in the South worked side-by-side with blacks on a regular basis (Kennedy 53,54). Then as well as Lincoln had his ideas with abolition, the Northern states had racist laws working with abolition in their states to keep Africans out. You see, the Northerners became abolitionist when they no longer felt a need for slaves or the black race at all. For example, Connecticut refused to educate blacks because they claimed it would bring them closer to equal with whites. New Jersey prohibited blacks from settling there (with the exception of the slaves we already mentioned). In Massachusetts the punishment of blacks staying there longer than two months required a public flogging. Then in Indiana, Illinois, and Oregon they just weren t allowed to enter the states at all (Kennedy 55). What does this tell you about what you ve been taught?

The truth is that the average African-American was treated better as a slave than as a free man in the North. The famous William Lloyd Garrison stated that, “The free colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse, and their lot worse than of the slaves…” (Kennedy 54). Now that is something that wasn t in my history books, any of them.

This forced the South to fight a battle for liberty and independence (McPherson 9).