Refighting the Civil War

On Facebook these days I see people refighting the Civil War. That is, they deny that slavery was a major factor in the war, and some of these deniers are not from the South. They're victims of ancient propaganda.

Slaves constituted much of the wealth of the Southern elite. To defend slavery and greed (and the barely masked rape and murder of Blacks in the South) required a serious warping of Christian religion and American political theory. To defend slavery you had to defend rubbish--you had to pretend that you loved states' rights, for example. If you could make a case for states' rights, then perhaps you could con Robert E. Lee into leading your army. (As I recall he led it to defeat.)

Never mind that this enduring mind-bending Southern rubbish was and remains devoted to an obviously losing side in human history.

It's 150 years since my anti-slavery ancestors kicked Southern butt all the way to Fort Sumpter, yet we still hear the same rubbish: the governor of Texas threatens to leave the union. But I take heart. In ten or twenty years Texas will once again be Latino.

Gary Goss