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Civil War History: Education System Impacts Debate
By erik W. Robelen
education Week
WAShington (AP) — You don’t have to look far for
examples of how the Civil War stirs public debate 150 years
after it began.
A private “secession ball” in Charleston, S.C., pegged to
the anniversary in February of the state’s declared exit from
the Union, sparked a protest from the local NAACP chap-
ter. In Virginia, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, a Republican,
got into trouble last year for issuing a proclamation on
Confederate History Month without ever mentioning slav-
ery.
Experts say schools can play a powerful role — and hold
an important responsibility — in helping young people
make sense of a complex conflict whose meaning continues
to be hotly disputed in the public sphere. That debate is sure
to be amplified, given the prominent attention the war is
getting as the sesquicentennial begins this month.
“One hundred and fifty years later, we’re still fighting
with many of the same questions,” said Andrew T. Mink,
the director of outreach and education at the Curry School
of Education at the University of Virginia, in
Charlottesville, who has administered a series of federal
Teaching American History grants. “People bring a certain
cultural understanding of the Civil War, of the Confederacy,
of the Union. ... If teachers don’t address that, it gets
addressed somewhere else.”
Recent polling suggests that Americans remain divided in
their views of issues tied to the Civil War. The very idea of
designating a Confederate History Month, for instance,
which Gov. McDonnell’s two Democratic predecessors
declined to do, split those surveyed. Just more than half of
U.S. adults said they oppose such a remembrance, accord-
ing to the poll by Harris Interactive.
Meanwhile, 54 percent of respondents said they believe
the South was mainly fighting to preserve slavery, com-
pared with 46 percent who believe the South was mainly
fighting for states’ rights. (The poll did not offer further
alternatives.)
To be sure, the nation has come a long way. For decades,
historians say, slavery had been largely removed from the
public conversation about the war and its origins, as had
such topics as the role of African-Americans in fighting for
the Union. Today, they get much more attention in schools,
museums, and planned commemorations of the anniversary.
Most mainstream historians now agree that slavery was
the leading reason driving the conflict.
“Slavery is the major cause of the Civil War,” said James
I. Robertson, a Civil War historian at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, in Blacksburg. “There are
people ... who will argue to the sky that slavery was just a
byproduct, but without slavery, there was no cause for the
North and the South to start killing each other.”
That said, Mr. Robertson and others stress that it was by
no means the only factor propelling the war, which involved
a web of issues, including differences in the Northern and
One hundred and fifty years
later, we’re still fighting with
many of the same questions
Southern economies, and disputes over the nature of the
Union, the role of the federal government, and states’ rights.
History educators say one of the biggest challenges for
schools in promoting an accurate and deep understanding of
the conflict may well be time. At the secondary level, the
topic may be part of a yearlong course that covers the full
sweep of American history; a lucky teacher might get two
years.
“Teachers often find their time extremely limited to get
in-depth with the Civil War,” said Anthony Napoli, the
We honor the many
accomplishments of
African Americans.
director of education at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History, in New York City. “The biggest question
is what to cover and what to leave out.”
A fundamental understanding of the Civil War is widely
seen by historians and history educators as vital for
Americans. They call it a defining moment in U.S. history
that still has many ramifications and lessons a century and
a half later.
“So many of the crucial issues that were connected to the
Civil War, its origins and consequences, are still with us
today,” said Bernard E. Powers, a history professor at the
College of Charleston, in South Carolina. “You only have to
think about the question of race.”
“But it’s not just that,” he said, citing, for instance, states’
rights.
“The political problem still manifests itself today,” he
said, pointing to recent debates over health care policy.
“Can the federal government require people to buy health
insurance?”
How schools teach the Civil War flares up from time to
time. One recent example concerned a textbook on Virginia
history found in many of that state’s public elementary
schools. It came under fire last fall, after a parent com-
plained about the book’s contention, widely disputed by
historians, that thousands of blacks served as soldiers for
the Confederacy.
A review by a panel of historians of Our Virginia: Past
and Present and another text from the same publisher, Five
Ponds Press, led the state board of education last month to
withdraw approval of both and to overhaul its textbook-
review process.
When asked whether current teaching on the war reveals
regional biases, most history educators interviewed said
that if there are differences, they are far more rare than in
the past, and less pronounced.
“I have no doubt you’re going to find pockets (of the
South) where ... this ‘Lost Cause’ view is present (in the
classroom), but I’ll tell you, I think it’s much too easy to
draw overly simplistic regional distinctions,” said Kevin M.
Levin, the history department chairman at the private St.
Anne’s-Belfield School, in Charlottesville, Va., who has led
workshops to help teachers with the subject. “I don’t think
you can draw the same regional distinctions that were
drawn a few decades ago.”
“I definitely have sat in on a classroom or two that maybe
shocked me with an old school, Old South version of the
Civil War or the causes,” said Donald Stewart, the project
director for a grant in South Carolina under the federal
Teaching American History program.
But he said that, in his experience, this is the rare excep-
tion.
“I’m still waiting to come across the teacher ... who
believes that slavery was a side issue (in the Civil War),”
said Paul C. Anderson, an associate professor of history at
Clemson University, in South Carolina, who also has
worked with many K-12 educators. “I have the exact oppo-
site problem. If I get a question, it’s that a teacher considers
the war to be a moral crusade (by the North), and it was not
that way.
“You have to understand that slavery,” he added, “was
sectional, but racism was national.”
Meanwhile, Kimberley Warrick, a curriculum specialist
for a set of Georgia school districts and a former history
teacher in Montana and Ohio, said she’s encountered that
mind-set. She said she has perceived some misconceptions
from teachers and students who don’t live in the South,
including that all whites in the antebellum South owned
plantations and slaves, and that all Southern whites were,
and still are, racist.
“I believe some students may have these misconceptions
because time typically does not allow teachers to explore
many of the issues deeply,” she said.
In Hartford, Vt., Jennifer Boeri-Boyce, who teaches
social studies at Hartford Memorial Middle School, said she
tries to help students get past the stereotypes.
“This is not just ‘the North is great, the South is wrong,’
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page 14 The Portland Skanner April 20, 2011