Historians Find Myriad Errors In VA History Textbooks

[cal04]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/historians_find_myriad_errors_in_va_history_textbo.php

Surprise, surprise, historians have found glaring errors in a textbook claiming that African Americans fought in large numbers for the South during the Civil War.

A number of additional errors have been found in other textbooks being used in some Virginia classrooms, since the state ordered a review of the books, the Washington Post reports.

Among the textbooks' errors are claims that the Confederacy included 12 states and the U.S. entered World War I in 1916. Five professional scholars reviewed the books, with three of them finding "disturbing" results. State officials are scheduled to meet January 10 to review the results.

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes -- wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College who reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present." The other book mentioned in the report was "Our America: To 1865."

[rfranklin]

1. LOL...the idea of slave owners giving the slaves guns is ludicrous...

who thought up that fairy tale? Oh yeah, the same people who said "my slaves love me!"

[Recursion]

4. Well the people in the military were free blacks

The controversial bit is that the textbook says they were put in front-line roles, which has basically no evidence apart from a few outlying cases.

[hlthe2b]

6. Even Gone With the Wind depicted slaves being required...

to dig the trenches for (as the character, Big Sam says): "the gentlemen and women to hide in when the Yankees come."

I always got a kick out of that line, but certainly closer to the truth than implying they all volunteered to fight and were handed guns.

[HereSince1628]

2. This happens when Texans don't select the books!

I know I shouldn't laugh a this but can't help myself.

:rofl:

[arcane1]

3. In case anyone hasn't read it yet...

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen is a most excellent book on this very topic.

[kenfrequed]

12. An excellent suppliment to any history lesson

I would also recommend "Lies across America"

[arcane1]

15. I have that one, unread, and next in line...

after I finish "The Shock Doctrine" :)

[kenfrequed]

19. Another great read!

The Shock Doctrine should be required reading right now, particularly the way we are being pushed around with regards to this deficit that was created by Republicans.

[NoGOPZone]

5. Perhaps that book was used as a source

for some dubious assertions and half-truths that appeared in a thread here a few days ago.

[MadHound]

7. Well, while her sourcing for that particular fact is suspect,

There are lots of strong primary sources that do show that thousands of African Americans did serve in the confederate Army. Most were relegated to doing the manual labor of the camp, but many did actually take up arms and fight.

If you look at the pension rolls and pension applications for various Confederate states after the Civil war, you will find the names of many African Americans. There are also other primary sources that back these numbers up.

Her mistake was citing the web site, a biased and potentially unreliable source. But the actual fact that she puts forth regarding African Americans in the Confederate Army is correct.

[hootinholler]

10. Cite your sources that back that assertion up please.

Post article:

In its short lesson on the roles that whites, African Americans and Indians played in the Civil War, "Our Virginia" says, "Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson."

Masoff said of the assertion: "It's just one sentence. I don't want to ruffle any feathers. If the historians had contacted me and asked me to take it out, I would have."

...

Masoff said one of her sources was Ervin Jordan, a University of Virginia historian who said he has documented evidence -- in the form of 19th-century newspapers and personal letters -- of some African Americans fighting for the Confederacy. But in an interview, Jordan said the account in the fourth-grade textbook went far beyond what his research can support.

"There's no way of knowing that there were thousands," Jordan said. "And the claim about Jackson is totally false. I don't know where that came from."

The errors are not just extant in Masoff's books.

-Hoot

[MadHound]

11. I thought I did,

Like I said earlier, the Confederate pension rolls, and applications for Confederate pensions show up thousands of names of African Americans.

There are 302 African Americans who applied for pensions from Tennessee alone. You can find the records at the Tennessee Historical Society.

Also, going through old records of UCV reunions and old newspaper articles of UCV reunions, you will find a number of African Americans attended such reunions. In fact the UCV made it a point to highlight these African American veterans so as to appear less racist.

I could go on, but I've better things to do. Perhaps you should do your own research into this. I've done mine.

[kenfrequed]

14. Is there a book written about this somewhere?

Or did you do all the primary source research yourself? That sounds sort of intensive and exhaustive an effort for mere personal research and curiosity. Unless you are a historian I don't understand why you would do this, particularly about this specific area of history.

Surely you must have read something that pointed you in this direction...

[kenfrequed]

16. To elaborate a bit

Those slaves that were loaned to the confederate war effort were still slaves and did menial work as well as cooking. They were not volunteers by any contortion of the imagination nor were they properly drafted and inducted as ordinary soldiers would have been.

The discussion is not, nor has it ever been, about slaves slaving away for the confederate army. There was never the slightest doubt that this was done. This was about rewriting history to suggest Blacks would stand up in large numbers and willingly fight for the confederate cause which is and always has been a myth designed to make the confederate cause more sympathetic and to try to hide the role that slavery played in the civil war.

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. I find the distinction between black conscription and white conscription to be subtle.

People are easily convinced to take up arms because their families and way of life are threatened, even when that way of life is the primary threat to their families.

[kenfrequed]

27. It isn't conscription.

Honestly, if you are a slave there is no conscription, merely the transfer of property. I don't think there is anything subtle about that.

Also conscription is not the same as people being convinced to take up arms. Conscription, by definition is not proactively voluntary. One can consent to conscription after the fact but that is hardly a relevent distinction in this case. Conscription assumes the conscript has residency and even conscripts in most settings are paid something.

[MadHound]

28. To answer your questions,

Yes, there are a few books out there, some of questionable quality, some not. Yes, I did a lot of this research myself, yes I'm a historian. Degreed and everything.

Yes, slaves were enlisted in the Confederate army. No, they weren't loaned, their masters expected to be paid in return. Many slaves went to war with their master, doing various menial tasks, but there are also many accounts of these slaves protecting and defending their wounded master and nursing them back to health.

Furthermore, there were many slaves who went to war for other reasons. Some went because they had been promised freedom in exchange for serving in the army. Some went in place of their masters. Some went to help their master. Some freed African Americans actually did go to war because they believed in the cause. We have a tendency to few people and their actions in the past through the prism of our own present, and thus find it either unbelievable or indefensible that people in the past did certain things, even though it makes perfect sense if you put those actions in proper historical context. What people tend to overlook when it comes to both slaves and freed African Americans of the Civil War era is that they realized that Northerners were not paragons of virtue. True, there weren't slave states in the North, but many African Americans were still lynched, beaten, abused, and even shipped back to the South. Malcolm X made a very telling comment regarding race and America, namely that Southerners hated the black man collectively as a race, but loved him on an individual basis, while Northerners loved the black man collectively as a race, but hated him on an individual basis.

Yes, while many tens of thousands of African Americans did flee the South during the Civil War, many didn't. Many stayed home and kept the plantation system tottering along, and some few thousand did indeed join up with the Confederate Army. People don't like to hear this, just as they don't like to hear that there were African Americans who owned slaves of their own in the South, but it is true nonetheless. Did they stand up in large numbers:shrug: A few thousand in an army that numbered in the tens of thousands, relatively speaking that's not large numbers. But it is large enough to be historically significant and worthy of study.

[hootinholler]

21. I would prefer a little more rigor when being dismissed via handwaving.

Regarding the Confederate Pension roles, the first question I have is were the applicants identified by race, or are you relying on A.A. sounding names? Second, were those who I will assume they were granted pensions free combatants, or slaves who were taken to war with their master akin to the horse I assume he rode? It seems fair to me that after the war a slave who was taken to war to work in building defences and other labor would have been granted a pension. Of course I freely admit that is speculation on my part, since the Tennessee Historical Society has little in it's online collections to buttress your assertion that receiving a pension meant the person was a combatant.

Regarding the reunions, a slave taken to war and put in harms way, possibly drawing a pension, I could see them wanting to attend a reunion for any number of reasons. I can also see them being welcomed as you say they were for the obvious reason.

All of that, plus my suspicion that if indeed there were thousands of A.A. combatants we would have heard more about it from their contemporaries in after action reports for one and perhaps just one or two muster lists.

So I shall remain suspicious of your assertions until you can show me otherwise.

-Hoot

[MadHound]

29. I gave you sources, yet you continue to doubt them, what does it take then?

You don't want to be dismissed via handwaving, yet refuse to believe the facts when they are presented to you, what do you expect then:shrug:

Here, just for more of your edification. If you have access to a university library database, you actually might be able to find these on your own, if you care to know the truth.

From the Macon Daily Telegraph, July 28, 1832

SOLDIER'S DISCHARGE
To All Whom it May Concern

Know Ye, That Charle Benger, a colored Musician of Captain Geo. S. Jones' company, Macon Volunteers 2nd Ga. Battalion, who was enlisted the 1st day of May, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, to serve one year is hereby honorably discharged from the Army of the Confederate States. Charlie is a patriotic and faithful negro, and deserves good treatment at the hands of any and every Souterner.

Said Charles Benger was born in Camden county in the State of Georgia, is 68 years of age, 5 feet 11 inches high, black complexion, black eyes, grey hair, and by occupation when enlisted, a fifer.

Given at Petersburg, Va., this 22nd day of July, 1862
Geo. S. Jones,
Capt. Macon Vol's.
Charles J. Moffett
Capt. Com'd 2d Ga. Batt., Ga. Vols.

Transportation furnished in kind to Macon Ga.
E.B. Branch
Capt. & A. Qr. M.I.C.S.

As far as your crack about "relying on A.A. sounding names", tell me, what is an African American sounding name, especially during the Civil War era? And aren't you, with that very statement, displaying some of your own prejudice and perhaps latent racism.

But to continue. Yes, many of the the African Americans who entered the Confederate Army did so because their masters compelled them to. Many served in the capacity of teamsters, servants, manual laborers. But there were a number who served of their own free will, either out of the promise of getting their own freedom at the end of the war, or even out of a sense of loyalty and patriotism towards the Confederate states. You may find that hard to believe, but that is because you, like so many other people today, look at history through the prism of modern beliefs, norms and thought. Back in the 1860's, the North was no utopia for the African American. There's a reason that the Underground Railroad terminated in Canada and not New York, Michigan or Wisconsin. Black people got lynched in the North, they were spat on and reviled in the North as well. And many Northerners would turn in an African American, free or slave, for the bounty or reward money. Many African Americans in the South at the time of the Civil War thought it was better to make a deal with the devil you know, than to go North and make a deal with the devil you didn't know.

Look, I recognize that this is inconvenient history, but history is usually inconvenient, especially when the the victors write it. Northerner tried to expunge the record of the service of African Americans in the Confederacy, but those records are still around, if you go looking for them. You may not like the fact that African Americans served in the Confederate Army, but your dislike doesn't make that fact any less real. Don't believe me, go do your own research. Start with the newspaper archives in Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and elsewhere across the South. Go look up the monuments that were erected in the South to commemorate African American's contribution to the war(yes, and they're written in stone). While you're at it, explore other inconvenient truths, like the fact that there were both Native American and African Americans who owned plantations and slaves themselves.

History isn't a neat little package wrapped in black and white and tied in a bow. It is messy, complicated and complex. Above all, it needs to be approached not with the mindset of a 21st century American, but rather the mindset of a contemporary person of that time period. Get to know the culture and attitudes of the people whose history you study. Open your mind to that, and a lot more will become clear.

[shraby]

22. I wasn't aware that the U.S. Government would give pensions

to the Confederate army members because they were not in the employ of the U.S.,Goverment but in the employ of an illegitimate army.

[hootinholler]

23. I don't think they did

The Confederate Soldier pensions were given by the states.

-Hoot

[hootinholler]

8. I was about to do an OP on this myself...

Here's the article from the post who reported some issues in Oct.

Five Ponds Press gradually expanded to other subject areas, filling a growing portion of Virginia's $70 million-a-year textbook market. Many larger publishers employ professional historians, but all of the books by Five Ponds Press have been written by Masoff, who is not a trained historian. Other titles by her include "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" and "Oh, Yikes! History's Grossest, Wackiest Moments."

Scolnik said Five Ponds is in the process of hiring a professional historian from a Virginia university.

School districts choose textbooks from a list approved by the state. Among the factors is price. The books by Five Ponds Press often are less expensive than those produced by larger publishers.

Fauquier County uses "Our America." Loudoun County used "Our Virginia" but pulled it in October, after The Post's report. Fairfax County still uses "Our Virginia," and last week, a review committee in Prince William County recommended both "Our America" and "Our Virginia" for approval.

It doesn't appear to be revisionist, but rather ignorance on the part of a lot of people. I have to wonder if the Virginia University historian will help. If they get one from one of the fundie schools, the kids could be learning about Jesus riding a velociraptor.

-Hoot

[glinda]

9. There needs to be a "History Lockbox" site. The more History is dismantled and re-constructed

the more direct correlation to how the people of this Country act.

[the redcoat]

13. These historians should take a trip down to Texas

[Doctor_J]

17. You mean Newt Gingrinch didn't sign the Declaration of Independence?

Dammit

[Odin2005]

18. Public school history textbooks are propaganda, not history.

[pipi_k]

20. Well, just wait a hundred years or so....

when a few textbooks in certain states will have rewritten History to show that George W Bush was a famous war hero who saved the lives of 3,000 men during the Vietnam War, singlehandedly cleared the rubble from the WTC site, discovered a cure for 12 deadly diseases, and struggled mightily to restore our economy after Bill Clinton left us 60 Bazillion dollars in debt.

[affrayer]

24. Lies? Naw, that's just the way we roll!

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes -- wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?"

This is a silly question. One look at the election cycle with the thousands of lies told every two years and the answer is obvious. American has become the land of the intentionally misinformed. Our entire political process has become a steady diet of lies, distortions and dishonesty.

And why not with one half of the political spectrum devoted to misleading the country. Who among you still believes in one of the boldest lies in the history of mankind, "Supply Side Economics?" And who among you believes that Sarah Palin is qualified to hold public office?

So why should we care about the rehash of century old lies? We have so many new ones to be bothered with...

[Enthusiast]

30. NICE post!

And right on!

[woo me with science]

26. They had the kids correct the errors in class.

Kids I know reported that they were told what pages to turn to and were handed out sticky paper to paste over the text.

Of course, all the kids read those paragraphs especially intently before doing so.