Wednesday, December 01, 2010

James Loewen in the "New York Times" on Secession

The "New York Times" had an article titled, "Celebrating Secession Without Slaves." Didn't use the word neo-Confederate. Discusses the celebrations of the Confederacy and the omission of the issue of slavery. Loewen's picture is with the article.

Article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/us/30confed.html

James Loewen says:

Most historians say it is impossible to carve out slavery from the context of the war. As James W. Loewen, a liberal sociologist and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.”

In its secession papers, Mississippi, for example, called slavery “the greatest material interest of the world” and said that attempts to stop it would undermine “commerce and civilization.”

The story got picked up and seems to be everywhere on the Internet. Ta-Nehisi Coates commented on the New York Times article with an extensive quote from our book.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/they-have-encouraged-and-assisted-thousands-of-our-slaves/67190/

Mr. Coates is using our book just the way it was intended to be used. When some neo-Confederate makes his wild historical claims, you can just quote the Confederates in their own words, and dispel the neo-Confederates' stuff and nonsense.

History News Network picked up on the story in Breaking News here:
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/134085.html

Generally the book hasn't been mentioned, but some people will take the initiative and find Loewen's books including our book.

It isn't even 2011 yet, and it seems that the Sesquicentennial will be very different than the Centennial of the Civil War. No neo-Confederate nonsense seems to be the theme.

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