Lies My Teacher Told Me (27 page)

Lincoln understood that fighting a war for freedom was ideologically more satisfying than
fighting simply to preserve a morally neutral Union. To JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

save the Union, it was necessary to find rationales for the war other than “to save the
Union.” At Gettysburg he provided one.

Lincoln was a fine lawyer who knew full well that the United States was conceived in
slavery, for the Constitution specifically treats slavery in at least three places.
Nevertheless he began, “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal.” Thus Lincoln wrapped the Union cause in the rhetoric of the
Declaration of Independence, which emphasized freedom even while many of its signers were
slaveowners.35 In so doing, Lincoln was at the same time using the Declaration to redefine the Union
cause, suggesting that it ultimately implied equal rights for all Americans, regardless of
race.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war,” Lincoln continued, “testing whether that nation
or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Again, Lincoln knew
better: by 1863 other nations had joined us in democracy. For that matter, every European
nation and most American nations had outlawed slavery. How did our civil war test whether they could endure? Here Lincoln was wrapping the Union cause in the old “last best hope of
mankind” cloak, a secular version of the idea of a special covenant between the United
States and God.i4 Although bad history, such rhetoric makes for great speeches. The president thus appealed
to the antiwar Democrats of the North to support the war effort for the good of all
mankind.

After invoking a third powerful symbol-“the brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here”-Lincoln closed by identifying the cause for which so many had died: “that this
nation, under Cod, shall have a new birth of freedom.” To what freedom did he refer? Black
freedom, of course. As Lincoln well knew, the war itself was undermining slavery, for what
began as a war to save the Union increasingly had become a war for black freedom. Citizens
at the time understood Lincoln perfectly. Indeed, throughout this period Americans
purchased copies of political speeches, read them, discussed issues, and voted at rates
that now seem impossibly high. The Chicago Times, a Democratic newspaper, denounced the address precisely because of “the proposition that
all men are created equal.” The Union dead, claimed the Times, “were men possessing too much self-respect to declare that Negroes were their equals, or
were entitled to equal privileges.”

Textbooks need not explain Lincoln's words at Gettysburg as I have done. The Gettysburg
Address is rich enough to survive various analyses.5" But of the four books that do reprint the speech, three merely put it in a box by itself
in a corner of the page. Only Li/e andLiberty asks intelligent questions about it.57 As a result, I have yet to meet a high school graduate who has devoted any time to
thinking about the Gettysburg Address,

Even worse is textbook treatment of Lincoln's Second Inaugural. In this towering speech,
one of the masterpieces of American oratory, Lincoln specifically identified differences
over slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War, then in its fourth bloody year.)B “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed
time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war,
as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure
from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?”
Lincoln continued in this vein by invoking the doctrine of predestination, a more vital
element of the nation's idea system then than now: “Fondly do we hope-fervently do we
praythat this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it
must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'” This last is
an astonishing sentence. Its length alone astounds. Politicians don't talk like that
nowadays. When students read this passage aloud, slowly and deliberately, they do not fail
to perceive it as a searing indictment of America's sins against black people. The Civil
War was by far the most devastating experience in our nation's history Yet we had it
coming, Lincoln says here. And in his rhetorical context, sin or crime, not mere tragedy,
is the fitting and proper term. Indeed, this indictment of U.S. race relations echoes John
Brown's last note: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty
land will never be purged away, but with Blood.”

Lincoln's Second Inaugural made such an impact on Americans that when the president was
shot, a month later, farmers in New York and Ohio greeted his funeral train with placards
bearing its phrases. But only The United Slates-A History ofthe Republic includes any of the material quoted above. Five other textbooks restrict their quotation
to the speech's final phrase, about binding up the nation's wounds “with malice toward
none,” The other six textbooks ignore the speech altogether.

Like Helen Keller's concern about the injustice of social class, Lincoln's concern about
the crime of racism may appear unseemly to textbook authors.

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The strange career of the log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born symbolizes in a way
what textbooks nave done to Lincoln. The actual cabin fell into disrepair probably before
Lincoln became president. According to research by D. T. Pitcaithley, tbe new cabin, a
hoax built in 1894, was leased to two amusement park owners, went to Coney Island, where
it got commingled with the birthplace cabin of Jefferson Davis (another hoax], and was
finally shrunk to fit inside a marble pantheon in Kentucky, where, reassembled, it still
stands. The cabin also became a children's toy; Lincoln Logs, invented by Frank Lloyd
Wright's son John in 1920, came with instructions on how to build both Lincoln's log cabin
and Uncle Tom's cabinl The cabin still makes its archetypal appearance in our textbooks,
signifying the rags to riches legend of Abraham Lincoln's upward mobility. No wonder one
college student could only say of him, in a much-repeated biooper, “He was born in a log
cabin which he built with his own hands.”

Must we remember Lincoln for ibat? Let's leave it out! Such an approach to Lincoln might be called the Walt Disney
interpretation: Disney's exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair featured an animated
sculpture of Lincoln that spoke for several minutes, choosing “his” words carefully to say
nothing about slavery.

Having disconnected Abraham Lincoln from considerations of right and wrong, several
textbooks present the Civil War the same way. In reality, United States soldiers, who
began righting to save the Union and not much more, ended by righting for all the vague
but portentous ideas in the Gettysburg Address, From 1862 on, Union armies sang “Battle
Cry of Freedom,” composed by George Root in the summer of that year:

We will we/come to our numbers the loyal true and brave, Shooting the battle cry of
freedom. And although he may be poor, no! a man shall be a slave. Shouting she battle cry
of freedom.'"

Surely no one can sing these lines even today without perceiving that both freedom and the preservation of the Union were war aims of the United States and without feeling some
of the power of that potent combination. This power is what textbooks omit: they give
students no inkling that ideas matter.

The actions of African Americans played a big role in challenging white racism. Slaves
fled to Union lines. After they were allowed to fight, the contributions of black troops
to the war effort made it harder for whites to deny that blacks were fully human.1“ A Union captain wrote to his wife, ”A great many [whites] have the idea that the entire
Negro race are vastly their inferiorsa few weeks of calm unprejudiced life here would
disabuse them, I thinkI have a more elevated opinion of their abilities than I ever had
before."42 Unlike historians of a few decades ago, today's textbook authors realize that trying to
present the war without the actions of African Americans makes for bad history. All
twelve current textbooks at least mention that more than 180,000 blacks fought Triumpli of the American Nation includes this evocative photograph of the crew of the USS Hunchback in the Civil War. Such racial integration disappeared during the nadir of race relations
in the United States, from 1890 to 1920.

JOHN BROWN AMD ABRAHAM LINCOLN .

in the Union army and navy. Several of the textbooks include an illustration of African
American soldiers and describe the unequal pay they received until late in the war. Discovering American History mentions that Union soldiers trapped behind Confederate lines found slaves to be “of
invaluable assistance.” Only The United StalesA History ofthe Republic, however, takes the next step by pointing out how the existence and success of black troops
decreased white racism.

The antiracist repercussions of the Civil War were particularly apparent in the border
states. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the Confederacy. It left
slavery untouched in Unionist Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. But the war did
not. The status of planters became ambiguous: owning black people was no longer what a
young white man aspired to do or what a young white woman aspired to accomplish by
marriage. Maryland was a slave state with considerable support for the Confederacy at the
onset of the war. But Maryland held for the Union and sent thousands of soldiers to defend
Washington. What happened next provides a “positive” example of the effects of cognitive
dissonance: for Maryland whites to fight a war against slaveowners while allowing slavery
within their own state created a tension that demanded resolution. In 1864 the
increasingly persuasive abolitionists in Maryland brought the issue to a vote. The tally
went narrowly against emancipation until the large number of absentee ballots were
counted. By an enormous margin, these ballots were for freedom. Who cast most absentee
ballots in 1864 in Maryland? Soldiers and sailors, of course. Just as these soldiers
marched into battle with “John Brown's Body” upon their lips, so their minds had changed
to favor the freedom that their actions were forging.

As noted in the previous chapter, songs such as “Nigger Doodle Dandy” reflect the racist
tone of the Democrats' presidential campaign in 1864. How did Republicans counter? In
part, they sought white votes by being antiracist. The Republican campaign, boosted by
military victories in the fall of ] 864, proved effective. The Democrats' overt appeals to
racism failed, and antiracist Republicans triumphed almost everywhere. One New York
Republican wrote, “The change of opinion on this slavery question . . . is a great and
historic fact. Who could have predicted . . , this great and blessed revolution?”45 People around the OPPOSITE: This is the October 15, 1864, centerfold of Harper's magazine, which throughout the nineteenth century was the mouthpiece of the Republican
party. The words are from the Democratic platform. The illustrations, by young Thomas
Nast, show shortcomings in the Democratic plan. Ore could hardly imagine a political party
today seeking white votes on the basis of such racial idealism.

The Democratic platform began innocuously enough: “We will adhere with unswerving fidelity
to the UNION under the CONSTITUTION as the ONLY solid foundation of our STRENGTH,
SECURITY, and HAPPINESS as a PEOPLE,” But Mast's illustration was a knockout: he shows
siavecatchers and dogs pursuing hapless runaways into a swamp. He jolts the reader to
exclaim. What aoout them? These are people too!

world supported the Union because of its ideology. Forty thousand Canadians alone, some of
them black, came south to volunteer for the Union cause.

Ideas made the opposite impact in the Confederacy. Ideological contradictions afflicted
the slave system even before the war began, John Brown knew that masters secretly feared
that their slaves might revolt, even as they assured abolitionists that slaves really
liked slavery. One reason his Harpers Ferry raid prompted such an outcry in the South was
that slaveowners feared their slaves might join him. Yet their condemnations of Brown and
the “Black Republicans” who financed him did not persuade Northern moderates but only
pushed them toward the abolitionist camp. After all, if Brown was truly dangerous, as
slaveowners claimed, then slavery was truly unjust. Happy slaves would never revolt.

White Southerners founded the Confederacy on the ideology of white supremacy. According to
Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy: “Our new government's foundations
are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the
white man, that slaverysubordination to the superior raceis his natural and normal
condition.” Confederate soldiers on their way to Antietam and Gettysburg, their two main
forays Illustrating “PUBLIC LIBERTY and PRIVATE RIGHT,” Nast shows the New York City draft riot
of 1863: white thugs are exercising their “right” to beat and kill African Americans,
including a child held upside down.

into Union states, put this ideology into practice: they seized scores of free black
people in Maryland and Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery. Confederates
maltreated black Union troops when they captured them.47 Throughout the war, “the protection of slavery had been and still remained the central
core of Confederate purpose.”48 Textbooks downplay all this, probably because they do not want to offend white Southerners
loday.