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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: No Sense of Real History No Sense of Real History Al Benson Jr. It is no secret among those who understand the rationale for government schooling that the teaching of real American history (and probably that of some other countries also) is not something that has a real high priority. In fact, in most cases, what passes for "history" today in government schools is little more than politically correct propaganda. One of the most important and critical periods of our history is that period embracing the War of Northern Aggression, the real reasons for it, and the horrendous period following it which was euphemistically labeled as "reconstruction." For our youngsters to correctly interpret and understand our history, what happeded in that time period must be understood by them. If they do not grasp what happened at that point, none of the rest of it will make any sense and we will wind up with the skewed version of "Americanism" that we have in our day. Most government school history texts claim the War of Northern Aggression was fought to free the slaves in the South. Seldom mentioned is the fact that, up until a few years before the War, slavery also existed in the North. Archaeologists are finding evidence of slave-holding plantations in the North, in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, which give the lie to the idea that only the Southern states engaged in this activity. Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist from the University of Maryland has noted: "America was a slaveholding country--North and South...Over the years that reality has been lost, stolen, or just strayed from the history books." Don't you just wonder how that happened? Even historians, journalists, and lecturers don't seem to know much of the truth nowadays. Author Douglas Harper has written: "I had written one book on Pennsylvania history and started a second before I learned that William Penn had been a slaveowner. The historian Joanne Pope Mellish, who has written a perceptive book on race relations in ante-bellum New England, recalls how it was possible to read American history textbooks at the high school level and never know that there was such a thing as a slave north of the Mason-Dixon Line:..." Mr. Harper started a website dealing with slavery in the North and noticed, after awhile, one of the major search engines had, somehow, "lost" all his references to slavery in the Northern states. It had managed to preserve his comments about slavery in the South, but somehow, his comments about slavery in the North went missing. He contacted them and soon his comments about Northern slavery were back up--only to disappear again in a few days. The memory hole is a convenient place for such disturbing facts. If our children are only taught that the War was over slavery, they will have no real grasp of the important other issues involved--tariffs, cultural differences, even theological differences--which separarated the two regions of the country. They will not understand the important concept of the rights of the individual states within the framework of a confederated Union. Unfortunately, even most of the history books for the homeschool and Christian school market today do not seem to deal with any of these issues to any meaningful extent. They are glossed over, given a little lip service, like the lying politicians give us when they want our votes at election time, only to totally forget what they said after they get into office. Our children are never taught that the War of Northern Aggression changed how this country was run. We went from a confederation of states to a centralized, national Union, where Washington runs the whole show. Such was hardly the intent of the Founders, but it is what we have today. Unfortunately, most people don't know the difference--much in the same way they don't know the difference between a republic and a democracy. And this is not all by accident. Here in Louisiana (I don't know how it works in other states) the last time students learn the history of the War of Northern Aggression and "reconstruction" is in the seventh grade! Nothing about it in high school at all. In all honesty, how much of what you learned in seventh grade do you remember? Off the top of my head, I can't recall anything I learned in seventh grade that has stuck with me. What sort of grasp of this critically important period of our history--where our system of government was, for all intents and purposes, changed--will these kids even have when they get out of high school? In most cases they will remember nothing at all. And, as previously stated, this is not by accident. The War of Northern Aggression was America's French Revolution, from which we have never recovered--and until our children have been taught to understand that, we never will. If our view of our past is faulty (and it is) then our vision for our future will be also--and our children and grandchildren will be forced to live with the results.
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