Why You Shouldn’t be Celebrating “Confederate History Month”

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• How is it that the one side that caused 90,000+ deaths is the good guys? I have heard it suggested that the US government could have bought slaves from their owners but instead Lincoln chose to start a war.

• Thane Eichenauer: But then you'd either be bitching about "Big Emancipation" wasting stolen tax money or shouting "Keep your Big Government hands off my farm equipment!"

  I know we often agree to disagree, Thane, but I'm glad (and surprised, given the number of of posts I've written to which you've taken issue) that you've stuck around as a reader all these years.

• Seen this episode of The Simpsons?

  Apu is an immigrant, applying for US citizenship

  Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of
  the Civil War?
  Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious
  schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists,
  there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--
  Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.
  Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

• Mark Jaquith: Yup, saw it, know the history and enjoyed the laugh. But note that the first cause Apu lists: the abolitionist/anti-abolitionist schism.

• Next up: Nazi History Month.

• But note that the first cause Apu lists: the abolitionist/anti-abolitionist schism.

  He lists it as an obvious cause — because it is the most easily understood. You can describe it in a single word, as the proctor humorously demands Apu do. While the slavery disagreement was important, it was also a symptom of a larger and more nuanced rift. Let's not whitewash (heh) and abridge the history to make it fit more neatly into "good guys" and "bad guys" boxes.

  And yes, "Confederate History Month" is a stupid idea. We all ended up being Americans in the end, so why not just call it "War Between the States" month and cover both sides?

• News to you "No longer need slaves to keep up our economy so let's be holier than thou and now say slavery is bad" people do not, of course, get "it." The southern men that made up the vast majority of those who fought in the Civil War never owned any slaves. So why would they go to war to keep slavery? No, the real reason that most southerners fought was, as quoted by Shelby Foote, noted Civil War historian, when asked by yankee troops why they fought, the rebel reply was "Because you're down here!"

• Chris, of course, misses the point. The issue is not why individual soldiers fought. The issue is what motivated the states that seceded to do so; what motivated them to form the Confederacy; what animated the decision of this would-be new nation to risk war with the United States. That, as the documents written by the political elites who made the decisions to secede make clear, really was slavery.

• Here's an idea...why don't we just have a round 2 and settle it once and for all. Then, maybe after almost 150 years of listening to the North do everything they can to convince themselves they are the 'good guys', that the South was full of racist slaveowners (despite the fact that less than 25% of people even owned slaves) and that the war was justified, we can put this issue to rest. I'm mean you guys only paste it all over television and the movies to discredit any conservative theory. Gee...wonder why we still don't get along all of these years later...why the South still doesn't trust the North. Hmmm...