Hmm.  I suppose I should defer to Brent Tarter in this matter, it being well
outside my area of expertise and well within his.  However, it's been my
(perhaps naive) impression that the debate about the legality of secession has
been cyclical, recurring from time to time in general discussion, though more
constant amongst southern writers.  I suppose what I'm trying to say is that
the historiographical success of the south has been largely in keeping certain
constitutional arguments alive, rather than in a comprehensive view of the
civil war.  Debate about these constitutional issues, it seems to me, runs
continuously from the compromises made during the hashing out of the
constitution right through to today, creating ongoing legal and cultural
confusion about national and subnational identity (i.e., the nation and the
states).  If the south's winning the history means that the question of states'
rights never goes away, then of course Brent is right.

On the other hand, I'd be curious to see work on the way the civil war is taught
(and learned) in primary and secondary schools across the entire country.  I'm
guessing that for the most part students learn that the south lost, and that
they lost because they should have lost.  At this level, we're clearly dealing
with mythology as much as history, and it is part of the work of serious
historians to challenge historical myths, isn't it?  Some college-level
American history classes and some serious professional and amateur historians
no doubt derive quite different conclusions from the evidence.

Cheers -- Kevin 


On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:12:13 -0400  Discussion of research and writing about
Virginia history             
<[log in to unmask]><[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 
> Kevin Berland wrote yesterday, 
> 
> "From the point of view of simple historiographical theory (and from the
> point of view of the familiar proverb) the victors write the histories.
> To claim that many histories of the civil war suffer from a one-sided
> point of view is neither new nor radical.  It's simply true."
> 
> I hate to disagree with my friend Kevin, but a good argument can be made
> (and I have hinted at it, myself, before) that even though the
> Confederacy lost the Civil War on the battlefield, the South can be said
> to have won the history.
> 
> The influence of Southern and pro-Southern interpretations in the
> post-Civil War histories may be in some part responsible for the fact
> that we are still intensely debating whether secession was legal or
> right (which are not the same thing), whether the South or the North
> bore the larger share of responsibility for the first fighting, whether
> or to what extent the institution of slavery was a cause of the war,
> what the aims of the South and the North were and whether or why they
> changed, why Southern leaders made different assertions about their
> motivations after 1865 than they did in 1861, and so forth and so on.
> Where else in the world, I beg to ask, have the leaders of an
> unsuccessful rebellion against a government been so lionized as in the
> American South?
> 
> If the winners had won the literature as well as the last battles,
> perhaps a national consensus would have developed that regarded the
> Southern claims and objectives as invalidated by the verdict of the
> contending armies.
> 
> $0.02 U.S. currency from
> 
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
> 
> Visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us
> 
> 
>