In a message dated 2/9/2002 5:58:49 PM Eastern Standard Time, Deanne Ferguson Mills writes: > The Civil War happened and it happened for a myriad of reasons. > But no one wants to take the risk of thoroughly examining all those reasons > and filtering through them to see what was worthwhile and worth salvaging > from BOTH sides of the conflict. The Civil War and Reconstruction eras are not really my primary areas of interest. I am really interested in and somewhat better equipped to deal with the 17th Century. Having said that, I cannot imagine an era of history in the U.S. - or Virginia - that has been more written about than the Civil War period. Just go into any bookstore and compare the Civil War books to, say, the Revolutionary War or the Great Depression. Maybe World War II has a greater output, but it doesn't seem so to me. You want both sides? I should think that the literature in the field is filled with as many memoirs on one side as the other and as many popular histories advocating each side as the other. In fact, there are probably lots of histories that advocate no particular position being that they are histories rather than political tracts. Politcal tracts on these issues have their place and there are plenty of those also. Anybody out there really interested? Interested enough to do some work (includes students ;-))? How about reading the primary source materials. There are plenty of newspaper records, legislative debates and contemporary tracts available. The state archives are full of diaries and letters and business records that bring out the picture and fill it in with real life. I'm sorry, but I think that anyone can find plenty of work to support their slant on things, if that is what they are looking for. They can also find plenty of work that provides food for thought. If they are really daring, they can read what they don't agree with and try to get something from it. In so far as I have one, my problem with Civil War history is something that we were just discussing, not enough attention to the wide range of influences on moral judgements in the period before the war. While there has been a fair amount written about the economics and political influence, there has been a certain glossing over of the actual operation of the institution of slavery and the politcal and moral obfuscation that went on to try to maintain an entire class of human beings in bondage. I think we have all heard pretty loudly the squeals of indignation over Reconstruction - some of it justified. An examination of the moral abdication by ordinary citizens of the South - as well as of the thoughts of their few daring abolitionist fellow citizens - has still not been popularly available. A careful examination of those such as the delegates to the secession conventions who changed their positions in the few months that we were discussing would also be really interesting. A look at what was happening in their home counties, what was written by their friends and families, all these seem fertile field for someone. Something along the lines of _Hitler's Willing Executioners_ would fascinate me, but even the suggestion will probably cause some to go screaming about the outrage of comparing slaveholders and Nazis. I'm not speaking of slaveholders and Nazis though. (Although I don't find a great deal to distinguish the two groups morally). I'm interested in what was going on in the mind of the average person or the average local politican in the South during the period. The local burgher or county commissioner who went along with what he may have known was wrong. It is also some clear that the issue of slavery took a back seat to states rights to some extent in the period immediately before the secsssion. But is that because of the unfolding of events or as a result of a concious PR campaign by economic interest bent on preserving slavery or both or neither? I am not going to get into the supposed slant in schools. We live in a country with a vibrant marketplace of ideas. If you can't get oranges in your marketplace, go to another. It may be a different school, or a library, or a book store, or increasingly the internet. It may involve parents actually doing some of the work of directing their children to read - and think - for themselves. History is neither benign nor static. There is a price to pay for everything and sometimes the price of learning includes being challenged by ideas with you you don't agree. Bill Russell To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html