Opinion of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy

[RINO Tom]

I took a class called Civil War and Reconstruction last year (my senior year of college) with a FANTASTIC teacher named Leslie Schwaum.  The main book used was "Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War" by Bruce Levine.  This forum, to say the least, needs a read.

It not only shatters the Lost Cause Theory.  It uses extensive research and primary sources to shatter a few other myths:

- That the South wasn't fighting primarily for slavery (numerous secession speeches in Southern legislatures stop that revisionism right in its tracks)
- That Northern Democrats weren't, by and large, just as anti-slavery and pro-Union as Republicans (they simply had a very powerful Southern wing to adhere to)
- That early Republicans and Lincoln were these huge "liberals for their time" (what a goofy expression) because they implemented a TINY income tax that was literally written into law as temporary and expiring after the war ... in fact, a few years later a Democratic Congress passed the first ever permanent income tax against Republican opposition.
- That Democrats were viewed as the more intolerant party ... They most certainly were not.
- That Southerners were more "patriotic" about their side ... if anything, it was the opposite.