http://www.historynet.com/letters-from-readers-february-2011-american-history.htm From the World's Largest History Magazine Publisher Sat, 25 May 2013 21:06:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://www.historynet.com/letters-from-readers-february-2011-american-history.htm#comment-455144 Lemurvet Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:29:04 +0000 http://www.historynet.com/?p=13683064#comment-455144 It seems to be hip and fashionable these days to bash the south and the Confederacy for what happened during the Civil War. There is a trend in university classrooms to ensure that history is rewritten in whatever way the historians writing the current texts deem to be en vogue. Countless families, my own included, were slightly above the poverty line and yeomen farmers when they went to war in 1861. They didn't have slaves and they didn't go off to fight the war so that they could get richer. It was, like so many conflicts, a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. McCurry fails to recognize this or discuss it in her article. Celebrating the heroism and bravery of the poor nameless souls who stood up for what they believed in should never be forgotten...no matter what side they were on. Slavery wasn't the only reason Southerners went to war...it may have been a leading reason why the wealthy elite pushed for it certainly or the outspoken abolishionists of the North, but then few of them gave their last full measure on the battlefield. As romantic and moral as it may seem to say that the Civil War was fought over slavery, it's simply not so. It was an economic war in the end, fought over the almighty dollar. The North's treatment of freed slaves after the war shows clearly that they cared little that the once enslaved peoples were now gifted with freedom. It seems to be hip and fashionable these days to bash the south and the Confederacy for what happened during the Civil War. There is a trend in university classrooms to ensure that history is rewritten in whatever way the historians writing the current texts deem to be en vogue. Countless families, my own included, were slightly above the poverty line and yeomen farmers when they went to war in 1861. They didn't have slaves and they didn't go off to fight the war so that they could get richer. It was, like so many conflicts, a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. McCurry fails to recognize this or discuss it in her article. Celebrating the heroism and bravery of the poor nameless souls who stood up for what they believed in should never be forgotten…no matter what side they were on. Slavery wasn't the only reason Southerners went to war…it may have been a leading reason why the wealthy elite pushed for it certainly or the outspoken abolishionists of the North, but then few of them gave their last full measure on the battlefield. As romantic and moral as it may seem to say that the Civil War was fought over slavery, it's simply not so. It was an economic war in the end, fought over the almighty dollar. The North's treatment of freed slaves after the war shows clearly that they cared little that the once enslaved peoples were now gifted with freedom.

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