Sociologist James W. Loewen is the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me.

Recently Amazon.com listed a new "book,"LiesMy Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independence,by Clyde Wilson. As the author of the "original"LiesMy Teacher Told Me, whose subtitle is "Everything Your AmericanHistory Textbook Got Wrong," naturally this intrigued me.

            It is not likely thatWilson, professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina, wasignorant of my book when he chose his title.Lies My Teacher Told Me hassold more than a million and a half copies, making it the best-selling book bya living sociologist. Moreover, Chapter 6 treats secession and other unseemlyaspects of the Confederacy, putting me clearly in the historical camp thatWilson despises. He calls it "the current fashion in historicalinterpretation."

            So I suppose I'mflattered that Wilson has chosen to appropriate my title for his"book." But not really — because Wilson's "book" giveshistory a bad name. Book titles are not copyrightable, so I shall not sue, butI do want to give my opinion of this "book" that sounds sofamiliar. 

            First, let me explainwhy I keep calling it a "book," complete with quotation marks.LiesMy Teacher Told Me: The True History of the War for Southern Independenceis only 38 pages long. So far as I can tell, most of it is a single essay thatWilson published two years earlier on the website of thesemi-clandestineAbbeville Institute.[1]

            Then there is Wilson's levelof scholarship. He quotes not a single word from any secession document —indeed, fromany source other than Robert E. Lee's farewell address tohis troops at Appomattox. From that speech he quotes seven words: Lee's praiseof the "valor and devotion" and "unsurpassed courage andfortitude" of Confederate soldiers. I have no quarrel with praising thosequalities of the men. Grant paid them the same tribute, calling them "afoe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause,though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people everfought."

                  Wilson will have nothing to dowith that last phrase, however. Instead, he claims, "Although their causewas lost it was a good cause and still has a lot to teach the worldtoday." He then actually asserts that the South Carolina delegates secededon behalf of states' rights! In Wilson's words, "the Union was no longerto their benefit but had become a burden and a danger. They said: We have actedin good faith and been very patient. But obviously you people in control of thefederal government intend permanently to exploit our wealth and interfere inour affairs."

                  He does not have to contendwith why South Carolina's leaderssaid they seceded, because he does notquote them. In fact, South Carolina's leaders seceded because they wereupsetwith states' rights. In the key document, “Declaration Of The Immediate CausesWhich Induce And Justify The Secession Of South Carolina From The FederalUnion,” adopted on Christmas Eve of 1860, delegates to the South Carolinasecession convention made this clear. We are seceding, they wrote, because“fourteen of the States have deliberately refused for years past to fulfilltheir constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for theproof.” Constitutional obligations? Sounds pretty vague! But the delegates goright on to spell out why they are leaving:

        TheConstitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one Stateunder the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any lawor regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall bedelivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

The “generalgovernment,” South Carolina goes on, “passed laws to carry into effect thesestipulations. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholdingstates to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of theirobligations.”

                  South Carolina went on to listthe states whose attempts to exercise states’ rights deeply offended them:

        TheStates of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, RhodeIsland, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, andIowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the acts of Congress, or renderuseless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive isdischarged from the service of labor claimed....

     South Carolinagoes on to charge other states with other unpardonable offenses. New York, forexample, no longer allows owners the right to take slaves through New York oruse them temporarily there. South Carolina is outraged. Some states, SouthCarolina charges, let African Americans vote. Who votes in America was at thistime, of course, a state's right, until the passage of the 15th Amendment, twowhole eras later, but the delegates refer to theDred Scott decision andare offended that New Hampshire, for instance, lets blacks vote.

                  This key document from SouthCarolina is all about — and allagainst — states' rights. It makesnoclaim that the federal government has wronged the South. Why would it? UnderBuchanan, South Carolina had no problem with the federal government.

                  What about Mississippi, nextto secede? What do its leaders say about why they seceded?

                  They copied South Carolina’stitle, passing “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justifythe Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union” in January.“[I]t is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which haveinduced our course,” they begin.

        Ourposition is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery ¯ thegreatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product whichconstitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce ofthe earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropicalregions, and by an imperious law of nature none but the black race can bearexposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of theworld, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.      

                 Secession is notthe only subject that Wilson gets backward. He denies all agency to theConfederacy in the coming of the war. “The U.S. government, under the controlof a minority party, launched a massive invasion of the South,” Wilson writes.Well, yes, eventually it did, but first, the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter,for starters. No administration could have simply turned the other cheek tothat initiation of war and remain in office. James McPherson makes this pointat length in his 1989essay, “The War of SouthernAggression.”                 

                  Wilson also repeats the old“Lost Cause” claim that only overwhelming numbers caused the South’s defeat.Indeed, he goes that claim one further: “Though they had four times ourresources,[2] they were notable to defeat our men, so the U.S. government launched an unprecedentedlybrutal war of terrorism again [sic] Southern women and children, white andblack.” Nonsense! Even other neo-Confederate historians admit that Northernsoldiers defeated “our men” at Appomattox, as well as Fort Donelson, Vicksburg,Gettysburg, and many other battlefields, ending in Bentonville, North Carolina,in 1865.

                  As for the “unprecedentedlybrutal war of terrorism against Southern women and children,” Wilson apparentlydoes not realize why plantation mistresses often secreted gold and jewelry ontheir persons when U.S. forces came through. Because it worked! That is, U.S.soldiers rarely touched white women. Nor does Wilson seem to know that C.S.A.policy in the North was to seize all African Americans they met and sell themas slaves, whether they had ever been enslaved or not. Indeed, within sight ofthe unfortunate and soon-to-be-moved bronze Confederate soldier at theMontgomery County Courthouse in Rockville, Maryland,Confederates under J.E.B. Stuart seized over a hundred African Americans anddragged them to Virginia in chains.

                  Wilson’s project is blatantlyanti-intellectual. “History is human experience,” he writes, “and you do nothave to be an ‘expert’ to have an opinion about human experience.” To be sure,I am on record as favoring helping every student to do history, but not justbased on their “opinion about human experience.” "People have a right totheir own opinions, but not to their own facts," I wrote some years ago. (George Zimmerman made these sentences modestly notoriousby using them on his website.) "Evidence must belocated, not created," I went on, "and opinions not backed byevidence cannot be given much weight." One wonders how Wilson dealt withthose occasional hapless students at the University of South Carolina whoargued based on their own experience, rather than from oral history or documents.For that matter, what is one's "human experience" about the Civil Warin 2016? Conversations with your dad? Does not one's view of the Civil Warhaveto be grounded in research?

                  Wilson does not agree.“History is not some disembodied truth,” he assures us. “All history is thestory of somebody's experience," he goes on. "It is somebody'shistory. When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, itis a part of our identity. To tell libelous lies about our ancestors is a directattack on who we are.” Therefore, he implies, we don’t need evidence. There is"more than one perspective," he writes, and he implies that allperspectives are legitimate. So much for the discipline of history.

                  Early in his essay, Wilsondoes say something with which I can whole-heartedly agree. “It is useless toproclaim the courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier whilepermitting him to be guilty of a bad cause.” The Confederate causewas“bad.” Grant got that right. Wilson cannot, without traducing the evidence,make secession on behalf of slavery into agood cause. Therefore, it istime for him (and his neo-Confederate clique at Abbeville) to surrender.Further resistance is futile.

                  Across the South, from beforethe 1860 crisis down to now, some white Southerners have worked on behalf ofthe rights of Southerners ofall races. Their stories go unsung todaybecause from 1890 to 2015, the white South was busy singing the misbegottenpraises of the miscreants who took it out of the Union. Now much of thatactivity has ceased, has even reversed. The new activity — taking down thestatues of Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, and Robert E. Lee in favor of peoplelike James Longstreet, Elizabeth Van Lew, and Print Matthews –that is ahistorical project worthy of Dixie. This work helps us actually to realize “TheTrue History of the War for Southern Independence.” Recognizing such peoplehelps African Americans realize not all whites were racist, while providingwhite Southerners with positive role models. How much better for the world andthe history profession this new activity is, compared to the false mythologiesthat Wilson still hawks – misusing my book title to do it.

    [1]Therest of this article is based on the Abbeville essay. Thus I do not have to buythe "book" by sending Amazon $5.38, some of which would trickle downto Abbeville and Wilson. Donald Livingston, a philosophy professor retired fromEmory, operates the Abbeville Institute from his house. Besides Wilson, its other marquee member is ThomasDiLorenzo, the notorious anti-Lincoln writer.

    [2]See"Getting Even the Numbers Wrong" in Loewen,Lies AcrossAmerica:  What Our Historic Sites GetWrong, for a critique of this claim that overwhelming numbers caused theConfederate defeat. 

Copyright James W. Loewen