When I was in High School, I had a truly extraordinary teacher for AP American History. I never figured out his backstory, but he was an incredibly erudite, independently wealthy (an astonishing – unique, as far as I know – rarity in a public school in southern New Mexico), charismatic and persuasive man.
He put enormous effort into trying to make us understand that what we’d been taught as “history” when we were children was at best a pale reflection of what adult historians actually engaged in. His favorite metaphor was “The Lynn Middle School interpretation of .” Lynn was one of the feeder middle schools to my high school, and any time anyone in the class regardless of which of the several local feeder schools they’d come from said something simplistic or poorly-reasoned he’d always dismiss them. He’d say “That’s the Lynn Middle School way of looking at it, what about…” and then he’d use that fulcrum to shift our way of seeing things.
As a pedagogical technique, what he did was absolutely superb. It was extraordinarily effective, because nobody wanted to be a middle school thinker. Everyone strove to see the nuance and the complexity they’d been blind to before.
Except, in retrospect, for this one thing. The US Civil War.
The “Lynn Middle School” interpretation of the causes underlying the Civil War was that it was about the institution of slavery. The sophisticated, erudite, grown-up interpretation was this nuanced argument that it was about State’s Rights. Slavery was at most a proximate cause for the schism, but fundamentally it was about self-determination.
I don’t think he was indulging the drive of any particular personal animus by doing this. I think at the time this was the more-erudite position on the cause of the conflict. But as time’s gone on, and the point’s been made more clearly that it was, in fact, about the Peculiar Institution, I’ve always been brought back to wonder where he actually stood.
Was he a true believer? Did he think that in the passions and chaos of the time that the political class of the American South, landholders if not slaveholders all, was really focused primarily on the abstract issue of local autonomy? Or was he just seeing a particularly bright line between what kids and young adults were taught, and wedging a lever into that gap as a way to excel as an educator.
To this day, I don’t know. But every time the “was or wasn’t the Civil War about slavery” argument comes up, I think of him and I’m deeply grateful to have had him as a teacher.
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/12/9132561/civil-war-slavery-video
A Pun Involving Travel 
I bring this up when people say the war wasn’t about slavery, they don’t listen. Typically they just insult me, say I’m biased because I’m a liberal, and say I don’t know anything about history. Irony.
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Very nice post Mike. Looking forward to reading the attached link/post. I’d like to get into it sometime because I can only imagine the subjectivity that comes with such a culturally shaping event. And how as an (at best) amateur of history, once removed because I am from a different country on top, my perspective may benefit from a modern view of it.
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I read something somewhere that first you learn that the civil war was about slavery, then you learn that it was about states rights, then you learn that no it was really about slavery all along.
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Excellent post
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