dear historians: "google" is a starting point...

[acroyear]

...but you better damn well double-check the potential bias factor of your sources before you go including it in a textbook, dammit...

Loudoun schools remove textbook that claims black soldiers fought for South:

The publisher has said it will provide a sticker to cover the flawed sentence in "Our Virginia." The state Board of Education, which approved the book, said this week that the claim about African Americans fighting for the Confederacy falls "outside of mainstream Civil War scholarship."

The textbook's author, Joy Masoff, who is not a trained historian, told The Washington Post this week that she substantiated her assertion about black Confederate soldiers primarily by doing an Internet search, which led her to the work of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and some other sources. The heritage group disputes the widely accepted conclusion that the struggle over slavery was the main cause of the Civil War.

Comments

Complicated My Butt!

[motherwell.livejournal.com]

Here's a blog post that quotes explicit statements by Southern political leaders -- including a Governor of VA and the CSA Secretary of State -- stating that they were leading a secessionist movement for the sole purpose of protecting their "right" to own other human beings:

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/03/slavery_and_the_civil_war.php

And no, the fact that lots of Southerners never owned slaves is irrelevant. So is the fact that racism didn't just exist in the South. And so are all the other points you make here.