Rick Reilly Article about Texas State Board of Education

[IrishTex]

The Texas State Board of Education just hit on a genius idea. They just made history by making history up.

With a conservative majority on the board, they're about to make sweeping changes in what Texas students will be taught and what will be written in textbooks about American history, including:

• Largely deleting the civil rights movement.

• Replacing any reference to "slave trade" with the "Atlantic triangular trade."

• Changing any reference to "democracy" to "constitutional republic."

• Treating Jefferson Davis the same as Abraham Lincoln.

• Describing the Civil War as a battle over states' rights, with reference to slavery minimized.

Well, why not? If you have the votes, who needs the truth? But why stop there? Now Texas needs to change sports history. For instance, Texan kids need to learn that:

• Roger Staubach was our 38th president.

• The Negro Leagues will now be referred to as "The Unaffiliated and Absolutely Fine with How Things Are Baseball Volunteers."

• Texas' George Foreman retained his world heavyweight championship when Cassius Clay was disqualified for using an unpatriotic name.

• In 1943, Sammy Baugh led the NFL in passing, punting and interceptions while also single-handedly routing the Germans at Salerno using nothing more than the forward pass and a Bowie knife.

• The Texas Longhorns were national champions of the 2009 college football season, then played an "honorary" and "non-registering" game against Alabama in 2010, which they didn't even take half seriously, playing their second-string QB.

• Dirk Nowitzki is now Dick (Bubba) Treetops, of Lubbock.

• Texas' Ben Hogan won the 1953 Grand Slam by winning all three majors.

• Tom Landry named greatest all-time thing ever, followed by George W. Bush and Bevo.

• Yes, the University of Texas was one of the last college football powers to integrate its team, but this is only because the American-Africans in school never made it clear they wanted to play football, despite being asked repeatedly by their white friends. The American-Africans always said, "We hadn't really thought about it. We're too busy not being angry about Atlantic triangular trade."



SOURCE (http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=5221888)

[Matthew328]

Wow

[JasperDog94]

Originally posted by IrishTex

• Describing the Civil War as a battle over states' rights, with reference to slavery minimized.

Actually that is correct. Slavery was the straw the broke the camel's back, but the civil war more about state's rights than about slavery.

[BILLYFRED0000]

Originally posted by JasperDog94
Actually that is correct. Slavery was the straw the broke the camel's back, but the civil war more about state's rights than about slavery.

Yes. However it was economics that drove the south away. Without the slave trade they had no economy. The north was industrialized but the south had used cheap or free labor. One could argue that feeding the slaves was not free btw. However when the north wanted to outlaw or limit slavery the south had already trapped themselves into a corner. So even tho technically it was about states rights the real issue was that all men are created equal and the slaves being freed would have destroyed the south's ability to maintain an economy.

we have always been a republic by structure. That has never changed and is the accurate way to describe the country.

And Jefferson Davis was the president and leader of the Confederacy. That makes him in type the same as Lincoln.

[JasperDog94]

Originally posted by BILLYFRED0000
Yes. However it was economics that drove the south away. Without the slave trade they had no economy. The north was industrialized but the south had used cheap or free labor. One could argue that feeding the slaves was not free btw. However when the north wanted to outlaw or limit slavery the south had already trapped themselves into a corner. So even tho technically it was about states rights the real issue was that all men are created equal and the slaves being freed would have destroyed the south's ability to maintain an economy.

we have always been a republic by structure. That has never changed and is the accurate way to describe the country. Right. But like I said, the issue of slavery was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was the last straw, but it was not the sole reason for the civil war like we have taught for generations.

[ronwx5x]

Eons ago when I was in high school, we were required to take a class called "Civics". It was actually a sort of combination history and government class. Our teacher, who I really liked, made it a point to teach that the Civil War was about states' rights and not just about slavery. I made my own mind up, even at that age, about the reason for the Civil War!

[JasperDog94]

Originally posted by ronwx5x
Eons ago when I was in high school, we were required to take a class called "Civics". It was actually a sort of combination history and government class. Our teacher, who I really liked, made it a point to teach that the Civil War was about states' rights and not just about slavery. I made my own mind up, even at that age, about the reason for the Civil War! Sounds like you had a good teacher.:)

[waterboy]

Originally posted by ronwx5x
Eons ago when I was in high school, we were required to take a class called "Civics". It was actually a sort of combination history and government class. Our teacher, who I really liked, made it a point to teach that the Civil War was about states' rights and not just about slavery. I made my own mind up, even at that age, about the reason for the Civil War!
Exactly. To anybody outside of the South, and to black people in general, it's about slavery almost exclusively because that's the only thing that mattered to them about the whole war. To the South it was more about states' rights, and no ONE issue caused the war.

[Super_R]

I'm sorry...but did you say "hay blinkin"

[Matthew328]

IMO the Civil War was about state's rights, the issue at hand regarding states right was slavery. Slavery was the South's economic base at that time, and the South thought they should be left to decide the matter on their own.

JMO but for me Jeff Davis should NOT be viewed in the same vein as Lincoln, nor any other leader from the confederacy. They were traitors to the US Government and were actually let off the hook pretty easy.

State's rights talk today beats me down.

[CenTexSports]

The "state's rights" were more than individual rights. It was about the fundamental design of the "republic". Kind of like now. The southern states wanted a loose republic were the states decided 99% of their issues and the government was there for protection and world political relations. The north wanted a stronger centralized government that dictated states rights and limited them when desired. Slavery was just 1% of the 99% but when the federal government decided to abolish this state right, it was the straw that broke the proverbal camel's back.

When Gov Perry talked about suceeding (sp) it was again about the federal government stomping on state's rights.

Anybody that thinks that slavery was THE cause of the civil war is probably from north of the Red River.

[Matthew328]

So what other state's rights issues were at hand aside from the obvious one of slavery?

[CenTexSports]

I am sorry but at 56 years old and having taken Texas history in the 8th grade, I remember the concept but not all of the specifics. But they included the payment of monies from the state back to the federal government, trade policies (both from state to state and international export). I am sure that you can imagine as the federal government got bigger that every day they would find places to control that had always been the state's rights.

It continues today. In my lifetime I can think of several that have been moved from state control to federal. And they do this by controlling the money that flows back to the state. Examples: Minimum drinking age, highway speed limit, health insurance, unemployment insurance.

[ronwx5x]

I looked up the Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession and posted it on the Non-Sports Forum Now I am posting it here also. Yes, it addresses States' Rights, but the right most mentioned and named is the right to hold slaves and to recover them from non-slave holding states when they escaped. To say that slavery was only 1% of the cause flies in the face of the stated reason that Texas seceeded. I'm not arguing whether the states had a right to seceed, just showing the avowed causes, as stated in an official document, put slavery on the front burner and not the back burner. Now this is only Texas' declaration and each state that seceeded made their own statement of causes.

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas

[Matthew328]

States rights was a veiled term for slavery being the root cause. Everyone says it was the straw that broke the camel's back but I just dont buy it. At the time the south was very hypocritical when it came to states rights.


I'm lucky I'm home today and found some info from my college Civil War class textbook at UTA from historian Henry Brooke Adams. (I was a history minor in college). So I googled his name and states rights and found this quote.

"Between the slave power and states' rights there was no necessary connection. The slave power, when in control, was a centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachments on states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and admission of Louisiana; the Embargo; the War of 1812; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution" [rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk; the Fugitive Slave Law; the Dred Scott decision — all triumphs of the slave power — did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the slave power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South Carolina."

Wisconsin was another northern state who championed states rights just as loudly as any southern state, to the point where the governor ordered the militia out. The reason? They were not willing to uphold a Supreme Court ruling regarding the fugitive slave law.

The issue of slavery and the the state's right to allow it was the root cause of the Civil War, the other issues were very minor in comparison to slavery. It was the South's economic engiene, the way of life for anyone in power and to threaten it threatened the South's way of life and they were willing to do whatever it took to protect it.

People try to complicate the matter and make it look a little better for the Confederacy by saying "Ohh it was state's rights, most of the South didn't own slaves," etc. I call BS. The people in power owned slaves, the people who were not in power would have owned slaves in a heartbeat because it would have made them money. When it was threatened all hell broke loose.

[Matthew328]

If slavery wasn't that big of a deal for the Confederacy it sure is mentioned in their constitution specifically, but states rights are a bit inconsistent.

The Confederate Consitution contained no provision for secession, though its preamble said that each Confederate state was "acting in its sovereign and independent character." One provision (similar to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) affirmed that the "powers not delegated" were "reserved to the States." The states, however, were limited in important ways. For example, they could not (just as the states of the Union could not) pass any law "impairing the obligation of contracts." They could not get rid of slavery, for the citizens of each state were to "have the right of transit and sojourn in any State . . . with their slaves."


So if a Confederate state wanted to all of a sudden abolish slavery...guess what..couldn't be done!! States rights?

[CenTexSports]

I guess my reading and yours vary some. Yes the slavery issue is brought out and it appears that it is as I said the "proverbial straw", but most of the rest of the talk of slavery is mentioned as a descriptive term to identify north vs south.

There is a great difference in talking about slavery and identifying groups of states as in favor of slavery or not in favor.

Let me say one more thing. Saying that slavery is the one (or major) cause of the civil war is like saying that freedom of religion was the major cause of the revolutionary war.

BTW: Lots of good information in these posts. I enjoyed reading them; esp the Causes for Secession.

[ronwx5x]

Originally posted by CenTexSports
I guess my reading and yours vary some. Yes the slavery issue is brought out and it appears that it is as I said the "proverbial straw", but most of the rest of the talk of slavery is mentioned as a descriptive term to identify north vs south.

There is a great difference in talking about slavery and identifying groups of states as in favor of slavery or not in favor.

Let me say one more thing. Saying that slavery is the one (or major) cause of the civil war is like saying that freedom of religion was the major cause of the revolutionary war.

BTW: Lots of good information in these posts. I enjoyed reading them; esp the Causes for Secession.

I guess I do read the causes differently than you. The very first cause listed, paragraph 3, is slavery and either the word slave or slavery is listed 22 times in a very short document!