A review of It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Regnery History, 2020) by Samuel Mitcham
On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will Reach her, about must and about must go, And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so. John Donne, Satire III
As John Donne so correctly informs us, truth is not something easily discerned, recognized, nor often embraced. Often when the truth is found and it does not comport to man’s hoped-for meaning, instead of graciously embracing the truth it is attacked and those seeking it are scorned. In today’s post-modern, politically correct society anyone who expresses the truth about slavery and the War for Southern Independence must be willing to be subjected to the most horrendous attacks from leftists in the media, and academia, as well as being harangued by establishment politicians and many religious groups. But this is precisely what Dr. Samuel Mitcham has willingly subjected himself to in his latest book, It Wasn’t About Slavery.[1]
In It Wasn’t About Slavery, Mitcham does not dance around the subject of why the War for Southern Independence was fought. The good professor makes no attempt to flank the enemy’s stronghold or use “intellectual” drones to safely attack his opponent’s fortress of falsehoods. At the front of his troops, the gallant “General” Mitcham makes an overwhelming and successful frontal attack upon p.c. ignorance and arrogance.
It Wasn’t About ...
Best Price: $21.39
Buy New $22.99
(as of 04:44 UTC - Details)
The Northern victors of the War for Southern Independence use two major myths to hide the nakedness of their aggression, conquest, and occupation of the once free Confederate States of America. They are: (1) Secession is equal to treason and (2) The South fought the “Civil War” (not my term, theirs’) to keep their slaves. When it comes to truth-telling and the Yankee, Mitcham does not spare the rod of verbal chastisement: “The victor, it is said, writes the history, but these people have abused the privilege”[2] [emphasis added]. Mitcham makes an astute analysis of the true objective of “those people” as General Lee referred to Dixie’s invaders, as it relates to truth and history: “Their objective is not to ‘Seek the Truth’ (which should be the goal of every legitimate historian), but to serve an agenda.” And what is the nature of the invader’s “agenda”? I will simply let another great Southern historian enlighten us: “What passes as standard American history is really Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee heroes and ideas.”[3] Although the term “fake news” has become a commonly understood term today, Southerners must deal not only with “fake news” but most importantly to the survival of our culture, “fake history.”
The keystone to modern-day fake history is the myth that slavery and therefore racism was a cornerstone of Southern society; whereas, freedom, equality, and democracy were foundational to Northern society. In essence this myth is used to explain away all the horrors imposed upon the people of the South. Punishing the South was necessary to make America a truly free country—so goes the myth. As Mitcham demonstrates, white-supremacy and racism were more pronounced in the North than the South. Many European visitors to these United States testified to this reality.[4] As one historian noted even in the State of New Jersey it’s legislature “had made ample provision by her own statue [protecting] the rights of the slaveholder.”[5] In 1858 New Jersey a committee of the New Jersey Legislature declared, “slavery existed at the time of the adoption of the constitution in all States of the confederacy”[6] [Federal Union]. Racism was also evident throughout the North. For example, in 1864, Republicans unanimously join Democrats in New Jersey and passed an anti-miscegenation law outlawing marriage between White and Black people.[7] These examples could be repeated for virtually every Northern state ad infinitum. Regardless of such examples of Northern slaveholding and Northern racism, fake history teaches Americans that it is the South that must carry the burden of slavery and racism—Mitcham exposes this myth.
