Some people will tell you, "Well ackshually it was for states' rights," but those states wanted to use those rights to enforce slavery.

It strikes me as like the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Like, wow, you're totally right about the semantics, but at the cost of missing the point entirely.

I grew up in the country in the bible belt. I bought the states rights argument for a long time. I was never a Confederacy stan, but yknow sure I get it.

Then one day I actually read everyone's secession declarations and basically all of them name slavery out the jump. Welp, fuck them. 🤷‍♂️

Congratulations, your kids will be ill prepared for a global world. It's sad that foreign kids will have a better grasp of American history than Americans

This is probably the same person who helped get textbooks updated to show pictures of slaves dancing and having a good time 🤮

"It was about States' Rights!"

"Yeah, a State's Right to what, exactly?"

I'm an introvert, probably neurodivergent, and was bullied in school. I always thought public schools were not adapted for neurodivergent people and those that could not "fit in the mold". I thought I didn't receive enough attention. I always had more questions and were afraid to ask. So in a way could understand why some people would want to avoid that for their children, by homeschooling them.

However, people like in this Tweet are the exact reason why homeschooling in my region (Québec/Canada) is generally frowned upon. It's always people against vaccination, the religious and ignorants that pushes for homeschooling, and that's also why it's very difficult to have the right to do that here. Mennonites are actually leaving the province because of that.

i wonder why the US is trailing in education

Two answers to stuff like this:

1. What did the Ordinance of Secession or Declaration of Causes (and related documents) actually say? Have them pull up the language of literally any one and search for “states rights” then “slave.” Hint: you’re gonna find one but not the other.
2. Knowing more about the revisionism is very useful as is knowing when it’s a waste of your time.

Edit: sorry about the Battlefields link; it’s the easiest aggregate of several even if it also tries to support the states’ rights argument by talking about laws while excluding it was all about laws regarding slavery.

People halfway across the world know that the US civil war was about slavery.

It wasn't even about states rights, not really. If you read the SC declaration of succession, they talk extensively about the states rights to succeed legally and why in the first 13 paragraphs, then in the 14th they start the explanation of why they are succeeding. It's about the northern states not returning fugitive slaves, as was the law at the time, and the government doing anything to enforce the Constitution. Then in paragraph 22 they discuss the election of Lincoln and his open opposition to slavery and they were worried about losing the right to have slaves.

Basically, if the government isn't strong enough or willingly to enforce its own constitution, then they didn't need to be a part of that government and they had the right to denounce that government the same way they had done with the British government during the revolution.

text

It's 100% about slavery and there isn't

And this is exactly why homeschooling exists. For the most part of course. It's people who want a certain view of History taught and don't want to have to worry about pesky things like facts or history or books. That's why so much homeschooling is deeply Evangelical Christian, and somehow even the weirder branch of Evangelical Christians if that's a thing, also why so much of it has Nazi shit involved. Yeah if you've never looked it up there's a lot of Nazi propaganda in the homeschooling community. It's just great..

iT waS aBoUt StATes rIGhtS ᵗᵒ ᵒʷⁿ ˢˡᵃᵛᵉˢ

I wish those kids luck in life

I mean, it kind of wasn't...

Lincoln honestly wouldn't stop talking about how he wasn't gonna touch slavery.

It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I beheve I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1861-first-inaugural-address

What started it was the south thought the feds should be able to enforce southern law (escaped slaves are still slaves, and northern states had to return them) and the Feds said they couldn't force one state to follow another state's laws.

It's a valid distinction, but almost certainly not what she told her kids.

Like when people say it was over "states rights" but ignore the Feds sided with state's rights, and the South was the one arguing for a stronger federal government.

However during the war, Lincoln did outlaw slavery, but that was more of an economic sanction to dissuade European governments funding the South by buying up resources and land. The South would have still lost but it would have taken far longer if they were selling land/plantations/slaves to wealthy foreigners

It's one of the few things pretty much everyone gets wrong when you ask what causes it.

Bet she never read the Constitution, Confederate or otherwise:

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

"In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States."

Isn't it 'my truth' instead of 'the truth' then? 😇

well if we're being semantically accurate here. It didn't start because of slavery, slavery on its own very rarely does anything. It was the disagreement between the north and south on slavery itself, that caused the civil war. And of course, the iconic "states rights, to have slavery, but we dont talk about the slavery part because that's inconvenient and makes us look bad"

"Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter-"

"Just say slavery."

"Slavery it is, sir!"