Unfortunately war does that too, not just people. I understand your feelings too, because afterall, if we forget the lessons of history, we are destined to repeat them.
I just finished watching a two-hour PBS program on Lincoln that I recorded the other night. It focused on the myths of Lincoln, and whether he had been made out to be more than he really was. The main historian was Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African-American. I had to laugh at several parts of the program. He interviewed several blacks who believed they had been misled to believe that Lincoln was their "saviour" and the Great Emancipator. My impression was that they were blaming whitey, and their school system for starting and perpetuating that myth. Yet no where in the program did they mention the possibility that a lot of that myth may have begun with their own people, having been passed from freed slaves, down through the generations. God forbid that their own folks would have played a role in creating the myth that is Lincoln.
Then there was the part where Gates, while attending a get-together of the Sons of Confederate Veterans seemed shocked over the fact that blacks had actually fought for the South. Here you have a well-known historian, who acted surprised to see a black family in attendance, honoring their ancestor's memory and the role he played in the Confederacy. It only stands to reason, if there were blacks who owned slaves in this country, (and they did), why is it so hard to believe or accept that blacks would have fought for the South? I've seen it time and time again where educated blacks refuse to accept these facts as truth, choosing instead to perpetuate their own myths about what their black ancestors did. The most interesting fact for me is that they refuse to admit that it was their own African ancestors who sold their people to the slavers.
Unfortunately, the practice by some blacks has been to try to eliminate any trace of history of the Confederacy. On one hand they push to promote their own racial history in this country, cherry-picking the truths they want told, yet they strive to eliminate someone else's because it doesn't fit their idea of what history or heritage is, or should be.
This is a really bad secret, and I hope I can actually utter this here without being hung out to dry...
My grandmother said her grandmother told her there were times that they (the poor whites) envied the slaves because they mostly had a roof over their head and food to eat. The poor whites didn’t have much opportunity to get above their station (regardless of the occassional ‘rise above’ person who came through with an education and wasn’t stuck in the field to feed the family) and were just out in the cold if they hit hard times. I guess it was like a farmer making sure his oxen are taken care because he relies on them.
That is terrible, because no one should own another human being and my grandmother’s grandmother didn’t literally want to be a slave... but I think she was remembering after the supplies were gone in the south, the men were gone off to war and they watched the slave children eating. In a house or cabin. With a fire. And a doctor called to take care of someone when they were sick. That wasn’t all slaves of course, but most slaves were just one or two in a upper class home. Not all slaves were plantation slaves.
So there you go. That is an evil family secret that was passed to me. One of those things you hate to know, but also somewhat understand and sympathize as well.