And I appreciate articles, such as you've posted, more now than I ever did, and because I used to reside among the ignorant mantra soothsayers. I understand why discussion of the civil war still goes on in the South. DISCUSSION. I also, therefore, understand why "Northerners" persist in their pre-occupation of simplifying, reducto absurdum revisionist history making pontifications.
There is so much history in the Old South. It is so utterly rich in history. While in the west, I had to hunt out information on the South because what I was getting from educrats, media, and the "conventional wisdom" about the South was infantile, devoid of humanity. And this from people who consider themselves the "epitome of Humanitarians". bah.
"Conventional wisdom" about what went on in the Old South runs right alongside the lines of the Feminists' rhubarb:
Women are superior to men. For 4,000 years, women did not uphold office because they were oppressed by men. This is evil. Therefore, all men are evil.
Yes, slavery is rotten, especially when viewed through the standards we now have. The fact is, at the time of "slavery" owners, slavery had been a fact of life in nearly every country of the world. It took a "movement" to make it known to the world that slavery is not the path to freedom or a civil culture. That is also true. What is also true is that some slave owners were civil. And owned slaves. Were civil to their slaves. This here is the rub in most arguments:
BS on the "civil part", Alia -- they were slaves, ergo, there is no such thing as "civil".
On paper, that argument is on its face, sound. But in reality? It's a statement devoid of content or context.
Dittos, on bringing up the subject of freeblacks owning other blacks, blacks fighting in the Confederate army: the same "anti-south" argument is generally applied: these folks didn't know any better, or this or that. These are assertions made from somone using simple linear logic in argumentation. But it is devoid of context and content. It shuts down discourse upon "history". It nullifies any other facts as tho those facts are irrelevant and coming from someone in the here and now. It's a hindsight position weighing judgement upon people and places in the past, but devoid of the fullness and meaning of the lives of those who lived then
Another piece of conventional wisdom about the old South that people don't realize is that ol' Dixie was not united at all behind the rebellion. A lot of independent-thinking Southerners, especially in the highland areas, had no use for the Confederacy. The numbers of white Southerners who were fervent supports of Lincoln and the cause of the old Union was many times more than the number of black Southerners who fought for the CSA.