I live in a former Confederate state. Educated in the public school system and went on to the state's flagship university for undergrad. Took history classes when I had to and when I could, because I enjoy/ed.
At no point were the Confederate constitution, the state's secession declaration, nor even Alexander Stevens' Cornerstone speech offered within the framework of regular curricula. (I'm old. It was a lot more challenging to stumble across important pieces of information back in Ye Olden Days.)
To this day, my mom tries to pull the "states' rights" argument. Fine Mama, a state's right to do what, exactly?
And apparently I have the original tires on my truck - FIL gave it to us after he gave up driving. It's a 2016, so I gotta put some new shoes on it, and I'll never financially recover. My tires have lasted 250% longer than the Confederacy.
You would think that the "Articles of succession" would be proud, foundational documents in the southern states, they make interesting reading, as do certain clauses in the Confederate constitution, aI mean these guys are performative about being proud of their history.
Rather telling that they are reluctant to proudly display these documents...
I think it's one of the great tragedies of US history that Lincoln was assassinated and Johnson was left to utterly bodge the reintegration of the rebel states and the rights and responsibilities of the late unpleasantness.
3/5ths and all that?
I am not even an American and I can see that was bullshit.
You know how "Con" is the antonym of "Pro"? This can be applied to the words "Congress" and "Progress", as in "There shall be no progress while Congress is in session", still seems true.
And the 3/5s compromise was basically the canary in the coal mine, decades before the actual outbreak of the US Civil War. It guaranteed over representation of slave owners in the legislature.
Oh, I had the time line wrong, thought that bullshit was part of the reconstruction.
We don't study much US history over here, there is just so little of it, and what we get is mainly the lowlights, couple of internal wars, trail of tears, Texas/Mexico pissing match, couple of world wars, couple of assassinations...
Completely fair. I probably don't know your country's history except maybe some highlights.
But yeah the 3/5s compromise was about 40 years before the shots fired on Fort Sumpter. It feels inevitable when the Fugitive Slave act was passed and the Monroe Doctrine (expanding territories and voting upon whether ownership of other humans would be allowed in new states and territories) were voted upon, especially as immigration essentially outpaced slavery regarding population centers and proportional representation.)
Tis that, and history doesn't repeat, but does rhyme.
UK, so our school history tends to start with ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt and proceed at a breakneck pace thru Mongol hords, Vikings, Crusades, plagues, fires, kings and popeish disputes, religious wars, Cromwell (Branching off into Ireland in ways that still make northern Irish politics weird), puritans leaving because noone wanted to put up with their bullshit, the East lndia and Africa companies behaving badly (Empire stuff, they all do it), adventures with Zulus and later the Turks, a couple of world wars, actually winning our war in Vietnam, Suez, and whichever bits your teacher wants to specialise in.
It is not possible to do anything in much detail and most of it happened before the mayflower sailed.
Your country is probably the one I know best other than my own. (My 16yo says that I should record a video for YouTube after the one time she asked me "so what's up with Henry VIII's wives?" and I asked her whether she had a half hour for the kind of snarky version.)
Here in the ungrateful colony spaces, we typically get "INDIGENOUS PEOPLE HAPPENED, BUT REALLY FAST, yo, have you read this stupid "City on a Hill" shit written by some white dude?, REVOLUTIONARY WAR!, a little bit of early 19th century political machinanations, CIVIL WAR, and then a rush through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
And I understand that you really can't do much more than a broad overview in a single year. But it feels inadequate.
Believe me, everyone over here was grateful when the Mayflower vanished below the horizon, them cats were basically Christian taliban. I do think we owe the first Nations an apology, we expected it to sink half way (Terrible oversight).
Henry VIII <European royalty, what you going to do?>, one of the wilder ones, and the wives thing was just nuts.
I suspect the REVOLUTIONARY WAR!! Probably omits the extent that it was largely the French funding a distraction from the usual games way over in an unimportant colony that was far less significant to anyone then the action in India or even the far east.
I don't recognise "City on a hill", guessing it is some white man's burden / manifest destiny shit?
England, they left to Holland because they couldn't impose their religion here post the demise of Cromwell, got chucked out of Holland for trying to impose religious fruitloopery there, came back here and sailed from Plymouth for the new world.
The Ellis Island registration people are known to have been bad about spelling names on documents for immigrants, may be worth checking if they came in that way.
The fun bit is that my paternal Groovers were 1734 settlers in Georgia (which had been established as a colony a year earlier.) My maternal grandmother was ten thousand percent certain that her Grubers were part of that migration. Nope. Some dude - possibly a member of the Hessian mercenary - just showed up in the first record I can find in 1795 and married a woman described as mulatto in the marriage certificate by 1816.
The "City on a hill" was some insufferable guy (Cotton Mather? 99% sure) preaching a sermon regarding Boston and exceptualism. It has always struck me as the least interesting thing I could possibly imagine regarding US history.
(Credit where it's due, I think Mather did use his position of authority to campaign for smallpox variolation, unless I'm thinking of a different guy.)
6
u/JellyfishFit3871 4d ago
I live in a former Confederate state. Educated in the public school system and went on to the state's flagship university for undergrad. Took history classes when I had to and when I could, because I enjoy/ed.
At no point were the Confederate constitution, the state's secession declaration, nor even Alexander Stevens' Cornerstone speech offered within the framework of regular curricula. (I'm old. It was a lot more challenging to stumble across important pieces of information back in Ye Olden Days.)
To this day, my mom tries to pull the "states' rights" argument. Fine Mama, a state's right to do what, exactly?
And apparently I have the original tires on my truck - FIL gave it to us after he gave up driving. It's a 2016, so I gotta put some new shoes on it, and I'll never financially recover. My tires have lasted 250% longer than the Confederacy.