Over time we've been told that Americans are basic. We live in a more simple or basic society with no monarchy, and no real ever present cultural lies. Yes there are problems of race, and certainly, still, of equity. Supposedly we all understand the story. But that is perhaps the greatest lie.
We believe that Americans fought each other to reunite the nation. But I was taught that it was to defeat slavery. But racial equality wasn't a wide spread piety. Slavery was so important to the Southern government, and its survival itself cost many lives. Slavery was a concept leading Americans into entropy. It was not beautiful, the war dead were slaughtered, and war is hell not painted with glory.
The Civil War was not about differences in people, nor the ethnic composition in either place, however much you might think it so. The people of various regions knew that others were different, regional difference is real, but the human species has little variance. And while it is attractive to think about our differences, the issue is not that the American Civil War was a second revolution.
Southern states were not in revolt. The North had changed, becoming a powerful new country, and the Southern states fought and in fact sought to perform a counterrevolution and restore the ancien regime. We must learn our true past or we'll never change our path for an open future. Statues do not matter. Reality that allows the truth to dominate and flourish does matter.
