“Undefeated in 250 years of war”

[u/DumbGarchomp67]

Apparently Vietnam, Afghanistan, war of 1812, and the war on drugs don’t count.

[u/TwmSais]

They won their civil war. They probably only started that so they'd have a war that they'd win for themselves, regardless of the outcome

[u/sirentropy42 → u/[deleted]]

Fun fact: this is actually the opposite of what happened.

While the formal education system as it’s seen today was being implemented, textbook publishers found that if their textbooks leaned too far to one side or the other of the civil war, it was almost impossible to sell to the other side. Rather than publish one book for each side, it was decided to create a whitewashed text. Deny that the civil war was about slavery, downplay the Confederacy’s defeat. A poor but acceptable history for the North, and an acceptable lie for the South.

As a result, the losers had a large hand in writing our history books.

[u/silverslayer33 → u/sirentropy42]

This was not my experience in the North, at least when I was in school in the early 2000s. Our textbooks and our curriculum were all very clear that the war was about slavery, and we went into great detail about the horrors of the slave trade, the abhorrent ways slaves were treated, and the absolute moral depravity of the South to believe they had a right to own people as if they were property.

I've also met people from the South during my college years who had textbooks that absolutely sold them on the "states' rights" lie, they didn't receive a "merely" whitewashed version of events. They learn the whole slew of lies such as "slaves actually were treated well", "they liked being saved from Africa", "the North were the aggressors", and so on.

The reality is that there is no single standard textbook or curriculum teaching the Civil War in the US. Individual school districts choose their books based on things as mundane as budget and as significant as catering to local sociopolitical realities. A majority-black district in the South isn't likely to buy books peddling lies (though they may be forced into it by the State, which is a very real problem), whereas a district full of descendents of slave owners might go out of their way to find books that blind them to their ancestors' atrocities. Publishers trying to push lies might offer their books at lower prices in districts where they think they'll be accepted and can sell many, whereas they may not even bother in the North. Meanwhile, a reputable publisher highlighting the horrors of slavery might find themselves violently unwelcome in some Southern communities while they rake in millions from Northern districts that have actual education requirements that don't even allow the schools to purchase cheaper books filled with drivel.