J'y suis malheureusement plutôt habitué. Comme enseignant, j'ai lu bien des cahiers et manuels d'histoire et j'ai toujours été renversé par l'espèce de version rose-bonbon édulcorée de l'histoire qu'on sert aux enfants, une histoire qui passe sous silence les injustices et les horreurs pour miser sur la belle coexistence imaginaire entre Francos et Anglos. L'histoire devient une usine à fabriquer les héros fictifs et la fierté en un pays romancé qui n'a jamais existé. Il faut beaucoup de contorsions malhonnêtes pour faire un événement heureux d'une conquête militaire dévastatrice, humiliante et sanglante, croyez-moi!
Or, il n'y a pas que le Canadâ qui se spécialise en révisionnisme historique, il semblerait que le Sud des États-Unis (les anciens états confédérés) s'y adonne allègrement. Essentiellement, l'exercice consiste à minimiser le rôle qu'a joué l'enjeu de l'esclavage dans cette guerre, quand on ne l'ignore pas complètement. Tout le monde s'y met, même les écoles et les églises. C'est du moins ce qu'affirme Tracy Thompson dans un article dont voici quelques extraits:
The Civil War is like a mountain range that guards all roads into the South: you can’t go there without encountering it. Specifically, you can’t go there without addressing a question that may seem as if it shouldn’t even be a question—to wit: what caused the war? One hundred and fifty years after the event, Americans—at least the vast majority who toil outside academia—still can’t agree. Evidence of this crops up all the time, often in the form of a legal dispute over a display of the Confederate flag. (...) Another common forum is the classroom. But it’s not always about the Stars and Bars. In 2010, for instance, Texas school officials made the news by insisting that Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address be given equal prominence with Abraham Lincoln’s in that state’s social studies curriculum. The following year, Virginia school officials were chagrined to learn that one of their state-adopted textbooks was teaching fourth graders that thousands of loyal slaves took up arms for the confederacy.
At the bottom of all of these is one basic question: was the Civil War about slavery, or states’ rights?
Popular opinion favors the latter theory. In the spring of 2011, in recognition of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, pollsters at the Pew Research Center asked: “What is your impression of the main cause of the Civil War?” (...) nearly half—48 percent—said the nation sacrificed some 650,000 of its fathers, sons, and brothers over a difference of interpretation in constitutional law. White non-Southerners believed this in roughly the same proportion as white Southerners, which was interesting; even more fascinating was the fact that 39 percent of the black respondents, many of them presumably the descendants of slaves, did, too.
(...) “No respected historian has argued for decades that the Civil War was fought over tariffs, that abolitionists were mere hypocrites, or that only constitutional concerns drove secessionists,” writes University of Virginia historian Edward Ayers. Yet there’s a vast chasm between this long-established scholarly consensus and the views of millions of presumably educated Americans, who hold to a theory that relegates slavery to, at best, incidental status. How did this happen?
One reason boils down to simple convenience—for white people, that is. In his 2002 book “Race and Reunion,” Yale historian David Blight describes a national fervor for “reconciliation” that began in the 1880s and lasted through the end of World War I (...) But an equally important reason was a vigorous, sustained effort by Southerners to literally rewrite history—and among the most ardent revisionists were a group of respectable white Southern matrons known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
(...) But the UDC’s most important and lasting contribution was in shaping the public perceptions of the war, an effort that was begun shortly after the war by a Confederate veterans’ group called the United Confederate Veterans (which later became the Sons of Confederate Veterans—also still around, and thirty thousand members strong). The central article of faith in this effort was that the South had not fought to preserve slavery, and that this false accusation was an effort to smear the reputation of the South’s gallant leaders.
(...) Miss Milly’s burning passion was ensuring that Southern youngsters learned the “correct” version of what the war was all about and why it had happened—a version carefully vetted to exclude “lies” and “distortions” perpetrated by anti-Southern textbook authors. To that end, in 1920 she wrote a book entitled “The Truths of History”—a compendium of cherry-picked facts, friendly opinions, and quotes taken out of context, sprinkled with nuggets of information history books have often found convenient to ignore. Among other things, “The Truths of History” asserts that Abraham Lincoln was a mediocre intellect, that the South’s interest in expanding slavery to Western states was its benevolent desire to acquire territory for the slaves it planned to free, and that the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful group whose only goal was maintaining public order.
(...) But presenting the “correct” version of history was only half the battle; the other half was preventing “incorrect” versions from ever infiltrating Southern schools. As the UDC gained in political clout, its members lobbied legislatures in Texas, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Florida to ban the purchase of textbooks that portrayed the South in anything less than heroic terms, or that contradicted any of the lost cause’s basic assertions. (...) in 1911, for instance, University of Florida history professor Enoch Banks wrote an essay for the New York Independent suggesting that slavery was the cause of secession; Banks was forced by the ensuing public outcry to resign.
(...) The UDC industriously compiled lists of textbooks used in schools across the South, sorting them into one of three categories: texts written by Northerners and blatantly unfair to the South; texts that were “apparently fair” but were still suspect because they were written by Northerners; and works by Southern writers.
(...) If all of this wasn’t enough to stifle all public debate and intellectual inquiry in the decades after the war, other prevailing conditions might have finished the job: the widespread poverty of those decades, the rise of Jim Crow and the need to maintain the belief in white supremacy, a pervasive religious mindset that put a higher value on faith than on reason. (...) For all but the rich and/or socially elite this was the South that H. L. Mencken lampooned as “a stupendous region of worn-out farms, shoddy cities and paralyzed cerebrums”—far more concerned with the next meal than with intellectual inquiry.
(...) it’s hard to grasp how completely this warped version of history was accepted as gospel in the South, as silly to dispute as the law of gravity. Former New York Times correspondent John Herbers is an old man now (...) but when he was growing up in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s, “the lost cause was one of the main themes my grandmother used to talk about: ‘slavery was nothing to do with the Civil War—we had a cotton economy and [the North] wanted to dominate us.’ It was an undisputed topic.” At the time, he accepted this version, as children do; today, he is struck by the vigilance with which adults in his world implanted this story in the minds of their children.
(...) the things I heard from my mother could have come straight from Miss Milly’s approved textbooks. History books were unfair to the South, she told me, so I was not to believe anti-Southern things I might read in them, and she was vigilant about correcting me if she heard me use the term “the Civil War” in conversation. To call it a Civil War was to concede that secession was impossible and/or unconstitutional—something no self-respecting Southerner should ever do. “The proper name,” she would say, “is The War Between the States.” Her reminder to me was nothing out of the ordinary; millions of Southern schoolchildren of my generation had absorbed such messages, as had several generations before us.
(...) for decades, publishers of school textbooks went out of their way not to offend delicate Southern sensibilities in their treatment of the Civil War. One longtime publishing executive told me that when he got into the business in the 1960s, it was common to see two different versions of school history textbooks—one for in the Deep South and one for everywhere else, “and the difference was how you treated the Civil War.”
(...) Take this passage, for example, from a widely used 1943 high school history textbook (...) “In one respect, the slave was almost always better off than free laborers, white or black, of the same period [because] the slave received the best medical care which the times could offer.”
Ce paragraphe me fait sérieusement penser aux livres d'histoire pro-fédéralisme canadien dont on gave les élèves d'ici:
Publishers don’t offer a special “Southern” version of history anymore (...)The problem today, (...) is that (...) the books have become in the last ten years longer, blander, more visual, certainly—and more inclusive. (...) The result is like light beer: better tasting, less filling. (...) today’s texts simply strive not to offend (...) Take this passage from a text widely used in public high schools today, which neatly splits the difference between the “states’ rights” and the “slavery” camps: “For the South, the primary aim of the war was to win recognition as an independent nation. Independence would allow Southerners to preserve their traditional way of life—a way of life that included slavery.”
(...) The conviction that the South went to war primarily to defend the concept of states’ rights “is in [Southerners’] families, in their churches, in their schools, in their political structure,” Pitcaithley said. “They’ve been taught that over generations. It so embedded that—as you have found—if you suggest otherwise they look at you like you’ve put your pants on your head.”
Dans cet autre billet, Stephanie Pappas nous offre sa liste des six mythes les plus persistants à propos de la guerre civile américaine:
Myth #1: The Civil War wasn't about slavery.
The most widespread myth is also the most basic. Across America, 60 percent to 75 percent of high-school history teachers believe and teach that the South seceded for state's rights (...) "It's complete B.S.," Loewen told LiveScience. "And by B.S., I mean 'bad scholarship.'"
In fact, Loewen said, the original documents of the Confederacy show quite clearly that the war was based on one thing: slavery. For example, in its declaration of secession, Mississippi explained, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world" (...)
In its justification of secession, Texas sums up its view of a union built upon slavery: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable." (...)
Myth #2: The Union went to war to end slavery.
Sometimes, Loewen said, the North is mythologized as going to war to free the slaves. That's more bad history, Loewen said: "The North went to war to hold the union together." Pres. Abraham Lincoln was personally against slavery, but in his first inaugural, he made it clear that placating the Southern states was more important. Quoting himself in other speeches, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." (...)
Myth #3: Blacks, both free and slave, fought for the Confederacy.
The argument over whether blacks took up arms to fight for the government that enslaved them is a bitter one, but historians have busted this myth, Deaton said. "It's just balderdash," he said. (...) "It's completely false," Loewen said. "One reason we know it's false was that the Confederacy by policy flatly did not allow blacks to be soldiers until March of 1865."
Myth #4: The pre-Civil War era was the low point of U.S. race relations.
Slavery was a low point, no doubt, but the era between 1890 and 1940 was a "nadir of race relations," Loewen said. Tiny steps toward racial equality were reversed. (...) "It was in these decades that white ideology went more racist than at any other time," Loewen said. Eugenics flourished, as did segregation and "sundown towns," where blacks were either officially or unofficially not allowed.
Myth #5: Civil War surgeons were butchers who hacked off limbs without anesthesia.
It's a Civil War cliché: The brave soldier taking a gulp of whiskey and biting down on a bullet while a surgeon takes off one of his limbs with a hacksaw. Fortunately for Civil War casualties, though, field surgery was not quite so brutal. According to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, anesthesia (mostly chloroform) was commonly used by both Union and Confederate field surgeons.
War dispatches from doctors clearly show that anesthesia was considered a crucial part of surgery, Wunderlich said. When surgeons ran out of choloroform and ether, they would delay operating. (...) the "minie ball" bullets used in the war were large-caliber and particularly good at shattering limbs. Amputation was often a safer option than trying to save the limb, which could lead to fatal infections in the days before antibiotics. Amputation was also very survivable: Below-the-elbow and below-the-knee amputations had survival rates of 75 percent to 85 percent, Wunderlich said.
Myth #6: A Civil War bullet impregnated a young Virginia woman.
One of the stranger stories to come out of the Civil War is that of a young Virginia woman standing on a porch as a battle waged nearby. Allegedly, a stray bullet passed through the scrotum of a soldier and into the young woman's uterus. She survived, only to give birth to a baby boy with a bullet lodged in his scrotum nine months later.
If it sounds too incredible to be true, it is. The story first appeared in The American Medical Weekly in 1874, according to debunking website Snopes.com. Written by an "L.G. Capers," the article was clearly a joke, as the editor of the journal clarified two weeks later. Nevertheless, the story has spread via outlets as varied as "Dear Abby" and the Fox television show "House."