Pants on Fire!

Ever had some old,m conservative uncle in your family foam at the mouth about how the Civil War wasn't really about slavery? What follows is invariably a giant pile of wacky, ideological nonsense.

The fine folks at Politifact recently tackled this very same issue and ruled it PANTS ON FIRE.

The erratic anti-feminist and purposefully politically incorrect Gavin McInnes added his take on the Confederate flag controversy. McInnes, a frequent Fox News guest, tweeted to more than 50,000 followers on June 23, 2015, that the Confederate flag should continue to fly. Why? Because, "The Civil War wasn't about slavery," he wrote. "It was about secession." In a companion tweet, McInnes said anyone, like Northerners, who think the Civil War was about slavery should go to Google. "Look it up," said McInnes, who was born in England and grew up in Canada. 

So we did.

And what did they find?

We typed in "causes of the Civil War." The first hit was History.net which told us, "The burning issue that led to the disruption of the union, however, was the debate over the future of slavery. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution." The second link on Google was to PBS and its History Detectives series. There we read, "What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict." No. 3 on the Google hit parade was Americanhistoryabout.com. That page offered five main reasons and the first one was "Economic and social differences between the North and the South." And what were those differences? 

Well, slavery.

The fourth link on Google was from the Civil War Preservation Trust. The trust wrote "The Civil War was the culmination of a series of confrontations concerning the institution of slavery." 

Perhaps they should have been directed to those sites which tell the (ahem) real story. You know that ones I'm talking about, right? They all have the same common, unspoken theme: I can't face the ugliness in my own ideology so I'm going to blame the victim and redirect. 

Of course, the internet can be wrong so Politifact reached out to some experts on the Civil War.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, used the words of secessionists themselves as proof of their intentions. "Read South Carolina's Declaration of the causes of secession," Foner said. "It is all about protecting slavery." Indeed, the first sentence refers to slaveholding states, and throughout, the institution of slavery is the pivot point around which all else turns. Historian Stephanie McCurry at the University of Pennsylvania points to Mississippi’s declaration of secession. Sentence two begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." 

So just to be clear: Slavery led to secession, which led to the Civil War.

Of course, we here on this blog know how the conservative brain works. The more facts they get, the worse they get and we all get to experience the backfire effect. My advice is to simply chuckle and say, "Sure, Unc...anything you say."