Five Stubbornly Persistent Myths About the American Civil War

We have to stop believing these

“Battle of Spotsylvania” by Thure de Thulstrup (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

There is no complete count of the number of books written about the American Civil War, though a rough estimate puts the total at close to one hundred thousand; the number of articles online surely numbers in the millions. This is not surprising, given that more Americans died in the four-year conflict (620,000) than nearly all other American wars combined and the fact that scars from the war continue to plague the nation more than 150 years later.

It is also no surprise, though it is regrettable, that more myths about the Civil War persist to this day than any other conflict the United States has engaged in. It was, after all, a battle between two diametrically opposed sides, with the South seeing it as a war for independence and the North viewing it as outright rebellion. Even the titles of early history books about the war reflected this division, as did the versions of the history of the war they told. That’s not history, however, but rather propaganda.

And it is dangerous propaganda, much of it forming the “Lost Cause” narrative that has been believed and taught in the South for far too long. It’s long past time to debunk the propaganda and accept only the real history of the war. In that spirit, here are five persistent myths about…