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Throwback Thursday: Five Persistent Myths About the American Civil War
These have to stop
It’s time for my monthly Throwback Thursday article, wherein I highlight a past article that either didn’t get the amount of love I felt it deserved (all of my fiction) or that needs to be seen by the six people and five thousand bots who have followed me since it was first published. I was leaning toward a film story, but a drive down a state highway in East Texas (where I am still in exile) changed my mind.
I’m not sharing an article about the benefits of rural living over city life (though I have been shot at far less here) or my ongoing quest for reliable Wi-Fi. No, this piece debunked some persistent historical myths about a tragic period in our nation’s history that haunts us to this day: the U.S. Civil War. How did something as mundane as a drive down the road cause me to choose this one? Put simply, it was a flag.
As I passed an auto repair shop that looked in dire need of repair itself, I saw something that was ubiquitous in my Southern youth but that you rarely find proudly displayed today: a Confederate flag. I realize that there are still people who desperately cling to the Lost Cause Myth, but I thought we had at least moved past the debate over the Confederate monuments, the naming of U.S. Army bases after traitors, and the damn…
