Reader comment: Pat Beighley says, "Did you see the description of the Trail of Tears? Unbelievable!"

4. The Cherokee Indians occupied part of this State, and had learned to live much like the white people. They had fine farms with slaves to work them, good houses, much cattle, sheep, hogs and horses. They also had a newspaper, and sent their children to good schools. But in the year 1836 the white people made a treaty with them, to pay them 5,000,000 dollars to remove to Indian Territory, where they were to have seven millions acres of new land. So most of them went away, and now live in the west, where there are more hunting grounds, and where the white people will not molest them. This tribe and others take sides with the South in the great struggle for independence.

The textbook Dixie Children was printed to provide "education" during the Civil War. UNC holds a lot of material from that period. People who read it are outraged. They should be. These texts are evidence of what the war was all about and of the thinking of the Confederate elite.

At a time when a church school in Cary (just beside Raleigh where the 1863 book was published) is teaching from a pamphlet titled "Southern Slavery: As It Was" which tells us that "slavery was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence", we need to blunt force of historical evidence to impell us to face the sad facts.

See this on the Cary school: Link. The authors have tried to hide their book but Amazon's "search inside" feature lets you know what's in it.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:46:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments