Thread by @BrynnTannehill

When Haley refused to say that the root cause of the Civil War, it pulled back the curtain a bit on an ugly truth: the American south has successfully waged a campaign to obfuscate history for over 100 years, to the point where they use their own supply. 1/n

https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1740199494380118313

Facts up front: The US Civil War started when Lincoln got elected and the south absolutely freaked out over it because he believed slavery should be phased out over time. It was an aspiration with no definitive date. He wasn't willing to split the union over the issue. 2/n

Slavery was the top issue in the 1860 election. Lincoln ran on a promise not to induct more slave states and to allow it to remain legal where it already was. He believed that it would become non-viable (eventually) and was content to let it ride out the clock for decades. 3/n

Lincoln wasn't particularly, um, progressive on the issue. His primary goal was always to hold the union together (an impossible task), with a secondary one to set the conditions for slavery to end some day in the indefinite future. 4/n

Never the less, the South absolutely lost their **** when he won, because they believed that his election would lead to the end of slavery... some day. They wanted it guaranteed forever. Seven of the 11 states that seceded did so before Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, 1861. 5/n

At the time of secession Southern states made it clear they were seceding over slavery. The concept of "states rights" (where mentioned) was clearly in the context of "states have the right to enshrine slavery into law forever." A partial list: 6/n battlefields.org/learn/primary-…

The South Carolina secession ordinance was also pretty explicit. So was the infamous "Cornerstone Speech" at the secession conference by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. 7/n battlefields.org/learn/primary-…

So, where did this nonsense about "States' rights" and "individual freedoms" come from? Basically, it comes from the south wanting to look less awful after the war when basically everyone was expected to agree that slavery was wrong. It's also key to the "Lost Cause" myth. 8/n

This reframing started as early as 1866, and is really well documented, so I shan't re-hash all of it here. But, the number one tenet of the lost cause mythology is that the civil war wasn't about slavery. 9/n battlefields.org/learn/articles…

Look, I get it: accepting that you fought for something horrific is a bitter pill to swallow. No one likes to do it, and almost no one has particularly owned it (maybe the Germans after about 1967-ish? Debatable though). 10/n

(Side note: I lost my college roommate and uncle in Iraq. I spent a year in theater as a Lieutenant and analyst 2005-2006. We had no business being there, and cause unspeakable misery and disruption. It was a CF. Admitting I wasted a year of my life on it is hard). 11/n

Regardless, rehabilitating the South's image was a massive project. The Daughters of the Confederacy put up statues everywhere. They paid for stained glass windows of Jackson and Lee in the National Cathedral in DC. 12/n .cathedral.org/discover/progr…

School textbooks (that I used as a kid!) taught about "states rights", "economic anxiety" (huh, where did we hear that one before as an excuse?), and movies (Like "Birth of a Nation", "Gettysburg", and "Gods and Generals") lionized the South. 13/n news.gsu.edu/research-magaz…

In particular, the movies told stories from a southern perspective that left out WHAT they were fighting for, and made their cause seem both noble and doomed (which is basically the Lost Cause in a nutshell). They were neo-confederate propaganda. 14/n theatlantic.com/national/archi…

Which brings us to yesterday, and Nikki Haley. I don't think she believes it, but because her audience has been spoon fed the Lost Cause mythology from birth, saying the truth would get her crucified by the Republican base (which is centered on white southerners). 15/n

It's also been largely accepted by whites outside the south (geez, I hated living in Ohio). The Lost Cause has become part of the party's tribal epistemology. So, Haley resorted to euphemisms. But they still mean slavery. 16/n

States' Rights = States have the right to keep slavery legal

Individual Freedoms = The "freedom" to own other people in chattel slavery. 17/n

Anyway, this isn't my deepest area of historical knowledge, but I did touch on it in Chapters 1 and 2 of "American Fascism". (which is still highly relevant going into the 2024 election). Haley absolutely deserves to be dragged for it. 18/n transgresspress.org/american-fasci…

But, I suspect you'd get the same evasive answers from the all other candidates (except perhaps Christie), and Trump (who'd be just as likely to blame it on the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor in 1932.) But, this is an ongoing problem for the US. 19/n

Not just because it whitewashes history, minimizes the horror of slavery, and contributes to people failing to understand the enduring consequences of it, but because it feeds directly into the narrative of purity and victimhood among white evangelicals and southerners. 20/n

When Trump tells his audience "I am your retribution," he's tapping into the Lost Cause Mythology. He's telling much of the audience "The south will rise again, and I will make it happen." 21/n theguardian.com/us-news/2023/m…

For more on this topic, I cannot recommend @HC_Richardson 's book "How the South Won the Civil War" highly enough. It came out to late for me to incorporate into American Fascism, but I wish I had. 22/n amazon.com/How-South-Won-…

I'd also thoroughly recommend the entertaining "Checkmate, Lincolnites!" videos by @atun_shei for an in depth discussion of a lot of the history behind the origins (and refutation of) Lost Cause mythology. 23/n youtube.com/playlist?list=…