“Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Book Got Wrong”

Throughout our schooling we fed off everything told to us by a teacher or read in a textbook, and stored it in our minds as a fact. In truth we need to think with our own minds and look deeper into the true meanings and motivations of other generations. Going through high school my views of our country and our history were changed dramatically. There are many lies we have been told all the way from the foundation of our country to World War II. One of these including the Civil War, and the motivation behind our country's division. Our first ten or so years of education we were led to believe that the Civil War came about to free the slaves, and recreate every man equal with basic civil rights. We were told that Abraham Lincoln was freer of the blacks and leader of our great nation through tough military and moral times. In fact the main motivation of our great moral President was not to free the slaves and stop the pain and suffering of the blacks. The main reasoning behind the Civil War was to preserve the Union, to keep the states as the United States. Freeing the slaves was just a way of gaining support, The proof, they claim, is his famous letter to Horace Greeley in which he wrote that "my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery, If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."