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06/17/07 - A Hispanic Reader Predicts "We're Gonna Win!" Joe G. Replies

From:  Robert Lucheta [e-mail him]

Re: Joe Guzzardi's View From Lodi Column: What Does The Class of 2002 Know?

Guzzardi wrote;

"And what is the value of a high-school diploma if a senior doesn't know the cause of the Civil War?"

If the student knows the politically correct "cause" of the Civil War—slavery—and not the real cause—the inequitable tax burden on the South and the growth of the Federal Leviathan at the expense of states' rights—he may be worse off for his false knowledge.

Certainly, at the time, the British did not believe that slavery was the cause. And, by reading President Abraham Lincoln's correspondence with Horace Greeley, Lincoln did not believe that he was warring on the South to free the slaves, either.

As for political correctness and the Civil War, consider historian John Clark Ridpath's statement that: "Slavery was the occasion, but not the cause, of the war."

Lucheta is an engineer.  He was born in the South.

[VDARE.COM NOTE: This remark about slavery being "the occasion, but not the cause" of the Civil War was first made in print by George Lunt, in 1866, who prefaced it with "It has often been remarked..." Civil War history has changed a lot over the years, depending partly on who was telling it, and who it was told to. Joe's point, of course, is that the modern student doesn't have any theory of the causes of the War—because he has no idea when it happened, or where.]