The Myths We Teach Ourselves About Slavery
Slavery was a moral evil, but that doesn’t mean every story we’ve inherited about it is historically accurate. Most Southern households did not own slaves. A common soldier couldn’t afford one. Former slave owners were generally not compensated after emancipation. Industrialization didn’t make slavery obsolete—it often made it more profitable. The Civil War itself was far more complex than the slogans we use to describe it. History deserves better than mythology. We can condemn slavery without reservation while still insisting on facts over folklore, because understanding the past honestly is the only way to understand the present clearly.
