What did you learn about the Confederacy in school?

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For me as child in the 60's in a northern state it was the simplistic. The war was about slavery then the heroic Lincoln "Freed the slaves", the good guys won when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. The reconstruction was glossed over. When reconstruction is glossed over one does not learn the civil war continued by other means, the union got battle fatigue and the South won by 1877. While the Confederate States of America never officially returned the Confederacy as state of mind dominated the south for the next 80 years and is central to the current dispute.

When I was a kid in the Sixties the second half of American history was supposed to start at the end of the Civil War and go up to the present. But the teacher and his lady assistant just skipped ahead and started it with the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. "Roughly the lifetime of your parents"(which in my case was dead on).

Most of what I learned as a child about the Civil War I learned on my own from- largely from reading that big awesome clothbound book I inherited from Grandad: Bruce Catton's big centinenial book about the war published in 1965 with lotsa pictures as well as text.

We also have lotsa of Civil Battle fields here in the Washington/Richmond area.

No big seismic event in any nation's history can be said to have been caused by any one thing. And our Civil was no exception. You cant say slavery caused it anymore than the Queen saying "let em eat cake" caused the French Revolution. But Catton stated though there were many issues between the regions slavery was the emotional spark that lite the powder keg. All of the other issues (tariffs, and like that) would have been solved through negotiation if not for the little thing about slavery. And that's pretty much what everything Ive read since then confirms. It wasn't just slavery, but it wouldn't have happened without slavery.

The Reconstruction period (1865 to 1877) was actually in some ways a more bitter epoch than the war itself.

Each sides two greatest warriors during the war, both became the two regions greatest peacemakers after the war:Lincoln, and Lee. Lee was realistic that the cause was lost so he set an example "were all Americans now, lets get on with our lives".

Similarly Lincoln tried hold back the vindictive "radical Republicans" om Congress who were out to punish the south. But unfortunately Booth shot Lincoln. So the Reconstruction pretty much got botched. With the worst of both worlds: Blacks being ignored by Washington and the Whites getting bleeped over. And obviously America still hasn't recovered from it all yet.

As William Faulkner wrote "the past is never dead. In fact the past isn't even past".

I can't precisely pin down what I learned in school - that it was in mid 1970s may be part of that. Another possible factor is that Dad's job moved him around the lower 48. I was born in southern California desert then around grade school beginning moved to Rhode Island for a couple years, then after that to Virginia for several years, back to Rhode Island for a couple years, then bouncing around the deep south until I was an adult.
The class which sticks in my memory was in central Georgia in middle of 1970s.
I was more interested in the technology of the thing than in the other -ologies and political things.
If it wasn't boats, trains, airplanes and rockets which they didn't have then, or miniature soldiers, it didn't get my full attention.

That carpet baggers were the ultimate evil.

Grant was a slob and drunk.

Lee was a top West Point grad with military experience.

We were taught the south had "better" generals.

I learned about the Confederates in university.

I learned that they were primarily driven by a desire to keep slavery.

I grew up learning that the North and South were two different worlds economically, socially, and culturally. I learned that the war started as a war over economics and States Rights, and ended up being war primarily over slavery. While I'm glad we are all Americans now, I believe the South had every right to secede from the Union and form their own nation if they so desired. That is how the United States came to be when we parted ways with the British Empire.

Not much. It basically focused on the evils of slavery without going over the details of why the states seceded in the first place. Hint: the first states left because of slavery. Their declarations said as such.

Despite this, I don't really think there was a "good side" to the war. Yes, the victorious Union ended slavery, but that's about the only good it did. 600,000 people died, most of them poor. The rich elites profited while the poor man bled on the battlefield.

I later learned that Lincoln had a sitting congressman deported to the Confederacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_V ... #Expulsion

My education about the actual Confederacy was very limited; they were the "rebels." Any substantive research had to be performed on my own.

In a macrocosmic sense, I don't like the fact that they sought to maintain the "status-quo"--slavery.

However, on a microcosmic level, it's quite possible to like individual Confederates. And to admire the bravery of Confederate soldiers. One admires them in the sense that one admires the North Vietnamese----they were survivors against great odds.

Most Confederate citizens lived similar to how most Union citizens lived----by the seat of their pants.

There was very little slavery north of the Mason-Dixon Line by about 1800

Most of the New England and nearby states had already banned it by then.