Martha Young Shearer was born in a place called Virginia, pre-Civil War. It became West Virginia before her post-war marriage to Ohio-born Samuel Shearer out in California, where both had served as teachers. If she or descendants ever felt confused about her birthplace on Censuses, a piece of old Virginia turning into West Virginia would be the cause.
Many owners of 1000-plus-acre plantations in Virginia supported the Confederacy, but some, like Gen. Robert E. Lee, did so reluctantly. Those wanting to sway undecideds in so-called "border states" to their side needed a smokescreen to help persuade. "States rights" became the rallying cry.
Each appealing smokescreen sits in the middle of a people-killing uproar.
To see this for states rights, remember "Liebensraum" ("living room") would be used by Hitler, democratically elected, to sway undecideds in Germany into to opposing Jewish countrymen, causing World War II. "Manifest Destiny" had been the philosophy mask worn decades earlier by Andrew Jackson, also democratically elected, as his military team moved the frontier westward at a faster rate. Democracy does not save us from our wickedness unless there are checks-and-balances. One early Puritan church voted to execute anyone who disagreed with the majority vote. Happily, there was a check in place, a British governor in the role of supervising judge, who then told them they could not do that.
Far enough south, the slave sellers and traders ruled for too many centuries, after the Virginia Land Company and others doled out most good land as 1000-acre or larger plots that no individual family could work by themselves. The land-granting officials had saved mainly inferior places, such as rocky hillsides, some good for coal-mining later, for small farmers. They would live in hardscrabble poverty, while mansions, made from money that slaves earned but never saw, dominated in the valleys below.
Some plantation-born young, growing up with slaves as young as themselves, wanted to change things, but their elders, controlling legislatures, would not allow change. Too many were "stacked" with big landowners, males only, only the well-landed and literate allowed to vote in places proud to have no schools in the countrysides and no newspapers found even in towns or the homes of the rural well-to-do.
Plantation women indiscreetly teachng their slaves to read could find themselves jailed in the Carolinas. Local Methodist bishops once wanted to free their slaves, the Georgia legislature passed a law saying they could not. The Mississippi legislature forbade freeing one's own slaves even at death, in one's will. Etc. Etc.
In contrast, up by the Canadian border, abolitionists had been strong for decades, backed by farmers and some weekly newspaper editors and many of those departing farms for their first factory work. Growing places, the greater amount of creative engineering and factories seen in northern cities were made possible by educational efforts and by road and canal projects not matched by the south. A southern city, by contrast, might stay small a long time if financed by slave-trading docks and shopping done for "city houses" used seasonally by country plantation owners.
All of the above produced industrial advantages and a larger population about to contribute to a war win by the increasingly stronger North. The old South did not know that, never having tried the same experiments.
Northern church ministers backed abolition very early, as did women's groups wanting the right to vote. (Women also wanted their husbands to come out of the saloons, to stop gambling and drinking away the family's earnings. Not allowed to enter and drag the worst husbands out, as northern legislators said housewives could not enter, only "working women", which might mean a cook and housecleaner, but also meant another type, the women would later campaign for a workaround, total Prohibition, instead.)
In lessons on how malignant politicians might do propaganda, to encourage actions and beliefs they should not, these sparkling words, for example, states rights and liebensraum and manifest destiny, are perhaps called "glittering generalities"? The "manifest destiny" people added glitter to their generality by using as their symbol an angel pictured holding a sword from the sky and looking down. Forcing peaceful native tribes, not just warring ones, out of Michigan and Ohio, down to Oklahoma? It looked like an angel-approved activity. Warring to force Mexicans out of the many states they had ruled early and settled early, including California (where Samuel Shearer's uncle had been an Alcade under the Mexican system, a position much like a mayor)? Also depicted as angel-approved.COMMENTARY.
How the Civil War started and the reasons why the North won are still not taught, even in HS, in certain places today, as HS lessons stop with, say, the year 1835. The lessons may be poor for other eras and places as well. This writer's children reported this as they went through the local system, and my neighbor, southern-born, but aware, says her children are now seeing the same. Too many elementary schools where we are long ago reduced daily social studies to a ten-minute worksheet, with the teacher reading answers to the kids so they can fill-in the blanks. No teachers when questioned at parent meetings admitted to any of this, as hiring and firing are "at-will" and confessors or do-gooders wanting to improve things WILL be punished (remember the old south whipping slaves instead of paying them? not much has changed?). A disgusted teacher who had decided to return to Florida no longer felt intimidated. She said, since she was quitting and had a job elsewhere lined up, they could not fire her; so we could ask all our questions that had never been answered in prior visits to other teachers. She described the ignorant lessons embedded in simplistic worksheets and the refusals to send history and geography textbooks home, so parents could teach what teachers were not covering, as teachers are required to pay for any book damage, including "normal wear-and-tear" and the "normal loss rate". The worksheets free up time to spend on math to pass tests. Some parents not knowing any better call the result "double math" and praise it. The math tests are repeatedly "re-normed". Each re-setting to new norms removes things the teachers have finally taught successfully, substituting things nobody has taught well yet, so that the questions produce sufficiently high error rates in pre-testing to be acceptable as a new norm. It appears to the general public that the kids and teachers never improve, when they have, but re-norming prevents showing it. As long as this continues, double math will continue in schools that offer only 170 days per year of instruction to students (only teachers are present for the 180-day number given to the general public).
Too many parents, not knowing differently, think they can make up for these obvious lacks by merely having their children memorize the names of all past Presidents and the names of all 50 states. Again, this writers' children can testify about all of this. If I find gravesites for more brave teachers I may add them, especially if a story is told, as done for those which follow.
