What 'Lincoln' misses and another Civil War film gets right

[redstar826]

- He used the N-word and told racist jokes. He once said African-Americans were inferior to whites. He proposed ending slavery by shipping willing slaves back to Africa

Comments

[moonshaz]

I went to elementary school in the late 50s and early 60s in Chattanooga, TN, a city that was the site of some major battles of the Civil War and loaded with Civil War-related historical sites. AND our textbooks didn't even MENTION the Civil War--or rather they mentioned the war, but they didn't CALL it the Civil War. It was the War Between the States.

I don't really remember what they taught us ABOUT the Civil War, just that they didn't call it that. I know I heard the phrase "Civil War" somewhere along the line, but I had no idea what it was and definitely didn't connect it with Lookout Mountain or Missionary Ridge or any of the other Civil War-related sites that were personally familiar to me.

I finally started putting the pieces together when I was attending junior high in IL, where my parents had moved by that time. I can't remember what I was taught about it in IL, either, but just learning to attach the phrase "Civil War" to all those places I knew so well and coming to realize that the Civil War and the War Between the States were the same thing was quite a paradigm shift.

Something tells me they probably DON'T call it the War Between the States when they teach about it in the Chattanooga Public Schools now adays!