To compound the country's total lack of vision, the alleged Northern abolitionists lost out also because it gave these new black citizens jobs as cooks, maids, nannies - actually, let's just call 'a spade a spade: 'Mammies' - butlers, house boys, and manual laborers. It's just unfortunate that the South couldn't see past their noses and let over 20,000 skilled black artisans (carpenters, blacksmiths, seamstresses, etc.) leave for the North instead of revamping the South by becoming the nations center of furniture makers, ironworks, and purveyors of clothes for the rich and poor. Of course, as a descendant of slaves, I'm glad that the North prevailed. Lee and the multitudes of Confederate soldiers who lost their lives fighting to maintain their way of life. I have a new-found respect for Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Rich plantation owners were broke, busted and bankrupt. And the proof was in the South's total destruction after the Emancipation Proclamation. The war between the North and South was more about the economic necessity for cheap labor to maintain America's dominance in agriculture which fueled Europe's dominance as an industrialist giant. I learned that the Civil War wasn't about white people hating black people (although there were quite a few whites who held the ridiculous belief that we weren't even humans). I came away with a new respect for the South for fighting and dying for a cause in which they believed in totally. They are extremely well-researched, providing little-known information about this historical fight.

This series of books covers the Civil War from 'A to Z'. Although my family home was just 3 blocks from Fort Stevens where the Confederate army almost took Washington and where President Lincoln was almost killed by a Confederate army, we never learned the amazing story behind the fort which we used as a playground. Washington and Frederick Douglass but only enough to fill a thimble. Guess who was a hypocritical, ignorant racist? ME!!! I discovered that I knew about as much about the Civil War as I was taught in school about African-American and black Americans - NOTHING!!! Oh, we got a smidgen on George Washington Carver, Booker T. Reading this series only proved my personal credo 'Racism is born out of ignorance'.

OUTSTANDING! I'M PROUD TO BE A BLACK AMERICAN!!Īs a black American who grew up in Washington, DC, I never had ANYTHING good to say about the Confederacy.

Shelby foote the civil war a narrative