Quote:<a class="bbc_url" href='http://www.salon.com/2015/07/06/new_texas_history_textbooks_soft_pedal_the_cause_of_the_civil_war_its_about_states_rights/'>http://www.salon.com/2015/07/06/new_texas_history_textbooks_soft_pedal_the_cause_of_the_civil_war_its_about_states_rights/</a>

Quote:Another board member, Pat Hardy, claimed that slavery was “a side issue to the Civil War,” and that the real reason it was fought “was over states’ rights.” Beliefs like those made their way into the standards, and therefore wormed their way into textbooks which are as notable for what they exclude as for what they include.


As Brown noted, Texas students are required to read Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ first inaugural address, in which he makes no mention of slavery, but not his Vice President Alexander Stephens’, in which he identifies “African slavery as it exists amongst us” and “the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization” as “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”