Studying the Origins of the Civil War With South Carolina's School Kids Circa 1918

I want to look at what South Carolina school children learned about the lead-up to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era by reading the leading textbook on the history of South Carolina. The Simms History of South Carolina had been published by William Simms in 1860. In 1916, the South Carolina state superintendent of education asked Mary Simms Oliphant to author a new adaptation of the book. It would become the standard eighth grade South Carolina history textbook.

Oliphant’s book was revised over the decades, but in one edition or another it was used from World War I until the 1970s. Many South Carolinians have written recollections of reading the books as children. Oliphant described slavery in the most dishonest way possible. She wrote in the 1958 edition:

“The Africans were used to a hot climate. They made fine workers under the Carolina sun….Africans were brought from a worse life to a better one. As slaves, they were trained in the ways of civilization. Above all, the landowners argued, the slaves were given the opportunity to become Christians in a Christian land, instead of remaining heathen in a savage country.” Imagine a Black child reading that?

“Most masters treated their slaves kindly … the law required the master to feed his slaves, clothe them properly, and care for them when they were sick….Most slaves were treated well, if only because it was to the planter’s interest to have them healthy and contented.”

You can find the 1918 edition of the book here.

Here is how the 1918 edition covered the lead-up to the Civil War.

Unlike later Lost Cause versions of this history, the 1918 edition sets the dispute over the spread of slavery into the territories as the root cause of the “Sectional Crisis” of the 1850s. Also identified as a cause is the dispute between Northern and Southern states over the Fugitive Slave Act. The Underground Railroad, described as a “deliberate theft of property,” is a third cause.

The book next describes the increasing anti-slavery agitation of the Northern Abolitionists as a severely aggravating factor. The book strangely blames the Abolitionists for the increased devotion to slavery of Southern whites. Oliphant claims that Southern whites saw slavery as an “evil” until Northern Abolitionists pointed out that slavery was evil!

After describing Senator Sumner as a man who “got only what he deserved,” Oliphant described the violence in Kansas as a series of Abolitionist provocations. The focus sharpens on John Brown. As the author describes the Election of 1860, she squarely describes it as a battle between the pro-slavery South and anti-slavery North. As I mentioned already, Oliphant had not yet gotten the memo that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery!