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If you watched the movie about Harriet Tubman and found yourself sympathizing with the poor slave owners for having their possessions stolen, then this book is for you. This book belongs on the stack of others which try to keep alive the popular lie of the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause myth was the assertion that: slavery was only a minor factor in the cause of the civil war if at all; that the South was the aggrieved party in the conflict; that slavery was would have simply disappeared on its own if only the North hadn’t interfered; and finally, that the relationship between blacks and whites in the South was one of mutual respect. Basically, the authors weave a goodly number of cherry-picked small truths into some large persistent lies. The authors seem to be hoping that the reader has not spent too much time reading actual history. Let’s deal with the root causes of the Civil War. The authors tell us that the Civil War had absolutely nothing to do with slavery – that this was a Yankee myth. The real cause was the Southerners’ wish for “liberty”, a term they expound upon, but always in vague terms. The impression is given that the South was bullied by the North and that most decisions by the federal government favored the North. This is a little difficult to accept when you realize that most of the Presidents up to the Civil War were Southerners and were sympathetic to the South and the cause of slavery. This was reflected in the makeup of the Supreme Court whose unbending favoritism towards the South culminated in the Dred Scot decision. Consider also the fact that one of the major reasons for the Mexican-American War was an opportunity for the South to expand slavery, which was the reason the Thoreau so famously protested it by refusing to pay the Massachusetts poll tax. They quote individual Southerners - ordinary soldiers and citizens - during the war and a number of Southern writers after the war making this point. What the authors are hoping you don’t think about is the various declarations of secession made at the outset of the war – stating succinctly why the Confederate states were seceding. They studiously avoid this because it would obviously negate their whole argument in one blow. You can google “confederate declarations of secession” to confirm this. All the major states of the Confederacy declare categorically that slavery was their main reason for seceding – not even slavery in general, because Lincoln allowed slavery to remain where it already existed, but slavery in the newly opened territories. And not even half of the new territories, but all of them! Another point that the authors make is that slavery was a benign institution that was gradually disappearing. They do this by listing many comments by slaves talking about the good, cordial relationship they had with their white masters. To hear them tell it, they were being treated like equals. The picture the authors paint is that of slavery peacefully dissipating, with former slaves becoming equal citizens. This strains the bounds of credulity. For one thing it goes against human nature that a group of people making a bundle of money at some endeavor would give it up willingly. The hard truth is that there is no getting around the fact that the cotton economy demanded either slave or low-paid labor from a docile work force. The hard truth is borne out by the Jim Crow era – marked by lynching, terror and intimidation of blacks by whites. The absurd and awful truth is evidenced by the fact that separate (but equal) bibles were used to swear in black and white witnesses in court. One has to wonder what happened to all that mutual respect between whites and blacks that the authors talk so much about. Admittedly, the authors do make a couple of good minor points. First, the North was far from perfect on the subject of racial equality. True enough, but it was still better than the South. Also, the Union army committed a number of atrocities. Point well taken. However, those points pall beside the torrent of obfuscation committed by the authors.